HOW TO LEAD the Creative Person on your Team

Tony Morgan shares some great tips on how to lead the creative types on your ministry team. As he points out, don’t assume they are all on the worship and arts teams.

Tell them what to do, but not how to do it. You can hold them accountable for the results, but don’t force them to embrace a certain process.

If you want their input, you’ll need to ask. If you stop asking, they’ll stop contributing.

If you ask, you better consider their input. If you’re not really going to use their input, it’s better not to even ask.

Know that they’ll be emotionally attached to what they create. So, if you decide not to use their creation, you’ll have to process that appropriately and not abruptly.

You need to give them a deadline, but it better be reasonable. Creative people need room to dream and let their ideas percolate.

Don’t try to motivate them with money, but they do want your praise. They’ll react when the extrinsic rewards are taken away, but they’re really intrinsically motivated.

They’ll get easily bored if they find themselves stuck in the routine. They need the freedom to take on new challenges and opportunities and hate to get stuck in maintenance mode.

They deliver new ideas, but they dread the details. To bring the best out of them, you need to protect them from the bureaucratic structure and administrative tasks.

They need a creative and participative environment. Creative people need the fuel that other creative people generate.

You need to provide boundaries, but they need to experience freedom. Boundaries force people to get creative. That’s when the best ideas are generated. But if creative people ever feel restrained, at best they’ll start to sulk and at worst they’ll join another team.

Read Tony Morgan’s full post “10 Keys to Leading Creative People“

Rockbridge Seminary students enrolling in the fully online course “Lead Like Jesus” during the January Term may want to make this a topic for discussion with fellow learners in the course.

Leader- look in the mirror if you dare

My wife Trish is a professional temp, working in all kinds of businesses usually as an administrative assistant. Over the twenty years she’s been doing this, she’s seen every type of company culture dysfunction. One of our favorite conversations is a debrief at the end of the day. 

A frequent phrase that pops up in these conversations is “top down.” In other words, to find the reason behind a dysfunctional company culture, look at the leader. 

It’s true. The leader, whoever has direct influence over an organization’s culture, will have his or her personhood imprinted onto that culture over time; the good, the bad, and the ugly. This doesn’t have to end in dysfunction, but to prevent it takes a leader who is humble, authentic, and approachable. Through the eyes of others, a leader can discover blind spots and make adjustments.

I’m thinking of a tool like the 360 degree arrogance assessment discussed in the Rockbridge Seminary online course, “Lead Like Jesus” (in the unit titled “The Heart of the Leader”). 

I won’t tell you what Trish thinks about her few temp assignments in churches and other religious organizations. The dysfunction is typically off the charts. It’s ugly. 

Thanks to Scott Williams for his 10 point “leadership look in the mirror” checklist on his blog “Big is the New Small“: 

The Good

• If your team is not scared to dream, fail & have fun (Look In The Mirror)
• If your team is self-motivated to produce excellent work (Look In The Mirror)
• If your team likes to have fun & truly like each other (Look In The Mirror)

The Bad

• If your team is scared to make decisions without your approval (Look In The Mirror)
• If your team settles for mediocrity and doesn’t demand excellence (Look In The Mirror)
• If your team members opportunities are limited because of age, gender or experience (Look In The Mirror)

The Ugly

• If your team dreads coming to work (Look In The Mirror)
• If you have high turnover (Look In The Mirror)
• If your team is unwilling to follow you (Look In the Mirror)

If you are oblivious to all of these points… ask your team to tell you what they see in you, when they look at you in the mirror…