Adaptive Leadership and High Performing Teams

Hey, so let's go. Um, man, so I just give you a little context of what I'm gonna be doing here. So this has kind of always been a space that I've never really intentionally just built out and something I've been working on just because the stage in life— many of you know, like, I, I sit in a relatively, relatively high seat in kind of the middle management, on the upper side of middle management. And I'm not saying this to boast Um, but then my wife was deployed, 3 kids in all different stages of life, an associate pastor, uh, then also I'm working between 3 different ministries primarily. And, uh, and God has been faithful. God has been faithful in that. And then most importantly, man, just a disciple trying to find hobbies, um, and just, just going through different phases of life. And so anyway, if you rock with the podcast, you know that I could be very, very Transparent, um, man, I'm real big on making sure that we live it. Faithful, faithfulness. I don't mind not calling out my own behavior, uh, but I really strive to be Christ-like. And it has its challenges at times, man, because again, wrestle with this flesh, not my body, like, but the flesh. And you know, we can— but that's— we're not here for that right now, uh, but what I wanted to do here, man, so earlier today, uh, my friend Caleb and my brother Caleb, Caleb Brown, Let's Talk with Caleb. If you're not rocking with that channel, man, I highly encourage you to. But we did some leadership things, and we didn't go deep, all deep into the end of like all the, the skills and the capabilities per se, but we kind of walked it back to character and integrity. Because I'm a firm believer that before we can kind of walk into those things, we have to make sure that this character integrity— like, it is— and I've been one of them. I have been a leader that didn't have deep character and deep— didn't have, uh, deep integrity, especially just starting out. But you'll be surprised that so many leaders out there, I mean, are exceptional leaders on the, on the surface, but do not have the character nor the depth that, uh, they profess or gloat in. It's, it's very dangerous, um, and again, I've been one of those. So I— matter of fact, the Holy Spirit, I believe, led me to kind of just do a quick video on my personal page dealing with that, just kind of using the Book of James. And, uh, so anywho, that is, that's why we kind of went that route. So if you, if you came in for more of skills and models and frameworks, uh, on that particular episode, it wasn't— it just, I wasn't led that way. And I appreciate Caleb for allowing me that space to kind of to go there, man. And it was at his commentary, I'm gonna do this so wise. And so, uh, so again, man, if you haven't, actually go check that out. It should be shared on this page, um, but it's one of the most recent videos above this one, uh, below this one I should say, since this one is coming later. Uh, so all of that being said, man, I again, I hope Caleb and I can cook up some stuff, man. I really have a heart for, uh, just leadership, followership, this, uh, associate ministers and associate pastors. Uh, just really been working on some things within that space. And so, you know, more to come, more to come there. If you're not subscribed to the Student Life Podcast on all major platforms by Tim Pratt Jr., I highly encourage you to plug in with me. I am only doing once a month, I believe every first Thursday of the month, and then every now and then I'll drop some bonus content in there. I am going to be working on doing more of a video format, so my wife is helping me get set up. I'm kind of like the person like, hey, just hit record and let's go. But she's like, oh baby, though, some aesthetic things that need to be taken care of. And I appreciate it and I love her for it, for helping me with that. All of that being said, so why, why am I here? Why are you looking at this, this model behind me that talks about situational leadership theories? And then we'll get into 5 dysfunctions of the team. Then I'll give a little bit more commentary at the end. I'll shut up and let you get back to your day. So I'm trying to keep this relatively quick, but I don't want to rush, rush through it. So the situational leadership model. So before we get into it, just to give you a little bit more about myself. So I also work as I'm moving in a more of a coach, strategic coaching role. I've been doing it like 50 to 60% of my time in the secular sense. I work for 360 Insights. So with AI, all this type of things that, you know, from you go through all these different phases of just these groundbreaking things that hit the industry. So I'm 36 years old and I've been in the engineering tech side of things since I was 21 years old, starting out as a contractor. And I've been fortunate, guys, bless me, to work my way up against like kind of the upper side of middle management. So I get to spend a lot of time with external leaders, internal leaders. Of course, I get to spend a lot of time with VPs to CTOs and all the way to a developer, account manager, product. Like, it's just, it's so broad, from high-performing teams to teams that are just, just starting out, to teams that literally there's no trust, to teams that's like, man, like, you don't even really need me. So I get to see things from a— I've been fortunate to see things from a unique perspective, and I'm always learning. I've failed at leading projects, I've succeeded at leading projects, I've failed in coaching, I've succeeded in coaching. So it's just, it's so much and I'm still learning, still processing. And because people are unpredictable and that's why I say go back to like character and integrity really matters. So when it comes to frameworks, all frameworks are helpful. They are useful to some degree. I believe they are. However, in the same breath, they also can be useless depending on how you use them. And a lot of times we try to lock people into frameworks again when people, the market, things are unpredictable, things are on a continual span. So this is just to kind of help us. So I'll teach it from there. There's plenty of YouTube videos on these things. So I'm not— I didn't invent this. I'm just kind of telling you how I have learned to use it through various certification programs, schooling and things. It's just real-world experience. So the first one is the situational leadership model or theory, and especially if I could just talk in a more pastoral sense here, with leaders, because it's like I said, very known in the secular arena. And again, it can be highly debated, uh, but you have developmental levels and you have leadership styles. And a lot of times, I believe this is because when I— one of the first things, again, and I'm speaking, I was like this too, so I'm, I'm not coming from a place of like, look at you and look at me. That is not my intent here. But what I see in a lot of leadership styles, we can start on this side of it is a lot of leaders have one style. They, they have one way. And I believe that those are some of the lowest leaders. I'm not saying you can't be a good leader because you hear a lot of time, this is just the way I'm wired and that's just who I am. And I'm not saying even in this context of God and the power of the Holy Spirit, he can use you. Yes, your personality and all those type of things, but don't use it as a cop-out to still grow in your leadership capacity, because you're going to limit yourself. Because even sometimes I could challenge a leader and say, okay, that's the way you wired, but is that how God wants to use you? Like, you know, you see what I'm saying? So, so, so that's the thing there, because if I'm submitted to the Holy Spirit, then it's more so my wiring is even submitted to him, because he might be leading me to do something that's uncomfortable for how I'm wired, how I'm made up. And how I want to lead things. And so I would just challenge there. Again, don't want to get too much in a coaching conversation, but I would lean in there as I work with pastors. And on that note, so what this model does here, again, from the leadership is supportive behavior and directive behavior. One of the things is with a leader from a— so if you take S1, directing. So this is a leader. If it— let's say if you have a leadership team, let's back up a little bit. Let's say if it's your senior leadership team I don't know, whatever terminology you might call your eldership team, uh, however you— administrative team. Let's say that you have 3— no, 4 leaders, and one is directing one. So from a situational leadership model, one kind of falls in that you have to direct them, the other one delegate, supporting, and coaching. So here you go with this, and say this, this makes up your team, like depending on you have to kind of operate in all 4 of these. So again, let's just say it's like in this case, you a leader that you want to delegate. You say like, I want to be a leader that I delegate and I walk away from because I have so much more stuff to do. Well, you only have one person on that team that really truthfully can have minimal direction and where they can carry the vision day to day. Now, you could build up that person and they become kind of the true leader of that group. That's a whole different conversation for another day. So let's— well, it might not be for another day, we might get to it here. But as a leader, if you're doing that, let's say it's like you are leading these 4 people and they are not, and, and they're leading other areas. Yeah, so let's not have that conversation right now. Excuse me. Let's say this is like these people are leading primarily the entire ministry, but you, the— like, you're the pastor or the senior pastor, whatever terminology that you want to go with. But these people are primarily leading throughout the church. Well, if you want to be a delegating leader to all of them, I'm telling you right now, you are going to have so much frustration because you want to lead delegating, you're not respecting the team that you have, per se. Now I'm going to eventually let both of these talk to each other and then get to the 5 Dysfunctions of the Team. But that being said, because again, you want to provide minimal direction and guidance and then you want to move on to whatever else you have. But the other person that's struggling, they need more of like an authoritative, autocratic leader per se. Like they need you to kind of help make decisions, give them a checklist. They need you to spell it out. And as much as that might frustrate you, that's the person that's in that leadership seat. So now you have to— again, there's no one inherent, like no one leadership style that fits all. So now you have to kind of tweak to this person and adapt to them. Then you might have a leader that, uh, doesn't necessarily need like the checklist and needs you to be autocratic or very more like directive or authoritative per se, with again spelling out for them. But you might, with this other person, they might can move off of coaching So it's more so of a relationship where you're trying to sell the idea to them, ask them thought-provoking questions, help them think about their thinking. And they go out, man, and they are just like, okay, again, not really a delegation. You still have to spend more supportive behavior and direct them and guide them, but you can coach them. It's not again that you have to spell it out almost to the point where you feel like you're doing a job for them. And then this other person, supportive. So this is where you're more so participating. Like, they might again, might not be comfortable. You might say, well, hey, I'm, I'm, I need you to make the decisions, I need you to carry it out. Uh, and you, they might say, well, yeah, but I still want to be more in a, I need you to help me with kind of not every decision, but they still run about 80 to 85, 90% decisions for you. So again, again, you're still not delegating per se, You're helping them in their decision-making. They might often be quiet, not might like rock the boat, speak up. So you're supporting them. And again, so now you see as a leader, here goes, you've had that, you still lead through your core values, but you've had to adapt based on the needs of your team is what I'm trying to communicate. So that's something that you might be feeling tension and you have to really name it and deal with egos later. But you have to know your leadership capacity, your lead, and then you have to know the capacity of the people that you are leading so you can steward properly. You, you can steward your leadership capability and then you can help steward them. And I see just so much tension a lot of different times when it comes to this is because Again, a lot of leaders, they want to stay in their safe space and they always do what I'm trying to say, default to their primary style, their primary style. And this is where I get it. I can get into like a conversation of agility and real deal agile leadership and adaptive leadership. So that is where I spent most of my time in more of that space and then project management and hybrid project management. So that is where I'm really grounded and experienced in more of the agility and project management. And man, it's just you learn so much in those domains. And my— just to be truthful, it did. Of course, the ministry side and grounded in biblical leadership. So over here we're going to deal with it. Let me just move something over real quick. We're going to deal with the, the development side of this. So kind of like the development level. So D1 is basically someone that's, that's ethos— oh geez, I'm about to butcher that word. It's enthusiasm. Um, and it's, uh, basically a beginner, enthusiastic. It's someone that's like, they're not as competent in what you are asking them. Again, I'm not saying that they're dumb, I'm just saying that whatever the challenge that you're giving them— like, I can think earlier, the role I'm doing now, like, especially over the last 2 years, I didn't have a high level of— I wasn't highly competent in it. And so that played with my confidence, my ability to really take things by the horns, as they say. So what happened? I got on a— here we go— individual development plan. We don't— we don't— I'm going to talk— I'm not going to talk. I'm going to do another video on those. But I literally was told, hey, you need to get on an individual development plan. Like, I want to see how you're thinking about growing, create a roadmap for how you're going to grow there as a leader? Do you even have those with your people? And do you even have one as a leader? And it should be just, oh man, let me, let me stay grounded. But in my experience, so I had to grow and become competent. And once that I became competent, I was very— again, I was very enthusiastic, but I had to grow. And so once my, my competence matched my commitment, man, like, okay, here it is. I'm kind of back in that what they call high performer. So this is a continual— like, this is not a thing. It just, it changes over time depending on what the role has actually shaped out to be. Like, things really truthfully shouldn't stay stagnant. Like, you can be a youth leader, but the youth of 5 years ago or 10 years ago is not the same as the youth that we're seeing today, from what they're dealing with to how we interact with them. So as a youth leader, you can say, well, I've been in this seat 10 years, but if you're still doing the things the same way that you've done 10 years ago, then you might not be— and you might be highly committed, but you might not be as competent as you think you are based on the dynamics. And so many things has changed. So you will— you could have been at one point a capable but cautious performer, meaning that like, no, no, no, you could have been a self-reliant achiever. You could have been highly committed and highly competent reaching the youth of 10 years ago. But because you didn't continue to learn and educate yourself and sit in the market, now you've kind of fell back down to here because again, things have shifted based on just the dynamics and the demands. That's why learning is continuous. Not saying you're throwing away everything, like some things foundational and value don't change, but I'm saying like knowing your demographics and the challenges and the unique things of that nature. So again, that's all I'm trying to communicate here is that we can fall depending on so many dynamics at play here. So, um, so then you have a, uh, a disillusioned learner. So this is like some competence but a low commitment, if that makes sense. Uh, we, we deal with people there. It's like, from a developmental standpoint, again, uh, do they have low commitment because they're struggling with competency? Like, like, I don't really want to commit to this. Like, I'm not trying to get into a thing from a pastoral lens or leadership lens of like, oh, see, that's what I'm talking about, those are the people that you just can't work with, I want everybody here. Well, unfortunately, people have to be developed to get there, and they have to be continuously developed to stay there, and it's challenging. And then you have a Capable but Cautious Performer, uh, again, very high competent but a variable commitment, um, again, so it could be various reasons for that when it comes to the commit— commitment thing. And then again, the Self-Reliant Achiever. So I know I spent a lot, a lot more time on here, but it's kind of just like, okay, how does this look from a developmental level? And truth be told, depending on the nature at hand, most of the time I strive to stay in here about 80 to 90% of the time. But that 10 to 20% of the time I can fall between here depending on what project they have given me. Am I going to be leading an entire program or portfolio? Am I going in to coach a team that just started up and they are under a lot of tight deadlines? Like, it's so many things. Do I understand the goal? Do I understand the vision? Like, and, and, and as things move on, again, I'm bouncing between these and then I'm having to adapt. This is why leadership to me is so important, man, because you have to stretch, you have to stretch, you have to adapt. It takes so much mental energy. Just imagine right now, if I could share this with you, I have to move between a pastoral lens and executive pastor, meaning people from all different walks, uh, people that are not even on salary to people that are on salary, volunteers that have lives in all different stages of life. So I have to navigate that as from an executive pastor standpoint, uh, again, trying to work with 3 different ministries primarily, okay, or campuses I should say, they have their own identity. Then in addition to that, in my day-to-day job, I'm having to work with sometimes on calls with where I sit on, I hear external leaders from other companies and how they do things to leaders that's outside of the product engineering to the president versus the CTO. And I'm not saying versus in a bad way with the C, like I'm having to on these calls, directors to VPs, I'm consistently having to just like— you can only imagine where— now my values and my core beliefs and all that type of thing, those are not changing. Like, I'm not adapting those. But what I'm saying is that I'm stretching to meet the, like, this— just these all different type of nuances. And it can be challenging at times. It really can from a mental standpoint. Uh, just as a sidebar, that's probably why I, I could maintain a coach and a therapist. If you don't have a coach, you get get a coach, uh, seriously. And if you feel like you need therapy or counselor, please go get one. Um, but those help me unpack so I'm not unpacking on my wife and my kids. And like, I'm just trying to do a better job with rhythms because really these things will never be in balance because I spend more time in these domains than I actually spend with my family. But I try to maximize and all that type of stuff. And so we get— it's like integration, but that's, that's not what we're talking about. But I'm just saying, this is why leaders, man, like we have to do a better job at also sharing these things with people and having very transparent, authentic conversations, you know, based on— we have to be careful, but we want to create this atmosphere of trust because things, I do believe, at the speed of trust. And so that brings me to the next one. This is by Patrick Lioce. I love his writings and his books., but it's a graphic from the Five Dysfunctions of a Team. So kind of to tie back off that leadership model, I hope that's helping you as a leader see like, oh man, again, we can reach out to me, hit me up, uh, go to hit me up on my personal page. I would love to have this conversation with you. We can go from there if, you know, might turn into an actual coaching opportunity or might not, but I always will give a fair game like within an hour or so to just have a conversation if if you are looking for a coach or someone to kind of come in and work with your team. And I kind of go into, if I can't be truthful with you, then I won't do it. Because I've worked with leaders, man, so many leaders. A lot of times when I come in and I can't name it respectfully, there's a way to go about it. But if I can't name it, so many, like a couple leaders I've worked with, it's when I kind of, the way I kind of come in and I approach this and I share, they don't want to hear it. And I won't work. Like it's just, I'm good. Too much opportunity out here to try to like power through. And I thank God I've been fortunate. So again, I have— and some leaders feel like, like you're being deceptive and trying to come against what they have, and that's, that's, that's never the case. And that's in the secular and in ministry. Uh, but we have to be able to name things so our leadership can get better. Uh, trust me, like, I've sent out 360 feedback reviews on myself, and some of the feedback that I got or received was— it hurt, like, no lie. But Again, we all have blind spots, and again, that's a whole other conversation. Uh, but getting back to the 5 dysfunctions of the team is that the first one is, um, with a team as a leader. So now we just talked about more so focus on the leader. Now let's look at the team. If the team does not have trust— trust is the foundation of it— everybody is going to be guarded. They're going to say what you want to hear. They're not going to really be transparent. So if you don't have transparency as a leader, if you don't have a high degree of psychological safety, you're not going to have true openness. You're just not like people because people are more guarded in their tailoring their language. So because they don't trust one another. So as a leader, you have to see that you can't, you can't just operate on how you want things to be. You have to operate on what you actually are seeing. And it is dangerous to try to build things upon this and move and send out these teams that you projecting are high-performing when they're really not. And a lot of times, just be honest with you, if you are the pastor or you are the VP, or it's this thing that we call narrative controlling, you're not going to get it up. Most of the time, you're not going to get it there without help, bringing somebody maybe that you can trust and work with from the outside that can help you get there. It's not going to use that, it's going to be confidential, that knows how to give you the feedback without naming people. Because this, again, I have seen this go really, really good and I've seen it go really, really bad. So you want to build that trust. And a lot of times within the faith-based side of it, we just assume just because everybody's a believer, everybody has the same maturity level. And I'm telling you, there are people that I believe that really care about their spiritual thing, but they are very immature and they are not trustworthy when it kind of comes to the context of their work and things that you just see. So again, people put up guards and just the team has no true openness. The next one is resolving conflict. So teams that typically have like a lot of resentment they won't say things, they go say stuff otherwhere. They can't speak with candor. Like Kim Scott, I believe that's her name, wrote a book called Radical Candor. And you have to be there. Like, conflict is not a bad thing. Tension is not a bad thing. But again, there's a way to say things. There's a way to call people out. There's a way to challenge leadership. There's a way to do this. But a lot of times what happens is if people move more on the resentment side of things, then you don't have that candor that you need to actually resolve the conflict. So what's happened is, is conflict avoidance versus conflict resolution. And this is where, again, another area that I spend a lot of my time in with teams is helping manage that conflict with the endgame is to resolve that conflict. But anytime you have people, you're always going to have conflict. So conflict management, conflict resolution is always going to be a thing. Another one is commit as a team. Now, this is a very, very hard one because this is what helps produce clarity, in my opinion, is that when you have trust and you know how to resolve conflict, you have people that end up like fully committing, meaning that you have more clarity because again, you have trust. See how these build on one upon one another. So people are tend to be more open. Then if people are open and trustworthy, then people will be more, uh, you'll see more candor. And so then here it is, you get more clarity. So even as a leader now, truthfully, it's like now when you speak and say that somebody's not feeling, feeling it or whatever, people are like asking questions. They know how to challenge you. And as a leader, you should welcome to be challenged. And in a faith sense, I get it, I totally get it. God told me, God told me, God told me. And I get, I get that. But sometimes I just believe that if we're not careful— let me say this, because there are things that people don't sit in the necessary seat— but as a leader, sometimes you should be able to walk through what you believe God is telling you, because you could be missing something. And that's why I believe we sometimes get away from the plurality of elders. Anywho, I'll stop there. But you, as a leader, you should be able to be challenged sometimes, because if you're a leader that can't be challenged then I just believe that you're a dangerous person. And I'm collectively speaking here, uh, people that have directly reported to me, I'm open. If I say, hey— and it is time to say, hey, I can't really go into the details of this— but I would still kind of say, hey, like, because sometimes I am, I'm sworn by, like, I just can't give the details. And so I might say something along the lines of, um, like, just trust and believe that I heard you, I've waited this, I've balanced it out, and I'm trying to make this in the context of the organization. And, and then I'll kind of give a little details as much as I possibly can. I have no problem doing that. So then we move on to each hold each other accountable. So this is where you start to see high standards and high-performing teams, because now it's not so much as you as a leader just trying to hold everybody accountable or your senior leadership trying to hold everybody accountable.. It's the team holding each other accountable and they're becoming more high-performing. So now you're kind of moving into that delegating role where you can delegate to the team because, you know, again, everybody's open, everybody's candid for the most part. Majority of the team is clarity. And now it's— you start to see a high level of standards, a high level of excellence. And then after that, here it is. It's your— the team can really focus on result versus focusing on the drama. Versus focusing on are people really truthful with me over focusing on unresolved comment. Like, you can have these things as a collective success. And so as a leader, when we look at this model, we have to, again, like, I don't believe that you can get to resolving conflict without high trust. But as when we look at this model right here of the 5 Dysfunctions of a Team, we have to give balance and things of that nature to this model to help basically shape it up. And then we partner that with the situational leadership thing. Like, again, these are just two models. We can go pull up a whole lot of them. But this is what I just believe in the context of the Five Dysfunctions of the Team that we can get there. So, so anywho, man, I just want to kind of go through these real quick. I hope this has helped to some degree. I'm going to stop it right there and not try to give it too much more. But again, I really hope these have helped. My daughter's walking down now and she's making sounds. But hey, it is what it is. So again, I really hope these have helped. If you want to have a conversation, man, just drop something here and I'll reach out to you. We can make contact. But again, you should see more things like this to come. And again, we'll move between character integrity, like biblical leadership things, as well as like different type of systems and all of that type of stuff. So, man, be blessed. Hope this helped, man, and love you all.