Hey everyone, welcome to the Vanderblumen Leadership Podcast where we help you build, run, and keep great teams. Thanks for being here. Let's dive in.
SPEAKER_02Well, last week we talked about the anatomy of a great team, William. And one of the key characteristics that you talked about was unity of purpose. How does a team leader go about defining what that purpose is for their team?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, I think last week we talked about uh how the the church is a nonprofit with a profit margin. Yep. And we just a quick synopsis. We said, listen, if you if you don't think of it as money profit margin, if you can think, Dr. Ed Young taught me this, if you can think about how much life change your church can generate, and that might mean, you know, my preference is let's go overpopulate heaven, let's go make new disciples. It might mean, hey, let's make disciples who make disciples, let's change lives by increasing the quality of the disciples we have. But if you think about life change and being able to measure that and show that, if you'll look at that as the profit margin and then be sure to show it off as much as you can, that's gonna create unity of purpose. Now, maybe you're you're a school. Well, it isn't life change. Maybe it is shaping people into the image of Christ as they're being educated.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Frankly, I hate to say this. I was a pastor. The local church is God's plan A. There is not a plan B. I get that. However, I think that people that are running Christian schools get more time to form somebody than people in churches. They have a better shot at forming a full, fully devoted follower of Christ than a church does. So maybe the mission is a little bit different. But here's what I know. When we studied, when we wrote Be the Unicorn, and we studied uh the 30,000 best people we'd ever interviewed. And we've interviewed hundreds of thousands of people over the years. But we looked at the 30,000 design, what are the things they have in common? We found 12 habits that they have in common. It's been it's kind of caught on a lot of uh Christian and non-Christian businesses are buying it. Uh, but those 12 habits, some of them were simple, like they're prepared, of course, curious, they're they're fast to get back to people. One that we didn't realize would happen is they're driven by a higher purpose. They're not just driven by the day-to-day grind, right? They're driven by something that lifts their eyes a little bit. All right, and the human nature is not to lift our eyes. So if a leader has a team, it's your job to lift people's eyes. There's a very little-known movie with Robin Williams and uh Jeff Bridges called The Fisher King. Okay. And uh, I mean, you have to go look it up. It's old and very little known. Robin Williams is kind of a semi-crazy homeless guy, and he and Jeff Bridges are buddies. They think that they have found where the holy grail is in some dude's penthouse. So they climb up the side of the building and they're, you know, working their way across the ledge, trying to break in and steal this thing. And uh, they almost slip and fall, and they yell and cuss and make all this noise, and they're like, Oh, we're busted. And they look down and nobody on the street even notices. And Robin Williams looks at Jeff Bridges and he says, Oh, it's helpful that people never look up. That's that's what people don't, you know. You think about David uh when he says, Where does my help come from? You know, I will lift my eyes to the hills. Where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord who's even above the hills. So back to the unicorns, hard data study, not scripture stuff, right? What we found was people who are the best performers in any type of organization are the ones who have a higher purpose. And here's the secret to that to that habit. The higher the purpose is, the farther the person goes. Wow. So, like if you're uh let's talk about complete corporate example, a salesperson. If like I need to make my numbers so I get my check, so I can buy my son the new game system for Christmas. Like that's one set of goals. Okay, I'm gonna help my son, right? Uh, that's gonna go farther than I just need to gather a check. What if it's I'm gonna beat last month's goal, a little higher last year's goal? What if I'm gonna break all the records for sales? Yeah, okay, that goes farther. But what we found is the salesperson who says, I think my product's gonna make people's lives better, and I'm gonna change as many lives as I can by selling as many of this product as can. The higher the focus, the farther they go. It's almost like a pendulum. You have high, you can swing farther out. So for me, I would just say a mistake I've made in leadership is always aiming too low. And I need to think higher, need to think bigger. Back when I thought about starting this company, I talked to Dr. Young, and I think I mentioned this in a previous podcast. I talked to several people, John Maxwell, I talked to uh Joel Osteen, I talked to Dr. Young. I have a kind of a diverse friend network. And Dr. Young told me it was a great job it was gonna be. He said, now when you're done with North America, and I didn't mean this. I didn't know if it was gonna be a full-time job, right? And he's thinking, so he he just expand your vision. Here's a here's a hack. If you're looking for a mentor in your life, don't look for someone who knows more than you know. That's helpful, right? But if I just look for people who know more than I know, that'd be about seven billion people, right? So um, here's the best mentors I've found are the ones who expand my thinking. Wow. They raise my perspective, they make me think bigger farther, right? So if you're a leader, I think the the trick is to always be thinking, how do I expand bigger? How do I go bigger? How do I go bigger? Think about when uh Elijah ran into the widow, right? Yep, and she needed oil, and she said all we got's a little bit of oil. And Elijah said, Go go out and get some more vessels, more jars, and just keep filling up the oil. And she did, and she kept doing it, and she kept doing, and there was oil all the way until they ran out of vessels, and she came back and she said, Okay, I don't have any more vessels. And and then you know what happened? The oil stopped.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00See the issue for the widow, and it was a great story, but think about this what if she could have found more vessels? The problem wasn't God's supply, the problem was her ability to find more containers. Yeah. So I think as a leader, the the job is to go as high as you can, to spread it to as many people as you can, and and it needs to be so compelling that everyone around is like, why would I not want to be a part of this? Randy Pope. Uh many people said this, but Randy's the first one that I ever heard say it. He's a fabulous pastor emeritus at Perimeter Presbyterian Church in Atlanta. We we got to do his succession, which is an amazing story. But Randy said, God, give me a vision a vision. Give me a vision that's so big that it's doomed to failure unless you're involved. I love that. That's that's the kind of vision, you know, that that will unite a team in a way that is uh pretty special. Yeah, that's a God-sized vision.
SPEAKER_02That's right. What would you say for you know some teams that maybe uh what what would be some of the side effects of not having a unity of purpose, of having disunity, and maybe even speak to if you have any personal experiences in organizations that don't have a unity of purpose?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Well, there's a uh Chris Hodges, Pastor Chris, is has been a friend for a long, long time, even back when he before he planted the church in uh Birmingham, and he he used to say to me, Um, you know, William, the the the the the power in the Bible of firsts is amazing. Go look at the first time something happens, go look at the origin of a principle, right? So if you go back to the earliest part of the New Testament church, you see they were all together. In fact, did you know um the disciples actually carpooled? Oh, wow. Yeah, they were that tight of team, they could have pooled together, you know. I know it's in the Bible. It says and they were there all in one accord. That joke, sorry. Not a corolla, not corolla, not the corolla, it was in the chord. Yeah, no, but if you go to that that famous set of verses in Acts chapter two, where they were all gathered together, they were all of one purpose, they've devoted themselves to the word, to prayer, the breaking of bread, shared everything in common, and then the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved. That's that was the founding verse for Willow Creek Church, and it gathered people in a vision. I mean, they've had you know a roller coaster journey, but when they started, you know, that church started with uh they they couldn't get a loan for the land that was out there, and so the pastor, uh Bill Hoggles, um said, Well, we can't get a loan because we're not a church. No, so he convinced everyone to go out and sell tomatoes to raise money, and then he went to a handful of people and said, Look, I'm gonna go take out a personal loan for as much money as the bank will give me, and I'm gonna count on the church paying me back. And he had a whole lot of people who said, We'll do that with you. It's amazing. So they all lined up and got personal loans. I mean, it's amazing. When you get a white hot vision, yeah, it gathers people together. So if you want to think about uh how to bring your team back together, we'll get to how it gets dysfunctional, but if you want to think about how to bring your team together, go back to the origin. So here's what happens teams that are most disunified that I've seen are teams that have been around a long time.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_00It's easy when you're a young organization, brand new church plan. That's why you want to grow the church in America, go plant churches. Yeah, like that's the that's the secret sauce. I've worked in some established churches and they're great, but they they kind of like um have you ever gotten lost in a hospital? I have, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think everybody has, right? You you go in a hospital and you start walking, and you find, I feel like I need to take breadcrumbs in to get back to my car. Well, why? There's no master plan for a hospital. We we build a building, and then, oh, we grew we need another building, we need another building, and it's all disconnected. Church campuses can look like that. Church structures can look like that. You end up with with uh you know people who are are just looking for the basket weaving for Jesus ministry, or they're just looking for the men's ministry for recovery, or they're just looking for the kid ministry for special needs kids, all of which are good things, but they're not around a common purpose. We've talked before, if you want to, if you want to fix that in your church, uh go back to the origins, like going back to Acts 2. Yep, going back to the beginning of the story. Go read all of the board minutes you can find in your church or your school or your organization and go all the way back to the beginning. Because I guarantee you this, I don't think anyone has ever planted a church and said, why don't we, why don't we do this? Why don't we go talk some people in raising money and we'll start a church where nothing ever changes, where it's super boring, where people fight over stupid things, and where we really don't know why we're here. That's not a vision that plants a church. No. If you go back to the beginning, some some white hot vision started your church. And in that is the secret sauce to bringing people back together. So if your church feels disunified, if your team feels disunified, maybe some of it is you've just been around a long time and you've grown in different directions. And I don't know about you, Jared, but I gotta clean out my closet every Sunday night because all week a little bit more. I have to like go Marie condo, right? Yeah. If that makes sense, every week, every day, just a little bit more pile up, a little bit more junk, yeah. And every Sunday night, it's like, okay, we're getting after it. So I I think sometimes people get uh a defeated sense of things because they're like, we're so disunified. How do we no no no? It may be just been around a long time. Yeah, and it's time to do a little Marie condo and get back to the uh original purpose.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I love that. And it's kind of this uh this unity of uh it's evolving almost. It can't stay the same. And if it does, you see, even as you mentioned, it kind of grows stagnant and it joking the the the church planner that says, Hey, we're gonna argue over little things and we're gonna, you know, we're gonna just plan to to stop our vision by going back to the beginning of where the the the white hot vision was present.
SPEAKER_00Recapture that and then take it and look as high as you can. And you you'll if you can take that original purpose and say, How do I think bigger than I ever have? How do I find a mentor that's gonna expand my thinking? If you'll take that approach, I think you've got a better chance at getting back to unity.
SPEAKER_02What is one action step that you can give team leaders today that can help strengthen this unity of purpose and their teams to be able to achieve those, you know, looking to the to the hills to God, to those visions that they have for their teams?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, uh the world's changed a lot since I was a young pastor. And uh, I mean, now we're in color, it was black and white, and it was all subtitles. Kidding. Uh no, it used to be when I came out um of seminary at Princeton that there was a lot more respect for we're hiring up a leader and he's gonna give us a vision and a plan for a 10-year plan, a strategic plan, and here we go. And leader, tell us what to do. It that is not the way it's working now. If you're trying that sort of command and control approach, you're probably gonna run into a brick wall. Works when you're first planting a church, but but it doesn't if you walk into an established place. Rather, it's gathering people around and collaborating. So, you know, one meeting that I've always found works, and I think we've talked about this in the past, is when you get your team together. See, you know, let's talk about this. When have we seen a profit margin? Yeah. When have we seen life change? And and I phrase it this way: when we were functioning at our very best, what are the big win stories? And and you just go around the room, put the big post-its that you can write on all over the walls, and let people just write down. I remember when we baptized that recovering addict, and you know, or I remember when the marriage that was falling apart came back together. I remember when if you get people around the room telling stories about the win when they went home from work saying, today was worth it. Today felt right. If you can do that, then then you can start to say, okay, now, are there some buckets here that unify these post-its? I guarantee you, if you're in a Christian organization, there will be a unifying theme and it will be something about life change. It'll be because there's nothing else that changes a life besides the gospel. Nothing, no diet, no exercise, no business plan. So if everyone can tell the stories, their own version of it. Children's pastors got one version, the pastoral care pastor, if everybody can tell their version of it, and then you can also, and everybody loves to tell celebration stories. That's right. And then you say, Well, okay, what's the irreducible principle here? Yeah. And it will come back to some form of your original white hot vision. I I think you that will allow everyone to speak into, oh, that's right. When we're at our best, these are the things that matter. These are the things that really matter. Yeah, I love that.
SPEAKER_02I love that. Well, hopefully that your team will be more unified to your purpose and to your vision than ever. Here's to helping you build, run, and keep great teens in an accord.
SPEAKER_01Thanks again for joining us on the Vanderblumen Leadership Podcast. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. If you're looking for more leadership resources, you can find us at Vanderblumen.com and on socials at Vanderblumen. We'll see you again next week where we continue discussing how to build, run, and keep great teams.