Counter-Cultural Leadership [Link Love]

I love having the opportunity to write about topics I love!  Here's an article I wrote that posted last month and I totally forgot about it. 

This is just a snippet, so follow this link to read more. I wrote this for the great site I mentioned Monday, www.mymissionfulfilled.com.

Phone Interview Tips, Part 2

This is the sequel to Phone Interview Tips, Part 1.

If your interviewer doesn’t share, it’s good to ask who all is present in the interview.  This will help you know who your audience is, and may affect some of your answers.  It’s good to know if you’re speaking with one person or 5. 

Remind yourself that there are absolutely no non-verbals in a phone interview.  You can’t expect a reassuring nod or eye contact. Be confident, even without these things!

When you’re finished answering a question, stop talking.  We tend to ramble on phone interviews because the silence feels weird.  You may not hear, “Good job!” or “that sounds great.”  Regardless, you must be confident in your answers.  Silence is inevitable on a phone interview.

Keep a pen and paper close by.  Jot down notes, questions that come up, or even questions being asked.  These things may help you focus on your answers.

Come with a couple of questions.  This certainly isn’t required.  It usually won’t make or break the interview, but it helps to show that you’re thinking in the right direction.  Don’t ask how you did, and don’t say, “I know I’m supposed to have questions, but I don’t.”  It is okay to ask what they process looks like from here, or when you might hear something.

Use a phone interview to your advantage.  Use your words wisely, listen carefully, and hopefully score the job you want... even over the phone!

Phone Interview Tips, Part 1

Interviewing for a new job? Have a phone interview that's scaring you to death?
I've been a part of quite a few phone interviews, as interviewee and also as interviewer.  Here are a few tips that were passed down to me, and some I've picked up along the way.

Treat it like a face-to-face interview… be ready early, have your notes together, smile, etc. Keep your scheduled appointment and try to avoid having to call the interviewer back later because something came up.

Dress the part. Seriously.  If you look professional and take time to prepare, it’ll change your perspective.  Dressing professionally will help you feel more confident about the interview.

Find a quiet, comfortable place to be during the interview.  Make sure there are no distractions.  This will help you focus.  It also helps the interviewer when there’s no background noise. If you’re walking, it’s harder to talk without become winded.  If you’re in a loud place, it’s just annoying.

Before the interview, brainstorm potential questions.  Write them down, along with your answers to those questions.  Why do you want the job?  What do you have to offer?  What are your greatest strengths and areas of growth/improvement?  What concerns do you have?  What experiences from your past have helped prepare you for this job? 

Print out and keep in sight those questions and answers. They may never come up, but they also might help you  in the interview.   You'd be surprised how much this will equip you to talk about what you bring to the table!

Come back tomorrow for Phone Interview Tips, Part 2!

Burned

Over the next few days, I'll post several updates from our Kids Ministry Conference in Birmingham.  The first is from one of our leadership chats...

This week at the Kids Ministry Conference, we spent a good bit of time talking leadership with some of our CentriKid Camps staffers who were in attendance. The question raised was, "What leadership lesson have you learned the hard way?"

I immediately thought back to an experience a few summers back when I burned relationships with some folks on my team. I handled a hard conversation with less tact that I should have shown, and I was very slow to show grace. Sure I showed some grace in not addressing the situation for weeks (okay, so that's not exactly grace...) but I learned the hard way how important it is to lead out of relationships, and to build relationships with the influencers on a team.  I'd much rather handle conflict appropriately... rather than get burned.

5 signs of a great team

I work on a great team. Really, they are incredible people. After long hours of doing manual labor together this week, I realized that they genuinely embody characteristics of a great team.

1. They are willing to do hard work. Nobody would say that manual labor, moving boxes, or sorting broken flag poles is their favorite job in the world, but there's no question that they'll be there. No one bows out for "more important work," or disappears to never be seen again. They are there to work hard.

2. There's no such thing as "That's not my job!" This team will do anything. Surplus day and flag sorting might not be found in their job descriptions, but no complaints are heard. The job needs to get done and we're a team.

3. They have unique gifts but a shared vision. The team knows what success looks like, and we work toward success using our unique gifts... we aren't all doing the same job, and we each have a different viewpoint for finding solutions to problems.

4. They communicate well. Nobody's perfect, but these folks are great at staying "in the know." We ask questions, try to stay on the same page, and value having the team in the loop as much as possible.

5. They keep it fun. Don't get me wrong, we all take hard work seriously... but jokes, laughter, and general funniness are a big part of our time together. This team loves to laugh, and we try not to take ourselves too seriously!

new book?

Book club take 1... epic fail.

Book club take 2... better?

Some folks in our office are still attempting to read parts of the personal mba book list. We quit book one no more than 2 weeks after I posted in January. On to book 2 - same genre - similar story. But, a catalyst for incredible conversations about camp. life change. doing something in the world.

Suggestions for book 3? The options are HERE: http://personalmba.com/

creating culture, part 1

I've been thinking a lot about what it means to create culture.  I work in a church, where a lot of my job is working on the programming and staffing of the ONE hour we get with kids each week... do you realize that's less than 1% of a kid's week? 1%, that's it.  If kids are exposed to God thru church only 1% of their weekly time, it's got to be a place they LOVE to come.  We have to create a culture that screams loudly the things we want kids to walk away with, and one that doesn't forget the importance of impacting parents.  After all, those parents (and kids' peers/teachers) get way more than 1% of a kid's time.  If there's anywhere to create culture, it's in kids ministry!

I love talking/studying leadership, but I've never spent much time looking at it from this angle of culture shaping.  EVERYTHING we do in leadership is either creating/shaping a culture or letting culture shape us.  Recently I stepped into a certain specific culture as an outsider... a culture that had no doubt been created by strong leaders -- where people know what to wear, how to act, what to say, even key phrases to repeat.  It was a bit scary, but fascinating to see this!  

As cool as this is for me to see and ponder, I realize that we have to be super careful in creating culture.  Leaders can leverage their influence to change behaviors in a number of ways, and it scares me to thinking about working hard to create a culture and it be the completely wrong or even more so, the not God-honoring culture.  More to come on this...