Are you a fixed or growth mindset person?

Is it possible for Tim Tebow or Tony Romo to become elite hall of fame quarterbacks? What you believe about these quarterbacks may determine how successful you are in your career. 

If you have the mindset that neither of these will ever become the quality qb that can lead their team to a Super bowl like Tom Brady or Aaron Rogers, that they don’t have the ability to improve much beyond where they are now, you are probably a “fixed mindset” person.  If you think, yes they have a good chance of being great, you are probably more of a "growth mindset".

Chip Heath explains in the book Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard, that people are generally “fixed mindset” or “growth mindset” and this can make a difference in how you approach success.  He provides this simple test to see which mindset you are.

Read the following four sentences and write down whether you agree or disagree with each of them 

1. You are a certain kind of person, and there is not much that can be done to really change that. 
2. No matter what kind of person you are, you can always change substantially.
3. You can do things differently, but the important parts of who you are can’t really be changed
4. You can always change basic things about the kind of person you are.  

If you agreed with items 1 and 3 you’re someone with a ”fixed mindset.”  And if you agreed with items 2 and 4 you tend to have a “growth mindset.”

People who have a "fixed mindset" would more likely believe that their abilities are basically static. If you are dumb, you'll always be dumb.  You may get a little bit smarter or better but your ability to be a good speaker, football player or musician is determined by your giftedness or wiring.  Fixed mindset people believe Romo and Tebo will never be much better than they are now.  

However, those with the “growth mindset” believe that abilities are like muscles - they can be built up with practice. Their mindset is that they are not restricted by their genes.  Failure is only a means to being better.  An athlete should improve every year he or she plays until age begins to diminish their athletic ability.  Good players can become great players.  Romo and Tebo will become better players with more experience and hard work.

Carol Dweck, professor of psychology at Stanford University in her book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, establishes the case that a growth mindset will make you more successful at almost anything because those who stretch themselves, take risks, accept feedback, and take the long term view can’t help but progress in their lives and careers.  Dweck, through controlled studies proved that the growth mindset can be taught and that it can change lives.Change is possible!  But as Christians, we already knew this.  Our faith is based on our ability to change, to become new through Jesus Christ.  Philippians 4:13, All things are possible through Christ.   Even for Romo and especially for Tebow!

The question is which mindset are you?  And, if you are a “fixed mindset” person; are you willing to be retrained to become growth minded?  Your success may depend on it.  

Is tradition a stumbling block to growth?

It is always interesting to see what the crazy new style of uniform the Oregon Ducks football team comes out with. The helmets they wore at the Rose Bowl were wild, very futuristic.  The Ducks have worn 12 different uniform combinations in 12 games and 7 different helmet styles.  I guess they took the "uniform" out of their uniforms. And it is catching on with other teams. I hadn't given much thought of it being anything more than a Nike commercial for their gear. I'm more of a traditionalist because I'm not crazy about them. I didn’t like it when my alma mater, Baylor, started wearing different uniforms other than their traditional green and gold.

However, I’m told that this is more than about innovative uniforms; it represents a movement in college football to forsake tradition in the name of winning. The theory is that teams focusing a lot on tradition and keeping the status quo like Penn State and Texas A&M actually are at a disadvantage. The logic is that tradition focuses on the status quo, not changing, and to get better we must change. Progress demands change, which tradition disdains. The Ducks and other teams that follow suit are forgoing tradition to focus more on whatever it takes to become a better team. The new uniforms appeal to the 17 and 18 year old athletes and actually become a recruiting tool to help them be better.

I'm not sure how much validity there is to all of this in college football. It has helped raise the Oregon program to a high level.  But it got me thinking about tradition and the church and whether or not tradition can hinder us as individuals and churches to be what God wants us to be and do.

There certainly has been a great tension in the church throughout the ages between tradition and progress. The Catholic Church has gone so far as to elevate tradition equal to scripture in forming doctrine. While the protestant denominations don’t take it to that extent, most all embrace tradition and have a difficult time with any sort of change.
Could this focus on tradition actually hurt believers and keep us from being all God wants us to be and do? Is tradition a stumbling block? Hebrews 12:1

My thoughts:
1) Tradition helps us remember what is important and plays a key role in instilling in us our faith and values. It is what unites the Jews and helps them remember what God has done for them. The Lord's Supper is one of our traditions that help us "remember" what Jesus has done for us.

2) Tradition can hinder our growth when we place an inordinate amount of time on it. God's work in our lives includes justification (past), sanctification (present) and glorification (present and future). I believe the church has been set back because of an obsession more with the past than the present and yes, individuals have suffered much because of it. Even today Christians have a tendency to want to study more than apply the word. We can easily get caught up with the past and even the future while neglecting the present.

3) If we use tradition to help educate, instill, and celebrate our purpose and our values and give the right amount of time and emphasis to it, this will free us up to be flexible when it comes to determining the path to accomplishing our purpose. Our methods can and need to be dynamic in this ever-changing world in order to best make disciples. The church has lost ground in its purpose of making disciples and in order to be the influence it should be in this world, there needs to be a reemphasis and refocus on how best to accomplish that purpose.  As Hebrews 12 states, our focus should be on Jesus.  My thought is not the Jesus on the cross, but the Jesus who is alive in us, working to make us like him.

Your thoughts?

The Decision Tree

One of the great take-aways I received from the book Fierce Conversations by Susan Scott was the idea of the Decision Tree.  This is a great visual tool to help your organization be more productive (bear fruit) by identifying clearly, which categories decisions and actions fall into, so that an employee or volunteer knows exactly where he or she has the authority to make decisions and take action.  

This word picture communicates to those you lead where they are free to make decisions and how to grow and empower others to get along without you. 

Decisions are arranged in categories based on their importance and impact on the organization. The analogy of root, trunk, branch, and leaf decisions indicates the degree of potential harm or good to the organization as action is taken at each level.  

Poor decisions at any level can hurt an organization, but if you unwittingly yank a leaf off a tree, the tree won’t die.   A Root Decision if poorly made and implemented could cause major harm to the organization.  

Leaf Decisions

Make the decision. Act on it.  Do not report the action you took.

Branch Decisions

Make the decision.  Act on it.  Report the action you took daily, weekly, or monthly.

Trunk Decisions

Make the decision.  Report your decision before you take action

Root Decisions

Make the decision jointly, with input from many people.

The goal is to provide employees or volunteers a clear upward path of professional development.  Progress is made when decisions are moved from root to trunk to branch to leaf.  As an employee demonstrates a track record of making good decisions in the trunk category, for example, it will be satisfying to both the employee and the person to whom she reports when those decisions can be moved to the branch category. 

The Decision Tree also raises the level of personal accountability.  Whenever we work diligently and brilliantly, without having to be told exactly what to do, it gives more ownership to the employee and unburdens the manager or executive of work. 

It would be ideal if all leaders would be able to set the goal, “You have six months to teach everyone who reports to you to get along without you.”  

Where might the Decision Tree work in your life?

Work place.

Church.

Home, with your children.

The Importance of Values and The Penn State Tragedy

I must admit that I was once a skeptic of the whole idea of knowing and living out your values but I am now a full fledged believer. I confess that during the process of trying to define my own values and values for my church, I don't think I fully comprehended what values were and their importance.  What difference does it really make that I know these values?  But two recent developments helped convince me how important it is to know and live out your values.

Maybe you've asked the same thing when you were pressed to memorize your company's values.  What's the big deal with these values? And I've heard several people share that their church leaders go through the process of naming and proclaiming their values by rote because it's the current thing to do, not fully understanding the real value of values.

The first thing that helped open my eyes was reading the book Fierce Conversations. Author, Susan Scott explained that when your values and the way you live are not in alignment, you experience an integrity gap.  If your behavior contradicts your values, your body knows and will actually be affected on a cellular level.  You can become depressed, angry and prone to disease.  You will feel out of kilter, experiencing  emotional, spiritual and even physical discomfort. Your immune system can actually be weakened when your are not living out your values and you can be more prone to illness.
Much like the body, when the employees or members of organizations and companies are not living out the values of the place where they spend 1/3 of their time, their lives and the organization suffer.

The second thing that convinced me of how important it is to live out our values is what happened at Penn State.  I've heard over and over how much Penn Stare values moral character.  But the leadership's walk didn't match their values when they chose guarding their reputation over doing the right thing.  They chose to look the other way and sweep the ugliness under the rug instead of making the hard decision to turn in a fellow coach and face the scrutiny of NCAA investigators and image police.  The leadership was "out of integrity" and it certainly hurt them and lots of others because the leaders didn't live out their stated values of integrity and character.
Understanding the importance of living in alignment with your values puts a whole new light on the value thing for me. And if values are this critical then as a leader of my family, a company, organization or church, I must:

• Identify just what is important.
• Communicate the values effectively, 
• Hire people that align with your values. (companies)
• Encourage my employees, members, family to live them out. (celebrate and reward)
• Model them myself.   

Take an integrity gap checkup.  What are your values? Ask yourself how well does my life life actually match my values?  If there is a gap between your values and your lifestyle, you are out of integrity.

I am successful to the degree that who I am,
who God wants me to be,
and what I live
are in alignment.

The most important thing

I like to listen to talks and sermons while I mow my yard so the other day I went on YouTube and pulled up Francis Chan's sermon, The Holy Spirit's Power and Our Efforts. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Deuca-kXtnI&feature=youtube_gdata_player.
Right there on my riding mower, I had a come to Jesus meeting.  His sermon had a profound and immediate impact on me.  Not that the message was something that I hadn't heard before, it just came at the right time and was delivered in a way that struck a deep chord in my spirit.
Chan asked the question, "What do you work hardest toward?"  Then he gently reminded me that the most important thing for me personally to work toward was not the tasks on my to do list, or accomplishing great things.  The most important thing is developing my character and who I am in Christ.  I realized right then that I had ventured off course, gotten a little too preoccupied with changing the world and forgotten about changing me.  As I thought about my situation, I realized that most all of the pastors and church planters I coach have so much on their plates that their tasks never seem to end.  They become overwhelmed by requests of their time and unrealistic expectations and are even more prone to falling into the trap of chasing the urgent. Pastors, leaders, all of us can easily neglect the most important thing, to foster the growth of self. The irony is, Chan declared, that when we sacrifice the important for the urgent, we end up with neither.  We will not be the person that God wants us to be and we won't accomplish His goals. 
However, when we are the right person, things will happen. We will produce the fruit and we will fulfill our purpose in Christ.  As Jesus said, "I am the vine and you are the branches.  He who abides in me shall bear much fruit, but apart from me you are nothing."
The apostle Peter also addresses this in 1 Peter 2:5, In view of all this, make every effort to respond to God's promises. Supplement your faith with a generous provision of moral excellence, and moral excellence with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with patient endurance, and patient endurance with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love for everyone. The more you grow like this, the more productive and useful you will be in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. NLT
God is more interested in changing us than for us to accomplish great things for Him. He loves you and me so much that He doesn't want us to stay where we are.  
The question I have to ask myself, do I want to change?  Or do I just want more stuff, more accomplishments?  Will I settle for surface and cosmetic modifications or will I strive for real change, deep in my character and my soul?  If so, I'll need to sacrifice the urgent for the important.  I'll need to devote time and effort into being who God wants me to be, the most important thing and all other things will be added.
Image: Danilo Rizzuti / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Lessons learned from Steve Jobs

With word of Steve Jobs' death, everyone seems to be writing and blogging about his impact on the world.  So I thought I'd throw my two cents in also. Here are some leadership principles I have learned from Steve Jobs' life and leadership that can be applied in leading a congregation.  

Inspiration 

The word that you hear most that describes this great tech giant is visionary.  If someone is fortunate enough to impact society in a way that changes the way all of us live or experience life, then that person is usually lifted up as a leader, an iconic figure.  Jobs has had not one, not two, but six of these breakthroughs, any one of which would have made for a magnificent career.  In order: the Apple II, the Macintosh, the movie studio Pixar, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad.  He certainly had a vision but even more important was that he was able to bring that vision to fruition.  The key to doing that was his ability to inspire others to join him in the quest to accomplish his goal.  The story is told that to recruit John Sculley, the former CEO of Pepsi to run Apple in 1983, Jobs famously challenged Sculley by asking, “Do you really want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or do you want to change the world?” It was his ability to inspire the right people he needed to join him in accomplishing his vision that made him a success.

As Christian leaders, we have a powerful kingdom purpose, the greatest and most inspirational call to action the world has ever known. Something Steve Jobs did not have.  And I would say the ability to inspire others to this vision is the most important skill a pastor could possess in growing a church numerically and spiritually.  It's hard to understand why a pastor would have trouble communicating this kingdom vision and inspiring others to join what God is doing especially when a pastor has the pulpit at least 50 weeks a year, not to mention the opportunities for one on one conversations.  Don’t you agree that one of the top goals of a pastor would be to inspire others to join in accomplishing God’s vision for the church?  Isn’t that the most important thing you can help your believers do?  Instead, you find pastors preaching about deep doctrinal issues or 10 steps to prosperity.  If you can't inspire your folks to join you in your vision, you may need to find another church or better yet, another calling.  

Focus

Steve Jobs once remarked, "focus does not mean saying yes, it means saying no!"  When he was rehired by Apple he began to develop the iMac computer.  He kept the individual computer and computer line simple. And all of the products that Jobs was responsible for creating have the same concept of powerful but simple.   When I was given an ipad for my service at Grace Point, I opened the box and discovered the simple one page instruction sheet which said, push this button to turn on.  Not much instruction was needed.  

In church work, we can often be called to do many things.  But it is imperative that we discover the talent and resources that are unique to our church and focus with laser like clarity on how we can best accomplish our purpose and vision using the people and resources we have.  Keeping it focused means saying no to a lot of ministries that don't advance our purpose, whether they be great or not.  

Innovation

Jobs was not one who wanted to follow the well traveled path.  He was an out-of-the-box thinker.  But his path to the creation of Apple was built upon the ideas of other creative and innovative people.  Jobs used the concept of personal computing which was being developed by a young computer geek named Steve Wozniak who had no intentions of marketing his idea.  Jobs brought the concept to the masses and the rest is history.  He may not have had the original idea, but he took the quantum idea and built upon it. Innovators are readers, learners, developers, creative sorts who are not afraid to take risks and are willing to expand on ideas of others.  

For many in church, tradition is more valued than change and creativity.  So innovation can be very difficult. But successful churches are usually those who are willing to make changes, take risks and be creative.  It is very easy to just reproduce what others have done in the past or what the denominational leaders ask you to do.  Religion often demands conformity and control and in the process churches can easily lose their unique identity and gifting and fall into a spiritual rut. Create a culture of innovation and ingenuity in your church. It goes back to vision and inspiration.  Others will be willing to change when you give them a reason that is connected to the vision.  Inspire others to imagine what is possible and then be creative about how you are going to accomplish the vision God has given you.  

To read more on the life of Steve Jobs go to http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/10/jobs/   

Grace at the Apple Store

I dropped my ipad a few days ago walking in a parking lot of a conference center.  It flipped out of my hand, which happens sometimes if you don't strap up the leather case.  I didn't think much of it, because my case protects the ipad but when I picked it up, low and behold, the glass was fractured.  It looked as if it had been shot with a bb, cracks extending all around it, all the way to the edge.  Apparently, it landed face down on the parking lot where there happened to be a pebble which impacted the glass.
Bummer.  I love my ipad.  It is my office and constant companion and now I had to either get a new one or get this one fixed.  How long would that take?
I am fortunate to have a friend who manages an Apple store in San Antonio and I emailed and told him about my mishap.  He said come on in and they'd take a look at it.
Well, much to my surprise, Apple just replaced my ipad with a new one.  Never would I expect this.  I read that some people who had their ipad 2 glass cracked had received new ones. But mine was an ipad 1 which I had owned for 9 months and I did not have the extended warranty.  Surprisingly, very few questions were asked.
As I drove away from the store, I felt this incredible sense of gratitude and blessing.  And it dawned on me that this certainly was grace and what I should be feeling every day I wake up because I have experienced so much greater grace from God.
Did I deserve a new ipad?  Certainly not.  It was my fault, brought on by my negligence.  I didn't even receive a sharp rebuke from the Apple rep.  He had me sign a couple of papers turn my old ipad over to him and brought out a new one. All I needed to do was accept it.  I guess I could have refused it and kept the old one but who wouldn't want a brand new one?
When God offers us a new life, we too have the option of keeping the old life, the one that is fractured, broken down by sin or trade it in for new life.  But God says I want the old life and I'll replace it with a new one, no questions asked.  No stern rebuke, no tricky deals or demand for promises to take much better care of the new one.
The question you may be asking, "would you have gotten a free ipad if you hadn't have known the manager? Did he pull some strings for you?" I don't know the answer to that.  It certainly didn't hurt.  My manager friend never indicated that this was a "special favor" from him.  When I thanked him he just responded, "my pleasure".
But when I think of it, our favor, the grace we receive from God comes only because we have someone pulling the strings for us.  Jesus Christ is our intercessor and it is because we know him, personally, that we are extended God's grace.  Thankfully Jesus paid the price so we could receive forgiveness of our sins and eternal life. Without knowing Him, there is no grace. 
Maybe there is more to the meaning of the Apple logo and branding than I thought.  Then again, probably not.