How to identify and develop a core leadership team
COMPETENCE
A person of unparalleled competence is a person who gets stuff done. Done well. Done completely. Done on time. Competence has to do with your professional responsibilities and how fully you embrace them. It’s born from a commitment to master the demands of your job, not for ego or self-glorification, but to maximize your influence with others. It’s the platform, so to speak, you stand on to be heard. Being good at what you do leads to increased fellowship. Without exception. If you’re choosing a doctor to perform open-heart surgery, you want someone who won’t advise a drastic procedure like this unless it was absolutely necessary and won’t add expensive extras to pad profit. But you also want a doctor who won’t accidentally nick an artery and leave you dying on the operating table. In other words, you want someone you can trust, both in their professional competence and their personal character.
CHARACTER
It means that you’re a person of your word: you do what you say you’ll do. It means your people can depend on you and you’d never ask them to do something you wouldn’t do yourself (like jumping off a building, a bridge, or a cliff). And character means that you act this way when things are going well and when things are going poorly, when you’re having a good day and when you’re having a bad one. Hall of Fame basketball coach John Wooden once wrote, “The true test of a man’s character is what he does when no one’s watching.” Wise words. That’s the point, isn’t it? Character is not dependent on the public eye to perform. It acts consistent with its core values, even in private.
CHEMISTRY
What I mean by chemistry is the ability of a leader to connect with people and spark a relationship. This happens in an instant. A warm smile, a firm handshake, eye contact, and a quick compliment come together to make one powerful chemical compound: human. A leader who stands aloof, a leader who laughs at others but never at himself, a leader who’s always busy, bothered, and burdened, won’t be leading for very long. Like a doctor with bad bedside manners, people will go elsewhere. “But I’m not a people person,” you say. That’s fine if you’re an individual contributor working in an isolated cubicle (maybe). But the minute you took on management responsibilities, you took on the mantle of leadership and the mandate to connect with people. It’s not an option now. Ignore it at your peril.
That doesn’t mean, however, you must become a backslapping extrovert. That rare breed of people who never meet a stranger and never forget a name. Most of us are not that person. Each of us connect with people in our own unique way. The important thing is to be true to that voice, comfortable in our skin. It’s authenticity like this that causes people to trust us, again, in an instant.
CALLING
The Scripture verse that I most associate with my vocation is Colossians 3:23: Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men. (ESV). Someone who is eligible to join any core team needs to have a strong desire to spend his or her life doing a certain kind of work… like the dictionary defines it: having a strong inner impulse toward a particular course of action especially when accompanied by conviction of divine influence. We don’t want people on our teams who are only there to make money, or earn a living. No, rather we want people on our team who are as passionate about why we do it as we are… because joining a leadership team in this organization is not a small feat. It will cost us more than we will be rewarded, it will test our resilience like few other things ever would. But I would smile doing it for this cause. I believe it’s where I belong, and who I want to work alongside, changing the world. Therefore, I am willing to take on more responsibility, doing more than what is expected because it is a calling, not a duty. I would do it even if no one else watches over me. It’s deeply rooted to who I am. It’s what I was created to do with my life. I’m learning daily how to be a better leader. Leadership always looks more glamorous than it really is, however, it is deeply fulfilling and is the vocation that God placed me in and equipped me for.
