Author: wes

Learn From Your Mistakes

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Learn from your mistakes. Seems like a simple concept, right?

But when was the last time you stopped to ask yourself if you’re truly learning from your mistakes? When was the last time you admitted you made a mistake?

I think there’s a fine line in here. I never want to wear a badge of “proud to make mistakes” on my chest, because mistakes are embarrassing. But I also never want to wear a badge of “mistake free since ’93” either.

Mistakes come from 2 places. New mistakes and mistakes of comfort.

New mistakes happen because we are trying something new. We step out of our normal routine, maybe swing for the fences with something, and make a mistake along the way. Whether the something we tried is a success or a failure on the whole, the mistakes we make are all part of the learning process.

Mistakes of comfort, on the other hand, happen because we are too lazy to correct them. Sound harsh? It may be, but that doesn’t make it less true. Mistakes of comfort are the result of knowing we are making a mistake, but we’ve made it so many times that we know the outcome and think we can live with it. Mistakes of comfort are dangerous and damaging to our leadership.

If you want to grow as a leader, take some time to evaluate the last few months. What mistakes of comfort keep popping up? My tendency is to laugh them off, but I know they need to change. What about you?

The bottom line is this: if you desire to grow as a leader, you need to learn to eliminate mistakes of comfort but maximize new mistakes. Taking risks can aid growth, but accepting mediocrity kills it.

Let Go

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I took last Wednesday off to go on a trip with my oldest daughter and her class. In doing so, I asked one of the adults who helps on Wednesday to take over our weekly program.

I will miss a Wednesday night generally about one to two times per year, and I’m starting to realize the most creative times we have on a Wednesday are the nights I’m not in charge.

There is something freeing about being able to miss a service and not have to worry about how things are going to go. The temptation, however, is to want things to go just like they would had I not been there.

Very rarely will you find someone who will do a good job at keeping things exactly the way you have them, but part of leadership is letting a person’s unique voice shine.

So, today, what do you need to let go of in your leadership? Is there something to which you have been clinging but you know it’s time to let go? Or, maybe like a bunch of ministers, you need to take a Wednesday or a Sunday off, and let someone else lead for the moment. You never know what you might learn about yourself if you do just that.

Lessons from the Farm: Lost Phones

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Have you ever misplaced your cell phone? If so, do you remember the panic in the pit of your stomach? The worry about hundreds of dollars not only disappearing once, but a second time when you buy the next one?

Welcome back to our Lessons from the Farm series. For the month of April I have been blogging about leadership lessons I learned from the farm. If you’d like to catch up, click here to read one of my favorite posts from last year, or click here to read some from this year. You can also subscribe to make certain you don’t miss a post.

I still remember losing my first phone. I had moved back and been working on the farm for a less than a year, when it happened. I was in a corral loading cattle on the truck with my phone in my pocket, and I went to get in the truck and my phone was not in my pocket.

I spent what felt like an eternity retracing my steps, hoping against hope to find my beloved Nokia (that’s right, it’s been a while). But the reality was if it had fallen out in the corral, it was likely buried under a mixture of dirt and dried manure, fully trampled by a sufficient number of 750 pound cattle. If it had fallen out while driving a 4 wheeler, it was anywhere over the span of about 2 square miles.

The feeling as I pulled out that day still sticks with me. I was in mourning over the loss. That may seem melodramatic, but we’ve all been there.

The leadership lesson? Things will go wrong. You will lose church members, or an important client, or a key business account. You will make a mistake and worry about where you went wrong and what you could have done differently. And that’s okay. It’s natural, even.

But leadership means you have to get in the truck and move forward. The business of the day doesn’t stop because you need to take a break. Mourn the loss, grieve the mistake, learn from it for next time, but avoid the temptation to dwell on it.

I could have spent all day looking for my phone. And I have heard stories of people who keep looking and find it. But sometimes we have to cut our losses so we can maintain our gains.

What loss are you mourning right now? Are you still dwelling on it? If so, take steps forward. Learn from it. Let it shape how you approach situations differently the next time. I took much better care of my next phone, believe me. Do the same in your leadership.

Owners and Hired Hands, pt 2

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As a follow up to last week’s post on the difference between owners and hired hands, today’s post is going to shift gears, for a moment. But before reading further, you need to read this post.

Jesus was the ultimate example of an owner teaching hired hands to become owners.

If you think about Jesus’s interactions with the disciples in the Gospels, he was constantly preparing them for a day when he would not be there.

The disciples, however, were slow learners. They regularly missed the point (see the Sons of Thunder), or only made sense of what was happening much later.

But, when push came to shove, in Acts we read how the disciples were able to step up when the situation called for it. Jesus prepared them for the leadership call they were going to face.

In your leadership, I’m not saying you have to be Jesus. But one of our strongest goals should be the desire to help people moved from hired hands to owners.

In ministry, this means equipping people to find a place to serve, and to allow them to serve!

Some of my favorite conversations are with teenagers when I tell them they have the freedom to make a decision and I’ll deal with the followup, or that when they are serving their way, I don’t have to worry about what they’re doing.

Leadership means bringing other people into ownership. But you have to extend the invitation. Find the people who are willing and ready to serve, and test the waters.

Lessons from the Farm: Owners and Hired Hands

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As a teenager growing up working for my dad on the farm, I started to realize there were some differences in how we viewed the operation. I worked because I had no choice (and got paid for it). My dad, on the other hand, approached the farm with a different mindset.

Welcome back to our Lessons from the Farm series. For the month of April I have been blogging about leadership lessons I learned from the farm. If you’d like to catch up, click here to read one of my favorite posts from last year, or click here to read some from this year. You can also subscribe to make sure you don’t miss a post.

Now, back to the difference between my dad and I.

I was able to work and make some money on the farm when growing up. In fact, I learned the value of keeping track of my hours, what a long work day looks like, and so much more.

But can you guess what I never did: I never lost sleep wondering if the farm was going to make money. I never made a decision on what revenue stream to pursue. I really never worried about whether or not a rain was coming.

My dad, on the other hand, did all of that and so much more. Why? Because he was the owner and I was a hired hand. There’s a difference between the two.

Today’s leadership lesson is simple: as a leader, people around you are not going to be as invested in the success of your leadership, ministry, organization, or business as you.

This does not mean the people you lead do not care for you. In many cases, actually, the people who surround you could be your biggest fans, but because they’re not the owner, their approach is different.

Similarly, you have arenas where you are a hired hand. You encounter situations every day where you are not the guy in charge, and your attitude is different as a result.

So, how do you manage this tension? You begin to give away ownership. At the core of the 3 questions, we learn to invite other people to become owners with us. Actually, inviting others in makes all the difference in the world. Granted, they will not likely become as invested in your success as you are, but their perspective will begin to change.

When I moved back to work on the farm in 2009, I was obviously not a teenager anymore. Over the course of my time back on the farm, my conversations with my dad began to change. I slowly moved from a hired hand to an owner mentality. He invited me along to influence decisions, to give my input, and to help guide the direction of the business. My success was tied in to the success of the farm.

Great leaders find a way to move people from hired hands to owners. You can do it, too. Find someone you trust and invite them to take a little more ownership. You’ll be surprised at the difference it makes. Chances are someone did that for you along the way, and it changed the way you think. Return the favor and invest in a hired hand.

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