Pastor Steven Furtick

Our leadership team is acutely aware these days that we’ve got a long way to go in our ability to develop those under our leadership in accordance with Ephesians 4.
It’s been keeping me up at night: if a lack of development is our biggest problem, how do we fix it?
Here are some of my thoughts, straight from my journal, subject to change without notice.

1. We made a distinction between isolated development opportunities (we’re pretty good at these-conferences, meetings, etc.) and a deeply embedded emphasis on development.
The opposite of isolated opportunities is integrated emphasis, demanding a cultural shift:
The desire to develop people must color every conversation, and factor into every encounter.

2. The cultural shift will become effective when we assume a posture of: what do you need from me to improve in this area? when addressing the shortcomings of those under our leadership.  It is not me against you, it’s us against the problem.

3. When addressing failures and deficiencies in those we lead, the underlying sentiment and motivation must be: I believe you’re better than this, not just: fix it or else.
This could be called the potential paradigm, because it ensures that we’re challenging each other on the basis of a sincere belief in one another’s potential.

4. In correcting the mistakes of those we lead, it’s not enough to identify the issue.  It’s also inadequate to simply drive toward a solution.  We’ve got to over communicate the reasoning behind the decision making.  Otherwise, we will never enable those we lead to make the decision better next time, resulting in an ongoing culture of decision dependency (my original phrase, I think..)

5. High standards demand a commensurate high commitment to development.  Our young staff (starting with me) has been forced to develop at warp speed.  Development is not a side project, a luxury, a future ambition or a distraction from the “real work”.  It is the marrow of our continued growth.