Impulsive Joy

Uploaded to Flickr by Markfive

(If you haven’t already read the first three posts in this series, you can do so here,  here and here.)

I love this except from a recent article on Leadership by Ken Blanchard

Many leaders “know what they want their people to do but many times don’t bother to tell them because they assume people know. This leads to the most commonly used management style in business, often referred to as seagull management. When someone makes a mistake, seagull managers fly in, make a lot of noise, dump on everyone, and fly out.”

“Can you imagine training for the Olympics with no one telling you how fast you ran or how high you jumped? The idea seems ludicrous, yet many people operate in a vacuum in organizations, not knowing how well they are doing on their jobs. This can lead to what we call decommitment—a change in an employee’s motivation or confidence—which can be one of the biggest challenges leaders face.”

“Feedback is the breakfast of champions……..Letting your people know where they stand and how they are doing can help nurture genuine relationships and create job satisfaction all around.”

Kids and students need a consistent place to develop their gifting, their skills, to receive feedback on their performance. Wisdom is knowledge in action. Kids and teens haven’t lived long enough to acquire all the knowledge they need to make intuitive choices sometimes. They need to borrow our life experiences and knowledge to help them make wise choices.

Just a few weeks ago I was listening to a message from Jeff Henderson from North Point Online about encouragement.

Research from the Gottman Institute has shown from research that the “Magic Ratio” for healthy relationships is 5 positive statements for every 1 negative.

The reality is  that we naturally drift toward 1 positive for every 6 negative.

If you create an environment that is counter cultural — more positive than negative — you are going to attract people to your ministry.  If you can give positive feedback, you will influence future leaders who will feel called to the church community.  But you have to be intentional with the time you spend with your students to have the opportunity to speak positivity into their lives so that they know there is someone who believes in their spiritual potential.

Coaching Huddles

When I first started shepherding youth in serving roles, we would have Sunday huddle times – every week — often with required reading. It was fairly informal but the consistent gathering would create a space for prayer requests and opportunity to relevant topics.  Depending on what I was observing, we would discuss everything from speaking on stage, working with kids to having humility in our roles.

If our greatest accomplishment is that they have learned is how to run a soundboard, then we’ve got a problem because they are about to graduate and go into life and culture. And we will have missed out on an enormous opportunity to help them develop their character and convictions before they are faced with all that the world will throw at them.

I’ve worked with some churches who will have a weekly or monthly leadership class for students who serve in leadership roles.  The important point is to do something.  Quarterly….monthly….weekly…. Put it on the calendar and be known for how you develop your people verses how you “need” people.

So at the end of the day, the question we need to ask ourselves is what do we want the end result to be?  Do you want to teach a skill or develop a leader?  Don’t you want college institutions and employers taking notice of the type of young adults you are sending into the world?

It may require some tough decisions on how you can stop doing something so that you can start developing your young leaders better.  At the end of the day, how you coach your young leaders will determine whether you are finding students “hanging out” in the sound booth or enthusiastically on task in a role they are designed for.

How do you develop your jr. leaders?