Leadership and Roadmaps

Eyo, what's up? This is Tim Pratt Jr. here, and I'm going to use this avenue. I'm going to give some context into it, but I'm going to use this avenue to do a little bit of leadership training and roll out a series of this. And so I'll get into the context just in a second. Let me share my screen here. All right, cool. All right, so, all right, so let's, let's get into it here. Uh, so yeah, so, uh, I'm primarily doing this for the two ministries. Of course, I'm a member of, uh, Will Chapel Ministries, and then I support, and I look at myself almost like under watch care to some degree of Lively Stone. Uh, but it's about kingdom I know you want to have order in a local context, uh, local church, uh, but nevertheless, man, I just, I try to serve, and this is more kingdom-minded initially because I do leadership development, leadership coaching, um, outside of the local church. Uh, so I would truly say this is probably more so a part of the student of life, uh, just mentoring and coaching that I do. And what I want to try to, uh, like I said, accomplish here is just to start doing a little bit more training, you know, on demand, and then as well as figuring out and working with appropriate pastors and senior leaders to figure out how do we accommodate this with a combination of hybrid, you know, uh, leading through Zoom, trying it through Zoom as well as in person, uh, and then start having like maybe weekly or biweekly like 30-minute coaching sessions, uh, because the reason why I say that is that I believe we live in a time now where, you know, things are fast. I mean, we are literally at the point where back then, you know, you could sit on the idea, refine it, test it, and just refine it again and then put it out there, and it's a game changer. Now it's almost like learning how to fail in a contextual way, uh, how to fail forward. Because like, we're in an age now where people think something is already out there in the market. I mean, now it's to the point where AI, like, it's like, oh, once it's thought of, it's, it's literally created as it's being thought of. Uh, and so I think, you know, ministries for the most part are struggling with this, just as well as a lot of secular places are, are struggling with this. But I think the ministry struggles with it because sometimes it gets too diluted and we start to look more like the world than staying true to like what God has called us to. But nevertheless, I'm a firm believer that we can stay true to the mission. In other words, we can stay true to what God said but flexible in our approach, you know, flexible how we reach things like that. And a lot of times, sometimes as leaders, if like I've been in technology engineering my whole adult life, so if things don't change, I get nervous. I mean, I've literally been trained and developed for this moment before it even touched, like how you see a lot of churches now trying to become agile, uh, but nevertheless it has created a lot of opportunity for me and I can speak from a lot of experience versus theoretical stuff, uh, so this is probably going to challenge the way that you understand leadership, uh, but I believe you just bear with me and then maybe like I say, you know, I'll send this out, I'll walk you through this presentation and then, you know, get it out to the appropriate leaders of the appropriate churches and people that I'm working with, and we just go from there. So let's jump straight into it, if that is a way to kind of put this in context. Oh, sorry, one more thing. The reason why it's important, and you're going to hear me refer about leadership coaching a lot, is because, you know, I've had the opportunity, of course, to coach, you know, both of my boys in peewee basketball. And for the most part, they practice twice a week, you know, so 2 hours of practice for a 20-minute game, 5 minutes a quarter. And, you know, what I have learned is that the more you practice— practice doesn't make perfect, but practice makes permanent. So if you're practicing the wrong way, you're going to do things the wrong way. So practice doesn't make perfect. It just— practice doesn't make perfect. It just more so— it's more so in the context of that it just makes permanent. So I was searching for that word. So it makes permanent. So nevertheless, we want to make sure that we're practicing well, being developed well, because like I say, we live in an age where there's no shortage of knowledge. But wisdom is not knowledge. You can have knowledge without wisdom, but you can't have wisdom separate of knowledge. You need knowledge in order to become wise. But it's when that knowledge becomes applied, it's when people can speak from experience, and then you contextualize it based on what you're doing in the capacity that you're serving, in the capacity that you're leading. I mean, at the end of the day, it's all just words until one lives those words. And that's biblical, but it's a mandate. It's a principle, not just biblical, but a principle in life. You have to apply in order to gain wisdom. And then you can seek out wisdom from people that have applied, have demonstrated. And one thing about leadership is so broad. You know, you have servant leadership, transformational leadership, situational leadership. I mean, you can get into a lot of topics, uh, but I often tell people, you know, I spend 60% of my day-to-day doing facilitating and leadership coaching at the individual team level and sometimes at the enterprise organizational level. And I have like 9 certifications that span over the course of, you know, uh, at that team level. So tools and processes to set up to, as well as like actually sitting down and learning and how to coach and take people through different frameworks and teaching when to be a mentor, like I said, when to be a coach, when to be a champion, when to be a catalyst. So these are different type of tools that we're going to get into throughout this presentation. But what I'm trying to say here is that, like I said, leadership is not the same as it was back then. It was more so, hey, do this. It was very straightforward, very industrial. And then we moved to the knowledge. And like I said, now we're moving to that technology age. And so we want to make sure that we have the necessary tools. And to the point I was trying to make is that I might not understand your context. That's why I'm very principle-driven when it comes to leadership, when I'm just presenting. But when I'm coaching, I come into your world and through questioning, through experiences, and learning how to just ask powerful questions and look up data. Because like I said, a lot of times we think leadership is knowing all the answers, and it's not. What makes you a really effective leader is the fact that you can jump into self-leadership, self-discipline, self-awareness to go find the answer with your team and contextualize it in order to move forward. So for example, it's acceptable to me if I ask a leader, hey, do you know how to do ABC123? It is fair for that person to say, no, I don't, or a little bit of this. What's not acceptable is for me to come back around and that person hasn't done anything, hasn't reached out to anyone, has not done anything to figure out the answer. They're just okay with saying, I don't know, or I haven't achieved this. And so that person is not a leader. They're not a true leader. They might be a leader by position only, that someone delegated that authority to them, but they're a leader by position only. But they want to move to the pinnacle side of it. And John C. Maxwell gets into that But nevertheless, like I say, you know, we're going to get into it, get into this content. And then, like I said, I just want this kind of be on demand so you can rewatch, rewind, take notes, because sometimes I talk fast and get ahead of myself, but I'm trying to slow it down. And that's the area that I'm really being intentional about. So that being said, let's jump into the presentation and get into this because I believe coaching has to be continuous in order for you to see results. Like I said, with my kids, you know, if they don't practice, they look horrible on the court. But if they're practicing continuously, just imagine if I just made them come to a big camp once every 3 months, because that's what we do a lot of times as leaders and senior leaders. We throw a workshop, throw a meeting, and then we go right back into Bible study and preaching the gospel. It was like little 15-minute increments without bringing in someone that's going to help in coaching people in the background to become better. You have to put in the work and you have to have a coach. Uh, so now, all right, let's get into this now. I don't want to keep rambling. Uh, so we're going to talk about leadership and roadmaps. And one of the things I want you to see, uh, is that quote right there where it talks about, there is no value in learning well if you neglect to do well. In other words, like I said earlier, you know, uh, and I'm in a coffee shop, so that's the background noise. I want to record this just not being at home. Uh, but there is no value in learning well if you neglect to do well. Um, so, you know, like I said, we live in a knowledge age. Anyone can access information and people can regurgitate information. They can, you know, get on here and listen to people like TD Jakes to Elon Musk, you know, two pivotal leaders in shifts in their space. And so you have all these people in between and then they can spew out things. I feel like, but you don't know how those people are coming to those conclusions. Uh, they're sharing like best practices and things that work with them, but back best practices are only as good as, you know, uh, the point they got them to that best practice. So what I'm trying to say to, to help that make sense is that, uh, sometimes a best practice might not be the best practice for you and your team. So as a leader, you have to have that high level of self-awareness and team awareness to say, okay, yeah, I understand where they coming from, but, you know, also they have 50 people, uh, they They're paying people. They're like, that's why they're able to do that. Well, that's not an excuse, but how do I figure this out and do it to scale, you know, within my leadership? So we just can't get in this habit of like, oh, I read a book, oh, I listened to a podcast, and let me do this. No, it's way more work, uh, than that. And it's like I said, this is not just a struggle in the ministry. This is a struggle across the board with people understanding the team, understanding the work, understanding what's required and how to work and fit that with itself, self, and then working with a team, and then still keeping that in tandem with the organization of the ministry that they're supporting. Um, so, so we want to make sure, like I say, we're not just finding value and learning well, but we're actually applying, we're tweaking, we're inspecting, and we're adapting, uh, to, to mature our leadership and our posture. So To the next one. So what's in your leadership backpack? This is going to be very important because, like I said, a lot of us, you know, we operate under a— I would say we need to recalibrate our leadership. Leadership is not just, like I said, hey, I have a title, I'm here to lead people. No, it is work. It is messy. You have to learn how to— we, I'm all inclusive— we have to learn how to cultivate people. Uh, it reminds me of a quote where I heard a guy say, you know, I never seen God grow a garden by itself. Now, it's not that God can't speak that garden into existence, but he chooses to work through people. So if you see your garden out of whack and you're not getting the results, then maybe you haven't spent enough time cultivating, nurturing, and doing the necessary work for that garden to flourish. So we have to look at people the same way, like plant the seed, but you just can't teach and plant the seed and then not demonstrate it face to face. Like, a lot of times we think demonstrate is like, watch me. No, you have to coach and get up in people's world. We have no shortage of information now. Like, people can get on YouTube and literally not even go— you can go to YouTube University, but without a coach— I mean, look at basketball players. Like, my kids get on YouTube now and they look at videos, but then myself, or especially my wife, or my father-in-law, uh, they go down to my parents sometimes, but, or they go to a trainer, that person is helping them take what they've seen on YouTube and contextualize it and say, okay, this is how you really do this. You need to do this, you need to have this, uh, because sometimes that's, that's just a highlight reel that they're seeing. But once again, they don't know how that person arrived to that point and what they did. So a coach is like, okay, yeah, I know you're trying to try that, but you're too far ahead of yourself, so let's take it here and you learn this And then we'll come there. That's where it's vital to have continuous coaching and training, not just once, twice, or three times. Like I said, once a month or twice a year or three times a year, once a quarter. It has to be continuous. So as we go on, we'll see here, what is leadership? So what's in our backpack? What is leadership? Well, I'll give you the general definition right here. So leadership is defined as the skill of influencing people to action with care that inspires confidence and excellence. Uh, so leadership equals awesome responsibility. So things might not always be your fault, but like I say, when you step up and you take on leadership, it's always your responsibility. Might not be your fault, but it's always your responsibility. So in other words, you probably hear me talk about this in a, in a self-awareness leadership class, that, uh, always take the blame as a leader. But share that credit. If you have been designated as a leader, if you don't have the right people, if you're not positioning people well, that's your responsibility. You have to position people well, even if you only have a certain group of people to work with. That's your responsibility to figure out. You might not be able to get it where you expected or wanted to, but you have to learn how to really work with what you have and contextualize it. Trust me, I am put on teams to serve, and I have to do everything I can, or it's to the point where I have to make a recommendation and say, hey, okay, listen, I think this is a personnel issue and we cannot go forward. So sometimes that's just what it is. It's like, well, we have to work what we have because of budget or whatever, and, uh, that's just, that's just what it is until, you know, we can figure it out and get those personnel issues, uh, addressed. But nevertheless, keep, keep championing. And like I said, sometimes it just comes down to trying to reposition people, position people well or contextualize a problem. And that's where we don't like to be as leaders. Like I said, we just want to share it, then we want to complain. I don't get this, I don't have this, I can't get commitment, they don't understand it, they don't understand this. Well, that's your responsibility as a leader. Uh, you have to make sure that you have become one and understand it first, uh, before you can teach it, uh, in a capacity that they might can understand. Or once again, you might have to bring in help, a better teacher than you. I'm not always the best teacher on certain topics, but what's the point of me reinventing the wheel? There are plenty of people out there that are way better than me, that are subject matter experts and things like that. So I work with them, tell them the problem, and then they contextualize it. Then they come share it with the team, or I can share it with the team. But for the most part, they can come in because they might be the better teacher. And then now I try to help support them based on what was said in the framework. Takes work. Leadership is work and it's messy. So also responsibility. You have to have skill. Leadership is power, but we don't want to abuse that power. Like I said, a lot of times, title only. Well, I'm the leader, do what I say. I'm the leader. No, we're not. I truly feel like in a lot of cases, I do believe there's a time where I say, hey, not right now. No, we can't do this. But I always recommend in leadership, if you say no, it needs to be a but. No, we're not going to do this. But because when you just tell people no, no, no, no, especially people in the context of ministry that are volunteering, you're shutting down your avenue of people sharing their ideas because you're, you're just, you're stifling the creativity because you're always saying no. It's like a power trip. So I believe that a lot of times we say, well, I don't have to give a response because I'm the leader. That's not true today. Like, people are different. Like, like I said, this is not the Industrial Age. We are in the Knowledge and Technology Age. So as a leader, people are coming to you, you might have to say, like, that's a very good idea, but you know, right now we have financial constraints, so is there any kind of other way we can do it this way? You don't have to come up with everything as a leader. If you're building all things to your power, then let's— that's all another topic. So yes, you should be there, like, it should be order and structure, but like don't abuse the power because all roads will lead to you and you'll end up being a bottleneck. Uh, so authority, it's more so influence. You want to be— you want your power to be influential. Like for example, with my kids, you know, my two boys, 13 and 10, uh, they're urging into— like I say, they're, they're teen— well, one is already in their teenage, uh, teenage years, but now I'm switching from being an authoritative figure in their life where I'm trying to be more of a relational, influential person in their life. Because it's going to come a time where they don't have to listen to me from an authoritative standpoint. And this is where we are with a lot of people. They can leave at any given time. So I want to be influential in their life because we're all shaping people. So as a leader, I don't want to just be on a power trip or just using my authority just to use it. I want to be influential in their life because like, hey, I want you to turn to me. I want to think things through with you. I want you to know that I might not always be right, so we can figure this thing out together. That's leadership today. It's serving. It's taking the triangle and turning it, flipping it upside down, serving your team. Because like I said, if you build an island or a, a conveyor belt just to you, then it's like, hey, I don't serve, I don't do anything, I don't have to get my hands dirty. Uh, like I said, I understand we have to have order because like, for example, you can't have a senior pastor doing everything in a local church, or you can have a CEO doing everything in the organization. So it's checks and balances, it's people. You know, my dad, uh, often says there's no hierarchy in the kingdom, but the local church is not the kingdom of God. It's a local church represented by people, us, the church, which, you know, basically help advance the kingdom of God. So you have to have structure and order in that local church because that local church is just a building, it's an organization, uh, to help people come to together. But if you don't have checks and balances— I'm not gonna really say like a very hierarchical approach— but if you don't have order and structure, uh, then, you know, you just have chaos. And so you want to have serving a part of that. You want to have a servant's heart, uh, but you also, like I say, want to be transformational. You got to have skills. So that's why you see this equals a couple of things. You have to be a coach of structure and character. So you have to be willing to coach and navigate people. Like I say, I've there are certain times, like going back to Cameron's PV team— and I'm doing this now with DJ's PV team because Cameron is on into junior high ball now, this is my last year coaching DJ— but it's like sometimes I, I can look and like, you know, for example, all teams usually have about 2 to 3, you know, 2 good, really 4 people, and then a pretty decent person, then it's just kids that want to play basketball. Well, as sometimes I have to like bring in someone else to help me and say, hey, you spend time on the top 2 to 3. Listen, it is what it is. Stop acting like everybody brings the same equal value. Um, we have to understand and assess where people are. It's a quote out there, we're saying like most teams, they have most players on the team like have— let me say, hold on, it's about 2 players per team for the most part to have the green light continuously. Everybody else, like, they fit within the system, you know, and they do certain things well. We have to be real. Like, I don't know why in the context of ministry we just like, oh, the grace of God and the Holy Spirit. Okay, that is true. Um, but the Holy Spirit is not going to account for your lack of self-discipline or your lack of development in your gift. Some of us just are horrible when it comes to our self-discipline or cultivating our gifts, like really, really cultivating, getting that feedback from people challenging us. And hey, like, I might not be as good of a leader as I thought I was. So that's where coaching comes in. Uh, it's two-way, you know. You, you can't expect to lead people well or coach people well if you're not being led well. You're not leading yourself well, you're not being coached. And like I said, in character, uh, all this doesn't matter if you don't have character. This just kind of comes to living out those values, not being one to just talk about them. Uh, this comes from, like, are you submissive? You know, you're asking people to submit to you. Well, it's kind of hard to ask people to submit to you if you're not accountable to someone else. Uh, you know, are you living out what you're, you're saying? You know, are you— know, if I'm preaching on, hey, you know, this is what God gave me on marriage, but then my wife or my husband, you know, general spouse, or it's like literally miserable, like they're, they're not sharing certain things with me, they got to walk on eggshells. No matter how much you think you're a high-value character person, you're not because you're not living it. It's a gap there. And so we want to make sure that, you know, we have that in our leadership. Um, so how do we go from learning about leadership to becoming an effective leader? Uh, that's where, like I say, continuous coaching, continuous development is going to come from. That's what closes that gap. I can study football, all my life. I can study the game of golf right now. I'm trying to transition and maybe get in golf, but I can study it. I can look at YouTube videos, I can read books, I can look at the perfect swing, I can just go observe people. But until I get my, uh, golf clubs and some balls and go out there and hit them and learn the game and learn the framework, all that is is just me being very knowledgeable, but I don't have no experience. I can't talk to you from an experience standpoint, but I can talk to you from a theoretical standpoint through observation. Uh, and that's why a lot of times, like I say, I believe a lot of this knowledge age, because we can listen to so many people, we get faked out in our leadership, uh, because we think we know it when we really don't. Because if you haven't practiced it, demonstrated it, you really don't know it. It's just potential power. Um, so hats of effective leadership, like I say, teach, help. I'm not gonna— like, you, you can pause this and kind of look at this. I'm not going to go death by PowerPoint here, but like I say, teach, mentor, Coach facilitating systems thinking. Uh, I do want to hit that one, um, because I don't believe— I think all the others are kind of self-explanatory. Like, there's an art and science to facilitating, trust me. Like, I've— like, it, it's the art and science. Like, a lot of us think we're good facilitators, but I'm telling you, it's, it's like frameworks on top of frameworks. And out there, uh, I was like just took back and amazed by when I went through a workshop for agile coaching But systems thinking, this is important because it's understanding how things fit into the context of the entire organization or entire ministry. So it's like, okay, the pastor has delegated something or said this is the vision. Now as a leader, I have a responsibility to say, okay, what am I doing? How does it fit into the bigger overall picture? How does it work with other ministries? Uh, you know, for example, um, just use, you know, use an example, okay? Like, let's say for instance the praise team, okay? If the praise team is not on point, and the youth— or like, no, like, let's back up, okay? The youth— I want a big youth department. So we try to go out and we try to reach the youth. We, we, we go out and we, uh— I want to talk with kids, I want to disciple kids without discipling parents, okay? Yeah, yes, still go after the youth, but you're sending kids into a broken system. So how many— have you put just as much energy in having conversations and open doors with helping people become better, effective parents? Like, that's a systems thinking view, because it's like I say, I'm going to send this kid right back into a system if they only come on Wednesdays or Tuesdays and Sundays for an hour to two, but I'm sending them back into a system. The school, the parents, and whatever else God knows what influence they're into, that's basically outweighing what I'm trying to do. So I, I have to think system. I have to see what's going on. Can we work with the schools? Can we get programs in place like Watch Dogs and so on? Um, going back to the praise team, the praise team is all over the place, then a lot of times people are already disengaged before the pastor gets up. Like, that's a systems thinking view. So this is why sometimes it might seem like pastors or leaders are harping, but they're trying to see that overall what we call systems view. So that kind of goes like understanding the culture, how a group will actually behave repeatedly, habitually. Culture is like, it's invisible to a degree. It's like what you tolerate. If you tolerate people just saying what they want to say, out of order stuff, people have doing things, not doing things with excellence, well, that's the culture that you're going to have. If you're all over the place and you're teaching, everybody else is going to teach all over the place. Like, straight up, if you're a leader, if, if you only meet one time every 3 months or don't hold— have any accountability checks, that's what you're going to have. So your culture is just going to— it's not going to be conducive to what your heart wants because you haven't took— and leaders shape culture. Leaders help shape people. They help shape culture. So we have to understand, okay, like, I hear what we— I, I see the values on the wall. I see the culture we want. But what am I doing to help this actually manifest? How am I seeing and helping people behave in a way that's conducive to the culture that we want? And then you get into, like I say, understanding team dynamics, which is the next slide. So once again, I just encourage you to pause this. But this just kind of— when you're thinking of a team, you want to be a real team. So you see, you can read it, you know, everybody has defined, say you want to have compelling direction, you want to have structure, you want to have an enabling structure, you know, workflows and processes, like keep them clean and keep them simple. Don't— oh man, I, I like once, you know, I, I work in process, you know, I'm a senior agile delivery manager, so Spark Brand has been facilitating coaching as a Scrum Master. And, uh, so you want to have a structure in place because like I say, where you don't have structure you don't have order, you have chaos. So who's going to set up what? Who's going to do this? Who's going to own it? Do they fully understand what they're doing? As a leader, do I need to kind of write it out and give them a sheet? Do I need to end my meetings? Sometimes we have all of these meetings and it's like, okay, cool, meeting's done. But we didn't put no structure at the end from who's going to own what by what date. And if anything comes up, hey, have that conversation with me. You want to have a supportive context. So you want to have tools, resources, and training there continuously to help and be an expert coaching. And this is where you might have to bring in someone like myself or just a coach, because like I say, I might not understand your cultural context when I'm just doing stuff like this, but when I coach, that's when I get into your world and I help contextualize things and help you become a better leader. Like I said, this is what I spend my day-to-day doing, from people from all walks of life, from the very entry-level interns to vice presidents in the company. I mean, I have to coach at, like I said, individual level, team level, and the enterprise level. So this is just kind of, like I said, the Hackman model for effective team leadership. So that's pretty much the leadership part of this. And so now I want to kind of switch into the roadmap since we're talking about leadership and roadmap. So one of the things as a leader I believe that you have to do is get ahead of your roadmap. So it's just basically a shared source of truth that outlines the vision, direction, and progress over time. So it's a visual— it's just a visual tool. Like I say, once again, you'll see on the next one that you don't have to be very granular with this. You know, ano with it from this context. But it's a living document. It requires regular attention, and it just helps you call out things. It helps the church see like, oh man, have we overloaded people? You know, this kind of gives you context because I feel like every team should have one, and it should be someone kind of like an executive pastor or someone like that, or someone delegated to kind of control. Okay, this is— I took this from all the team levels, you know, this is the days, this is the minutes, because we might be burning people out and don't even know it. Or, you know, our roadmap might not be conducive to what we're trying to do. You know, like for example, I want to reach the youth, but we've had program after program, but nothing geared towards the rally in the youth, rally in families. Our roadmap helps us visually see that. And so, like I said, so things to show you, to show you commitments and just a visual guide. And one of the important notes is like, this is not for command and control or micromanaging at all. It's just to help guide success into help people when you bring this up. It's like, hey, you know, this is what we're trying to do, we don't have enough commitment, but you see us in Q3 by this. Well, now people can say, hey, let me check my calendars, you know, this and that, uh, I believe I can commit to that, I can put together a special team, a volunteer team, um, to help bring this forward. So roadmaps are very, very important, uh, from my perspective, and they're, they're very popular, especially in the space of what I do. So this is kind of like a single ministry roadmap. I'm just using the media team. So you see kind of down, uh, below where, uh, here where it's kind of like just milestones. So you can like say pause this and, you know, come back and take a look at it. But this is the one for the media: Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4. You know how like this is what we plan on doing or accomplishing, uh, like I say, within every 3 months, you know, of a year. The next slide is kind of maybe what the pastor or an executive or, you know, inner circle or core leadership team might look at. So, you know, you can see here, like, whatever group— I think I said, yeah, this is say the finance committee or something, uh, they're doing this. So, I mean, I don't know, I don't think I gave them names. But then, you know, the men's, whatever, women's ministry, they're doing this. Youth, family ministry, they're doing this. So now we kind of see, okay, what if these had dates on them and times budgets, you know, we like really dug into them. It's like, man, wow, like we can really see where we understand like all the competing priorities. Because as I said, like it's a living document, so some judgment calls, uh, might have to be made here in order to still reach our goal. You know, we might have to give some things, say, hey, we need to shift this to then, or shift this to that, or hey, I like this, but let's blend these two together. And so on. This is what a roadmap has us to like helps us do, uh, as leaders. And then, uh, so last, you know, these are just some resources. Of course I'm going to advertise myself, uh, so I have a Student Life Podcast, uh, where I talk about various things. But I do have some episodes, and it's pretty easy if you just go to any major podcast, um, streaming platform. But I have one, What Is Leadership? You know, I talk about leadership development plans, like putting yourself on a leadership development plan with your coach And then your coach teaching you how to carry that out with your team, putting other people on leadership development plan, uh, it's positioning people well. You know, you have these quadrants, you know, uh, and you want to just make sure that you have defined the seat. A lot of times we have the right person in the wrong seat, or sometimes we just— let me say I said the right person in the wrong seat, and sometimes we have the wrong person, uh, in the right seat. So the seat is defined well, but we got I think I'm saying it right. I'm not— I don't have my notes in front of me, but you get what I'm saying. Like, in other words, it's like you want to position people where you want to always try to get people right person, right seat. And sometimes, kind of going back to what I said earlier, um, maybe the person is just not as skilled, so you have to kind of redefine that seat. This is a living thing, you know, depending on if you're the pastor, senior pastor, executive pastor, ministry leader, whatever. You might have to say, okay, this is the seat I want, still have that, but then I'm gonna tweak this seat until I can either help this person mature or come into that, or maybe reposition some people later. Um, so, and then Kingdom Mindset, I have a whole Kingdom Mindset series, uh, dealing with leadership more so in the context of ministry, uh, and much more out there. Um, and so, you know, like I say, it's all, it's on all major, uh, podcast platforms. And then to like just the financial committee, because like that's sometimes, uh, Dave Ramsey, man, he has some really good stuff out there. But I also believe that, you know, you can do this stuff yourself because he has a really good framework. So there's a lot of research out there, but you can really do this yourself, like helping people win with money, teaching people the basics of investing, preparing them to engage a financial coach or a financial advisor, uh, if they need one. Like, I believe that, you know, the financial committee should, should be thinking about things like that. Like, yeah, we want people tithe and give. And, you know, and I understand the biblical, uh, teaching around that. And, uh, you know, they can open up a can of worms versus the tithe and things like that. But nevertheless, what I'm saying is that the church relies on people sowing. They rely on people, you know, giving their tithes. And, and, uh, I shouldn't have said paying, but giving it, uh, giving their tithes, or, you know, um, sowing, you know, what's in their heart. Because Jesus always raised the standard. And so, uh, but a lot of times, uh, people can't do that if they're not winning with winning with money. So I can sit up here all day and preach, well, you know, don't rob God, you know, I can't— I can afford not to give, I can't afford not to give, or something like that, uh, give, give, give. But I could create all these type of pledge and systems, but if I'm not teaching people how to win with money, teaching them budgeting, or teaching them how to automate their finances, um, I can come in and kind of help coach with that. But this is something that, you know, we have be thinking about. And these are some books. Uh, so Unreasonable Hospitality, you know, if you're in like really just leadership in general, but I would recommend this book for more so like, you know, the, the ushers or people like security team, people that kind of help with the parking lot ministry and just kind of making things flow. Just hospitality, that's what it is, you know, like just how do we greet the visiting pastor or guests and things like that. Like, how do we take that up a notch and serve people well? Uh, for, you know, this is something that a leadership team can look at. Uh, from social media to social ministry, this is a book that I feel like is golden for any type of media ministry out there. Uh, Family Ministry That Counts. I actually interviewed this guy. I had this book. I'm actually re-going through it now to kind of look at some things. But, uh, it's a podcast on there, I think, Family Ministry. Where I interviewed the guy that actually wrote this book. And, you know, this kind of looks at youth from that— what I was making that statement— it looks at just youth, and then it also looks at parents, and it looks at it as a whole. Uh, Connecting the Heart of the Family with the Light of the Church. Small Church Essentials, uh, really good book. Like I said, once again, leadership team, not the whole church, to go through. Uh, and Kingdom Disciples by Tony Evans, uh, because at the end of the day, we have to get back heart of the discipleship, life-on-life discipleship. You know, I truly believe many local churches would be standing room only if people would get to the point of just true life-on-life discipleship. Not your content, not God putting things on your heart to teach and preach, uh, you know. Now I'm saying that the pastor, like, the role to equip the saints for the work of the ministry, but if we as believers that's not in some of the pastoral roles And of course, they still have responsibility for discipleship as well. But to really disciple people, like, man, who am I over the next 90 days— just as an example— who am I going to do life with? Not just on Sundays and Wednesdays or Tuesdays, but who am I going to do life with Monday and on the weekends? That doesn't include coming to the local church as well as after they leave. And, and that's meshed with, like I said, with life and life. Uh, discipleship. And so if I was doing this in person, uh, it would be a Q&A where I would kind of open this up just to kind of help you think of next steps. And you know, what do we need to do? Like I said, always like to end things with action items, uh, ownership of it. But, uh, what's on your mind? So just take some time here, you know, maybe like I said, I'll talk to the pastors that, you know, I send this out to and say, hey, you know, I can present this in person again and you know, we can kind of go straight into a QA, uh, with the leaders or whatever. And so, uh, but since I can't, you know, do that with you since we're not live right now, this is like pre-recorded, uh, I'm asking you to just take 5 to 10 minutes and, you know, write some questions down and see, you know, can you find those answers? Like, really dig with the— in with, uh, in deep within and, you know, just ask those questions and, you know, or reach out, like say, www.timothyprattjr.org, or, you know, on my social media, whatever, and I can help, you know, put something together. Uh, so I wanted to start here, and then, like I said, we'll get into another one to kind of look at that self-leadership, but, um, and self-awareness, because, like I say, sometimes it is a gap. And, you know, one of the questions you probably can ask— like I say, this might be redundant because I get into it— but if I did a 360 review of you right now and it was all anonymous and private, uh, with the idea that you have in your head as a leader, would it be consistent with the feedback that I would get? Now let's be real, like I say, let's, let's— I understand grace and all of that, but let's be real. If I interviewed 5 people that observed you and say, hey, listen, I really need you to be honest, and they were, would it be consistent with the idea that you have about yourself and your leadership? And if it's a gap there, how big is that gap? You know, is it little, like, oh man, that's kind of like little, you know, semantics, petty maybe? But, or is it like some truth to it and it's very, very big and you're like, you are not the leader that you think you are? Uh, so we want to understand this in the context of leadership because if no one is following you as you follow Christ in the ministry context, you're not a leader. Like, that's, that's just the truth. You're just a position only. That someone has disapproved of giving you or delegated that authority to you, but you haven't become a leader through relationship, uh, and transformation. Uh, so I hope this helps, man. Like I said, I'm getting ready, uh, just to be on YouTube, and I'm just asking, you know, that you share this with, you know, every leader in your organization, whether it's ministry or, you know, just the workplace. So hope you enjoyed it, man. Stay tuned for more.