As I spend time with leaders from both the business and church world I have noticed a common theme. With a few questions, a decent cup of coffee, and about an hour of time they can describe why they do what they do. What they talk about are their core values—those things that they want to describe their life when it is all said and done.
Another thing becomes quite apparent with just a bit of digging. Many of these leaders have a hard time connecting the tasks that fill their days to their core values.
Sometimes it is just a matter of better understanding what they do and why. This is especially true of people with repetitive job cycles (each day looks the same, or each week follows the same pattern).
Most pastors fit into that category; there are certain things that must be done each week before the next Sunday arrives. Their to-do lists are often full before a week even begins. Many times they struggle with motivation because they have forgotten the connection that each task has to their values.
Other times, the reason it is hard to find a connection between task and value is that there is no connection. The people who are in this place often talk about things like “the tyranny of the urgent”. They are doing things that “must be done,” but when you ask “why?” they have a hard time giving a good answer.
Digging to the Bottom
One little exercise I ask clients to walk through is this: look at your To-Do list for a given week, take each task listed, and ask “Why am I doing this?” Take that answer and ask why again. Keep asking why until you get down to something you would consider a core value.
For example, a task might be “write follow-up letters to all guests from Sunday”. Why? Because we want guests to feel welcomed and help them connect to our church. Why? God welcomed us into his family; we want to do the same. Why? We value grace and hospitality, two characteristics God displays to us.
Each task could go a number of directions. Depending on where you land, this exercise will do one of two things for you. If, in the first case, the task does lead you to a core value, this exercise helps you to speak vision and not just task. We are no longer “writing follow-up letters to guests,” we are extending grace and hospitality to people that God loves, just as he did to us. That perspective might flavor those same letters with a different tone and passion.
If, however, the task doesn’t lead you to a core value, then this exercise shows you that either the task does not need to be done or it does not need to be done by the leader. It is important that leaders do not fill their week with tasks that have no connection to their core values. They will lose motivation, which affects their performance, creativity, passion, and so forth.
The simple truth is that there are more things that must be done than a leader can do in any given week. In the past we turned to time management tools—bolstered by advances in technology—to help us become more efficient. Sadly, these same tools that helped us to become more efficient also allowed people to make more demands on us.
Cell phones allow us to make connections anytime, anywhere. But they also allow people to believe that we are available to connect anytime, anywhere. Email and other online communication tools allow people to send questions, requests, and comments to us with little to no effort. Put a ten-cent price tag on emails and I bet the average inbox would be cut in half.
The focus today should be less on time management and more on priority management. Leaders that are consistently successful keep a tight reign on their weekly to-do list, keeping it in line with their core values.
Jeff Johnson is a coach and consultant with 15 years of ministry experience. © 2009 ChurchCentral.com
