Today’s Thursday Quote comes from Jim Collins’ bestselling book, “Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t“. Check out this chart found on page 20 in the book (which my book falls naturally open to from repeated references.)
Ironically, I would like to make a couple of practical inferences from this chart that are not really found in the book. Jim’s primary focus in this section of the book was related to the character and qualities of the leader(s) in the organization – specifically, the Level 5 Leader at the top (Two men I highly regard as emulating the Level 5 Qualities include Bill Hybels and Robert Morris. Click their names here to read more.)
That said, let me unpack this for you two insights I’ve gained from this very meaningful chart.
- First, nearly every committed member/participant in your church should fall in one of these various levels of contribution. I think it will be very helpful if you can discern which level your leaders and volunteers fall on this scale. For many of my leaders I can determine that they are on a level 2 or 3, and help motivate and resource them to grow into the next level of leadership.
- However, what I have also discovered is that many people have a natural “lid” in the level of contribution that they can attain – and I need to be sensitive to that lid. My natural inclination is to try to move someone who is accomplishing great things for our church to the next level of leadership. However, it’s possible that, by doing so, I am setting that person up for failure, because my expectations don’t match their gifting and strengths. For instance, I had a secretary at our church who was a Highly Capable Individual – she was a serious work horse and accomplished a ton of stuff in small amounts of time. It’s possible that she could have moved to the next level, but that may not have been the best thing for her or for the church. So I needed to discern where she best fit, help her get there, and then find ways to encourage, resource, and strengthen her in that role.
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