Today’s Mission
Day 11
Ridiculous Lines from the Chronically Ineffective Leader
“It’s Easier Just to Do It Myself”
A leader is not an administrator who loves to run others,
but someone who carries water for his people
so that they can get on with their jobs.
ROBERT TOWNSEND
When we find a church with an anemic volunteer leadership team, we don’t have to look far before we stumble on to someone who lives by the motto, “It’s easier just to do it myself!”
Well, of course it is. It’s almost always easier simply to knock out a single task by ourselves than to have to coordinate with others. If easy is what we’re looking for, it’s actually easiest to do nothing at all!
But can we just agree that easy is not primarily what we’re looking for?
Most of us, if we’re willing to admit it, are like typical contestants on cable TV’s design or food competitions. You don’t have to watch long to realize that the least favorite challenges on these shows are the team competitions, the ones that require contestants to work together. There’s a reason the contestants consistently hate these kinds of challenges. When it comes to creating or innovating, it’s easier to do it alone than to have to compromise, co-create or share leadership with others.
Beyond the drama it creates, the judges on these shows have a purpose. They know from experience that the highest-level work, the most significant accomplishments in almost any field seldom happen by a single individual accomplishing a task. The greatest discoveries and most profound innovations take place as leaders build teams, not only beneath them but beside them and above them as well. In short, the greatest fruit in life and ministry might just come in the form of a “team challenge.”
But we can’t successfully lead a team until we have one, which is why you’ve made it a priority to build your team in this intense thirty-day challenge.
Today’s Mission
- Take out your master recruiting documents: your needs list and your ranked pool list.
- Check your email to see if anyone has responded to your email invitation, and reply to those emails immediately.
- For those who have said yes, send an email suggesting a meeting time and place for you to talk further about what you’re looking for.
- Hold any scheduled meetings with potential volunteers.
- For those who have said no,
- Move their names to the bottom of the pool list, under the section called “No.”
- Beside each name, write what role each person has said no to.
- Remove their names from the needs list.
- Place new names in the blanks left by those who have said no.
- Send your standard invitation email to the people you have added to your master recruiting list.
- Send a follow-up message to any potential volunteer who hasn’t responded to your last message in three days or more.