How often do you evaluate your schedule?
If you want to be an effective leader, you are going to have to decide where you will spend your time. You will have to choose what you focus on. You will have to decide where you will direct your energy.
This is not a simple process. This is always a process of evaluation. If you’re like me, you’re often choosing between what’s great and what’s good and what’s amazing. There are rarely any bad options on the table. Or if there are, then those are the easy decisions.
Spending the greatest amount of your time on the areas where you contribute the most to your organization, will not only mean success for the organization, it will also mean greater purpose for you.
Step 1: Discover your strengths. Part 1
Step 2: Ask for input from others. Part 2
Step 3: Examine where you currently spend your time.
This is the part of the process where you have to be truthful with yourself. Where are you actually spending your time? I recommend that you take whatever calendar you currently use and print it off so that you have room to write on it.
Carry it around with you and make a truthful list of where you spend your time for one week. How much time are you in meetings? How much time do you spend running errands and purchasing supplies? How long does it really take to upload the computers for large group production on Sunday?
One chronic weakness of mine is to regularly underestimate how long it really takes to do certain things. I tend to have an optimistic and unrealistic outlook on how much time I will actually spend on certain tasks, meetings, and projects.
Evaluate how you feel at the end of the day? Overwhelmed? Stressed? Fulfilled? Lazy? Uninspired? Get real with yourself about where you spend your time.
Step 4: Be willing to make big changes.
Now the hard work begins.
1. Get away for a day and take all of the information that you’ve gathered from the first three steps and evaluate the feedback.
2. Look at your strengths and the feedback from your team. Put them side-by-side. What do you see? For me, there were definitely things that my team wanted me to spend my time on that matched up with my strengths. Imagine that!
As I was evaluating, there were a few things that weren’t quite as obvious. There were things on this list that had to do more with my role and past experience than with my personal strengths. These were important things to factor in.
3. Pray and ask God to give you clear direction. Just like you, I genuinely desire to be used by God in my work. I want to be humble and willing to do whatever He asks. I know that He created me with specific gifts and a personal calling. A big part of my process is prayer. Seeking my Heavenly Father’s will and direction.
4. Put the non-negotiable on the calendar first. As you start this process, you need to start it with an understanding that there is never enough time to do all of the things that you need and want to do. You are going to have some tough decisions to make.
Non-negotiable are things like time with God, taking care of yourself, loving your spouse, investing in your children, rest time. There could also be meetings that you are required to attend by your supervisor. Put those kinds of things on the schedule first.
Now take a good hard look at the time that you have left and make a plan for how you will spend your time at work. Get creative. Get disciplined. Be willing to wipe everything out and approach your schedule in a whole new way.
Be realistic about what you have mental and emotional capacity to handle. Don’t book every free moment you have.
Have a plan for the things that you can no longer do. Maybe someone else on your team will now lead that area. Maybe there is a team of volunteers who would love to do it! Maybe it doesn’t need to be done anymore!
5. Take it to your team. I rarely get this right the first time. My next step is to take my new plan to my team and get their feedback. There is usually a little tweaking done. Sometimes we don’t agree, but I honestly seek to understand where they are coming from. I trust my team. I want to hear what they have to say.
I don’t believe that God’s desire for my life is to be busy. You can’t always see that by looking at my schedule. I’m prone to do too much. I’m sometimes prideful in thinking that I have to be involved in the big projects. Or that I’m the one who will do it the way it needs to be done. Because this is my prideful/sinful nature, I evaluate my schedule and myself in this area on a regular basis. Twice a year I get away and take a good, hard, honest, look.
I believe that God designed me for purpose. I believe that He cares where I spend my time. I desire to be in my “sweet spot” and for me, my sweet spot is right in the center of His will.
Are you doing what God created you to do?
Post written by: Kendra Fleming - Multi-Campus Children’s Ministry Director
November 10th, 2009 at 10:08 am
Wow, that is Good Stuf! I did a Drucker analysis about 4 years ago and so much has changed since then. Great system and I will share it with my team and we will do this…thanks. Question and I will try to stay on subject….In light of your strengths and I’m sure being a visionary for Family Ministries is one, how do you fit that into your schedule, I’m finding that in our leap to multi site that 1) I’m needed in and need to lead through meetings. and 2) I am leading people I might never meet. So much of the Vision Casting was high touch and now it seems distant and I’m feeling like I need to leverage that strength(Vision) in the meetings I lead with my team and high capacity volunteers. Is this the right way to go about that?? anything you have done that bridges that gap?? or am I missing something? I know this much, this is hard! and at the same time I feel like I’m growing like you would not believe!
November 11th, 2009 at 7:51 am
This should really be more of a discussion than a few sentence answer. I love talking about vision! First of all, I recommend that you read the book Making Vision Stick and listen to the Leadership Podcast - both by Andy Stanley. I just re-listened to it this week. They are really helpful.
But one of my main jobs is to cast vision. Over and over and over. I do it with leaders during individual meetings, during staff meetings, during curriculum meetings, whenever and where ever I can. You really cannot do it enough and it needs to become part of your DNA. My favorite word is “Imagine” — Imagine what would happen if…Imagine if every child understood….Imagine if parents were just lining up to get more of …..
Next - you have to teach all of your key leaders - for us this would be staff, coaches (vol), captains (vol), producers (vol) to cast vision. You have to inspire and help them see that if they don’t it won’t happen because you will never have access to the people that they do. I always tell my children’s ministry leaders that people don’t show up and give there all as a volunteer because they love to take care of kids or they feel like they should serve somewhere or changing diapers is just a fun thing to do! They show up and give there all because they are a part of something much bigger. To keep them inspired we have to connect them to that vision — that much bigger, life changing, part of ministry.
Last - share stories - every time you hear of something incredible that God is doing in the life of a child or family - find a way to share it. Write an email or forward theirs. Call a key leader who played a part - share the story and be sure to connect them to the story — and ask them to pass it on. But give them the picture - the vision - the words. Create video - paint a picture in meetings - feed them to your pastor to share from the stage.
Casting Vision is huge in children’s ministry. As you grow, you have to find ways to push that responsibility more broad to the leaders all around you.
That’s a great question and in my opinion EXACTLY the kind of thing you should be thinking about and worrying about as you add campuses!
Kendra