Begin with the End in Mind – August Leadership Tip – #252

Every second Thursday of the month, one of our MomCo staff members will teach a leadership tip or principle they’ve learned and want to share with you. This month, Melodi Leih shares about how keeping the end in mind will help you plan your MomCo year well.   

We'd love to connect with you! Send us a direct message on Instagram or Facebook or email us at leaders@themom.co.

You can connect with Melodi via Instagram: @melodileih.

You can also find our cohosts on Instagram: @andreafortenberry, @ivymamma and @sherri_crandall.

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:04

Welcome to the Momco Leadership Podcast. We believe that life and leadership are better in community. We're here to equip and encourage you as a leader and mom. We'll talk about real issues and practical tools to help you grow in your leadership, motherhood, and faith. Hello leaders. Welcome to this month's leadership tip episode. I'm so excited for you to hear from my friend and coworker, Melody Lee. Melody is the Associate Director of Volunteer Management and she's an executive leadership coach here at the Momco. She has been on staff for 20 years and has such great wisdom, insight, and encouragement to share. I know you're going to love this episode with Melody.

SPEAKER_01 0:49

I love this time of the year for Momco leaders. There's a lot of things happening, a lot of excitement around planning. We're pulling things together, we're making meeting plans, we're meeting with teams, and hopefully your team is really coming together, united on your purpose. And in the middle of all of that, I want you to pause for just a second and listen in to this leader tip today. It's a simple shift that really has big impact. So here it is. Begin with the end in mind. Well, some of you might like tilt your head and go, what? What do you mean by that? Stay with me. Before you plan your first meeting, before you jump into the theme, before you book your speakers, before you decide on crafts, discussion, all the things that will be going on in your group this year, pause and ask yourself this one question. When moms walk out of our last meeting together, what do I hope is different about them because they were part of our community? It's a really powerful question and really important for us. So think about it for a second. If it's the last meeting of the year, you might be celebrating together, you're looking around the room, people are laughing, maybe talking to people they didn't know at the beginning of the year, maybe there's some tears being shed because you uh know that this has been such an amazing community experience for them. But as you look around the room, what do you hope has happened in their lives? Maybe you're hoping that a mom who walked in feeling completely alone now has some real friendships. Maybe you're hoping that a mom who questioned whether or not she was enough now knows that she is very deeply loved by God. Maybe you have moms who found new confidence or marriages that have been strengthened. Maybe they've laughed more, maybe they've decided to share something very personal and trust people at their table, whatever it is. The outcomes don't just happen by accident. They're cultivated. It's part of our planning. Because it's so easy to spend all of our time and energy planning meetings instead of planning transformation, right? The meetings are important, they're the vehicle that we use to create an experience for moms. The details matter, the schedules matter, sure, but none of those things are actually the goal, right? The goal is living out the mission of Mom Co. and for moms to experience life change through a relationship with Jesus. And we want our moms who've been with us to have moved one step closer to Jesus than they were when they started with us. So once you've identified kind of what that goal is, what is the end outcome that you are hoping for? Um work backward, right? If your goal is for moms to build and have authentic friendships, then ask yourself, what kind of experiences are we creating that's actually cultivating relationships and authentic friendships? So little side note here: relationships and friendships take a little bit of time. And they aren't usually built by just sitting in rows, right, listening to someone talk or even watching one of our curriculum videos. That is part of it. It's part of the experience. But relationships and friendships are built through conversations, right? And connectedness and consistency, vulnerability, serving together, laughing together, showing up week after week. And so that might mean for you that your discussion group time becomes more important than squeezing in one more announcement at the beginning or one more craft at the end, right? Maybe you want to consider making sure that your table groups stay consistent all year long. So there's relationship and trust being built. And maybe it's leaders intentionally helping new moms connect instead of just assuming that when they sit down at the table, that that is naturally going to happen, right? Because remember, you're planning toward the outcome. What do I want those mamas to have experienced with us? So again, another thought for you. If your goal is that moms grow spiritually or moms are moving one step closer to Jesus by the end of their time with you, ask yourself, how are we creating opportunities for that? Is there a meeting pointing moms toward hope? Are we being very specific and intentional about sharing the gospel message? Are conversations around the table safe enough for people to be honest? And are we modeling vulnerability ourselves as leaders? Are we praying for moms? Are we not just praying for them, but actually sitting and praying with them? Again, these are things to help you think about planning backward toward that end goal. What is it that you want your moms to have experienced once when they have been with you at the end of the year? So, one more example for you. Let's say that one of your biggest hopes, your biggest desires is that every mom who walks in the door of your mom co-meeting feels very seen, right? Um, then every planning decision changes, right? If that's your goal, ask yourself these questions. And these are so important, you guys. Who notices new moms, right? If you want every mom to feel like she belongs with you, who's noticing her? Who's following up with her when she's not there, right? Who remembers her birthday? Um, who's reaching out when someone is struggling, or maybe someone just seems off that day, right? Who's paying attention to those details? Some of those things might seem very small, but they're actually one of the biggest ministry moments that happen all year long because people remember how they were loved long after they've forgotten what the speaker said, right? Or what the video said. What they're going to remember is how they felt when they were with you, who saw them, who spoke to them, who cared for them. So I want to also just kind of caution you here because I think as leaders, we um we tend to evaluate how things are going in our mom co groups by like a single outcome. Um, we try to look at questions like, hey, did everyone like the speaker? And we we judge whether or not we have had a successful meeting by that one answer. Um, or did we stay on schedule? Did the activity that we did today, did it work? Um, those things aren't important, or excuse me, those things are not unimportant. They are uh important, but they're not the the scoreboard in its totality, right? The real question that we need to be looking at and really wanting to answer well is are the moms who are coming and sitting at our tables, are they experiencing belonging, right? Are they growing? Are they connecting with other women in our group? And are they leaving more encouraged than when they arrived? That is a really good measure of success. All right, so again, the tip of the day, right? Begin with the end in mind. If moms leave knowing information but they never feel connected, then you might need to adjust, right? If moms attend regularly but they never really build relationships, you need to adjust. Leaders are exhausted because they're trying to create Pinterest perfect meetings, crafts that look like the sample, all those sorts of things, maybe we need to adjust. Because healthy leaders, which is what you are and what you are striving to be, create healthy groups. And here's the beautiful thing about Momco, you guys, is that Momco is this place where transformation happens in very ordinary, simple moments, right? The conversation at the meeting, the hug in the hallway, um, the offer to help carry something from the car in, right? The text message uh on the off week, um, the prayer that's whispered over a cup of coffee, um, those are actually the moments that God uses the most. So don't overlook them while chasing after the perfect meeting agenda, right? There isn't one. Leave margin, right? Leave room for conversations, leave room for the Holy Spirit to work and lead and guide, right? Um, because remember, when people are coming to Momco, they're not coming for all of the things. Sure, it is super nice to be able to walk in the door, take your kids, and someone else is watching them for an hour and a half, and you get to sit down and have some adult conversation. That is beautiful, and probably have a hot meal or at least a bagel and cream cheese, right? And be able to sit with some friends and feel good about being there. But even that is really not why they came. They're coming because they're looking for something. They're looking for connection, they're looking for a friend, they're looking for someone to really see them. And whether or not they know it yet, they're looking for a reason to hope forward, right? Like some of them might not even know that they need Jesus, but you have the opportunity to create that space by loving them well so that they can actually move one step closer to Jesus. So I want to encourage you to revisit your end-in-mind sort of goal throughout the year, right? Don't just write it down now and never think about it again, right? Come back to it, revisit it, talk about it in your lead team meetings. Um, are we moving um toward the culture that we really want to create? Or if this is our end goal, what are we doing? How is our plan going in order for people to actually um have moved one step closer to Jesus? If that's your end goal. It should be part of your end goal because that's the overall goal, right? For the Momco. So keep that in mind. Um, what's working, what's not, who still needs to be connected, who hasn't found their place yet? Um, what kind of adjustments do we need to make, right? Because great leaders don't just make plans, right? They evaluate them, they adapt them, and they keep the mission in front of them all the time. Okay. So at the end of the year, it's easy to count attendance, check boxes, um, you know, count heads, all those kind of things. But I want to encourage you to celebrate something even greater than that. Celebrate stories, right? Celebrate the mom who found community. Um, celebrate the mom who stayed because someone noticed that she was missing, right? Celebrate the mom who stepped into leadership for the first time or took on a small bit of responsibility for the first time. Celebrate people who have discovered hope or people whose hope has been restored because they've been with you. Celebrate answered prayers and celebrate courage because those are the things that last, right? So as you begin your planning, and I know that you guys are in the throes of it right now, I want to leave you with just one challenge, okay? At your next leadership team meeting, take 10 minutes to talk about this, right? Ask this question. By the end of this momco year, what do we hope every mom who comes through our door, what do we hope that mama experiences? And take the time to write down like three to five answers and then look at it every meeting, every event, every leadership decision, and ask yourselves, does what we're doing today actually move us toward that goal? Right? If it does, lean in. Great. Um, keep going. If it doesn't, don't be afraid to simplify. If it's not working, cut it out. Um, remember that you're not just planning meetings, right? You're creating safe space and connection so that transformation can happen, right? You're creating a place where moms can belong before they even believe that they have it all together or that they should be there at all, right? You're creating places of hope and places where they can discover that they're not alone. Um, your faithfulness matters more than you know. And so I am so grateful that you are taking the time to lean in and listen to these leadership tip podcasts because they will help you be and um help you recognize that every welcome, every conversation, every prayer, every small act of love, God is going to use all of it. So begin with the end in mind and trust God to do immeasurably more than you could ever ask or plan, and he will be faithful to do it.

SPEAKER_00 14:01

Leaders, we know that your time is valuable. We're proud of you for investing in yourself by listening in today. We know that when you invest in mom, you change the world. We believe in you and we're caring for you.