What is the most difficult thing in Leadership today?

So what do you think is the most difficult thing in Leadership today? 

Casting Vision in a compelling way.

Trusting your team.

Planning for the future.

Motivating your staff.

Saying no.

Saying yes.

Building long-lasting strategic relationships with partners and vendors.

Delegation.

Managing change. 

Constant innovation and creativity improvement. 

Hiring new talent.

Firing someone.

Confrontation.

Making things happen.

Growing the organization.

Investing in the personal and professional growth of your team/organization.

Creating the culture. 

Creating revenue to feed growth and impact. 

Leading yourself and constantly improving. 

Balancing the tension of boss and friend. 

And on and on and on.

In my opinion, one of the most difficult things in leadership is balancing the tension of being friends with your team, while also being their boss and demanding excellence and execution. My theory has always been hire the best, and if they happen to be your friends, that's great. 

To me, having your friends on your team is the best scenario. I would much rather have my friends on my team than not. But it creates a constant tension that has to be managed. 

Another difficult piece of leadership today is the rapid pace of change and innovation. As soon as you think you're innovative, you're probably not. 

What about you? 

What for you is the most difficult thing in your Leadership realities these days?

9 Specific Ways to Make Email Work Better for All of Us

Email, whether you like it or not, is still the primary communication tool in companies, churches, non profits, and all organizations. 

And the First big idea is this- making email work is your responsibility as the person sending the email. Everyone needs to own that. You are responsible to make email work for everyone receiving the email. 

So here are 9 specific ways to make email work better for you, me and all of us receiving your emails. 

1. Keep it brief. Emails should be simple and concise. Not complicated and continuous. Don't make me read a novel. Please! 

2. Create a very clear subject line. In fact, if you can state the purpose of the email specifically in the subject line, do that. And/or if you can provide a quick response in the subject line, even better. 

3. Change the subject line as the email changes. This is crucial. If the focus of that continued email string changes, then change the subject line along with it to reflect what is actually now contained in the email. Especially as emails change and get updated on a regular basis. 

4. Whenever possible, keep each email to one subject and call to action per email. Don't use an email to multiple people as your to-do list, with all of your different tasks and lists and items included. One focus, one subject, and one call to action if at all possible. 

5. Send the email to one person, and one person only.. Clear communication requires a clear sense of who is being communicated to. So make sure you're clear on who is receiving the email. It's fine if you include others who need to be in the loop, but be clear on who is receiving the email. 

6. Bold names who have an action item or need to respond. With multiple people on an email, make it very clear who needs to do what by bolding names and calling out action and response. 

7. Make next steps very clear. Callout key actions needed and next steps. Underline them, bold them, highlight them or whatever works to draw attention to what needs to happen next. 

8. Put a deadline for action in the top of the email body. Always have a deadline for what is needed. 

9. Remove people whenever possible from the proverbial email string. Always do your best to remove people from being cc'd or bcc'd or simply included. It clogs up people's inbox. You won't offend them, I promise! 

And always remember- a face to face quick conversation, or a phone call or text, may be the better option. So always choose the best way to communicate even if that means it's more work for you. Again, it's your responsibility. 

Email tends to cloud or hide emotion, so a quick 3 minute conversation can many times avoid multiple emails back and forth with feelings being hurt and people's time being wasted. 

Happy sending! 

6 Steps to Turning Ideas into Reality

We get asked all the time about how we come up with new and fresh ideas. It’s a pretty simple process that has proven to be pretty effective over the years. This can be useful in any organization or scenario, whether you are launching ideas, or just looking to make sound decisions. Here you go:

1. Create- we spend a ton of time just brainstorming, which is obviously a very important part of the process. The more ideas on the board, the more opportunities for one of those to make it through the process. For example, over the years at Catalyst, we had probably 300-350 programming ideas every year for our October conference. And creative meetings are “yes and” meetings, not “but or”. Important!

2. Criticize – every idea, in order to stay in the process, has to be critiqued and criticized significantly. This is key in order to make sure you don’t spend tons of time chasing too many rabbits and driving everyone crazy with lots of good ideas but nothing ever happening. And make sure everyone doesn’t take things personal- criticizing an idea is much different than criticizing the person who came up with the idea. It’s not personal. 

3. Authenticate- this phase is all about the point leader being willing to vulnerably offer up their ideas and amendments on the alter of authentication. Make sure if you're the leader that has the most influence, that you don't leverage that power of authority or title to "inadvertantly" get your idea through the process. Your words are heavy, and your ideas, even if bad, can be pushed through the system without being authenticated. So allow yourself and those around you to have a strong authenticity buzzer that can be pushed. We all have our pet ideas and projects, but everyone's ideas have to ultimately weight the same. This is a difficult step for most of us to learn and live out. 

4. Optimize- anything that makes it pass the criticize and authenticate phase has to be built on. In some ways, this is a second and third wave of innovation. Most of the time the original idea will turn into something that looks totally different. This is really the essence of putting icing on the cake. If you are the leader, at this point in the process your idea may be totally changed and enhanced from what it was originally. You have to be OK with this!

5. Validate- every idea has to be validated- financially, operationally, personnel wise, and direction/vision related. Lots of big ideas appropriately get held up in this phase, either to be released later or put on the shelf for good. Conversely, lots of bad ideas make it through this phase because of bad systems and/or leaders who aren’t willing to say no.

6. Execute- it all comes down to getting things done. Hard work is time consuming and tiring. And actually putting ideas into action is tremendously difficult and draining. We take tremendous pride in execution on ideas. If it has gone through the entire process and made it to this point, the idea deserves the attention and focus to make sure it happens. And if every level of the Idea process grid was correctly put in motion, the idea is probably going to be good!

Young Influencers List February Edition

Here you go, the February edition of the Young Influencers List. You can see all the past month's lists here.

1. Kyle Stark - assistant general manager for the Pittsburgh Pirates. 

2. Johnny Earle - entrepreneur, innovator, t-shirt maker, and founder of Johnny Cupcakes, a lifestyle clothing brand. 

3. Ali Nelson - artist, designer, illustrator, entrepreneur and most known as founder of Ali Makes Things, and co-founder of Kindred. 

4. Errol Lawson - UK based speaker, student motivator, entrepreneur, author and podcast host. 

5. Daniel Im - director of Church Multiplication and NewChurches.com, and part of the LifeWay Leadership core team in Nashville. 

6. Adam Thomason - preacher, author, thought leader, and founder of Collision Records. 

7. Bethany Jenkins - NYC based thought leader who heads up The Gospel Coalition's Every Square Inch Initiative, and director of career development at The King's College, and founder of the Park Forum. 

Let me know if you have recommendations for future YIL leaders. 

9 Insights on Building Great Partnerships

Collaboration is crucial in today's culture. Great organizations seem to always have a strong ability to partner well. Partnerships are not always easy though. Teaming up with one another can result in true synergy. Or many times can result in ultimate failure.

Here are a few thoughts on why creating Great Partnerships is a must for you and your organization:

1. Partnerships allow you to share risk and reward. Creating less downside, and potentially way more upside always make sense.

2. Partnerships create innovation, breakthrough and discovery. Working with others allows for input from outside your "normal" circle of staff or key team members.

3. Ministries and Churches have to work harder to create partnerships. Partnerships are very common in the business world, but for some reason in the not-for-profit world it's difficult to work together. Ministries and churches don't partner well, but when they do, it can be revolutionary.

4. Kingdom building. If we truly wish to reach our mission with the greatest velocity possible, we have to work with others. Achieving our vision and mission is much more possible when working together.

5. Good partnerships start with a deep knowledge of the other. Know your partners well before entering into one.

6. Transparency is crucial. Authenticity and honesty make for long term impact.

7. Strength/Strength. Build partnerships on each other's strengths, not necessarily on trying to improve a weakness.

8. Good fences make for good partnerships. Many times we don't take time to spell out all the details of a partnership in full disclosure. It is crucial to put everything on paper, in an agreement, and make sure all the details are spelled out.

9. Bridges not walls. Collaboration and true partnership most often occurs because you're committed to it. And you're willing to build a bridge, walk over it, meet someone on the other side, and then walk them back across hand in hand. Your commitment to it will fuel others willingness to buy into it.