The Ministry of Connection
Highly structured and administrative leaders tend to obsess over projects and paperwork. I should know; I have had the tendency to do the same thing. Although it is important to spend adequate time creating, organizing, and strategizing, it is also tempting to get bogged down in the minutia of things that don’t matter. We must temporarily set aside our stacks of PDF’s and to-do lists and make vital connection with our teams in order to inspire them towards meaningful significance and lasting productivity.
We must learn to walk out of the office and into the hearts and lives of those we lead. We must make a valiant effort to show our teams that they are more valuable than the work we do for them and the work they do for us. Generally speaking, people aren’t as interested or impressed in how everything looks or “feels” as much as they are in how much we truly value them. This requires spending less time behind the laptop, simplifying our administration, and making relationships with our team priority number one.
Relationships are the most impactful forum for leadership. Tasks become increasingly burdensome and painstakingly tedious if there isn’t a commonly shared goal: a sincerely felt agreement of ownership and purpose. In order for this to happen, we have to get to know our teams, listen to them, and discover what makes them “tick.” Jesus spent most of His time in intimate fellowship with His disciples, making a mark on their lives with His presence, wisdom, and love long before commissioning them.
A few questions to ask ourselves — Do our protocols tire or inspire? Do our policies impress or oppress? Do our procedures bind or unwind. As leaders, our goal is to unlock true potential in others. Yet, all too often we unknowingly create systemic clutter. In order for our teams to be truly efficient, we must become more relational than vocational. We must remove the unnecessary and clear the path for community inspired productivity (Psalms 23:5). By this, we can create highly effective systems in leadership.
