Mon • Aug 16th, 2010 • by Tom Nees • Comments 7
and how to manage stress
The plight of stressed-out pastors has attracted a lot of attention since the New York Times front-page report, “Taking a Break from the Lord’s Work” by Paul Vitello and an op-ed response “Congregations Gone Wild” by Jeffrey MacDonald.
The Huffington Post has followed with “Soul Care and Roots of Clergy Burnout” by Anne Dilenschneider citing a new report from Clergy Health Initiative at Duke on the poor mental and physical health of pastors.
However, in spite of these timely and well-informed studies there are misconceptions or myths about clergy burnout.
1. Taking time off is enough to prevent stress and burnout
As important as time off is, returning to work after days off, vacations and sabbaticals without changing stress-producing behavior patterns will not make much difference.
As a practical matter, sabbaticals are unaffordable luxuries for most pastors. Taking even a day off is difficult for a growing number of pastors who must support their income with secular jobs.
Exercise and good diet are just as essential to emotional fitness as time off.
As shown in the article “Why Exercise Makes You Less Anxious,” physical activity reduces stress. We are not meant to be sedentary.
2. Clergy leaders are more stressed-out and in poorer health than the general population
Not so, according to Joseph Arnold who has conducted a study of United Methodist clergy for the Lewis Center for Church Leadership.
He notes that clergy leaders used to be better adjusted than the general population. As he told me, “the slide toward the norm” makes it appear otherwise. They are simply more like the rest of us. Except, he said, in two areas where they seem to be worse off – diet and exercise.
3. Clergy leaders are dissatisfied with what they do
Arnold referred me to a 2006 study on “Clergy Role Stress and Satisfaction,” in which over 80% of pastors reported job satisfaction – compared to less than 50% in general population. (not online – available upon request)
However, they are dissatisfied when the “sent role” or their calling is inconsistent, if not in conflict with the expectations of “laity, colleagues, supervisors, policies and procedures.”
4. Older leaders are more likely to burn out than younger leaders
Arnold added that younger clergy are more likely to burn out than their older colleagues. Some of this, he said is general improvement in mental health as people age. Older clergy have learned how to manage their stress.
He attributes burn-out among younger pastors to lack of mentoring and coaching. They too often give up when they don’t know how to lead effectively.
5. Stress is inevitable
Yes and no. We all live with stress – the “wear and tear” of everyday life. Some stress is natural and good.
But these reports and studies indicate that much of the pressure pastors are feeling is self-induced.
Clergy leadership is increasingly stress-full. It will become more so as culture as well as congregations are affected by unprecedented and unpredictable change.
Fortunately there are leadership programs to help leaders including pastors develop behavior patterns that prevent unnecessary stress and burnout. Even if they can’t change circumstances, pastors can learn how to handle stressful situations.
As in the title of a book by Hans Selye, there is a way to live and lead with “Stress without Distress.”
Mon • Aug 9th, 2010 • by Tom Nees • Comments 13
and how to avoid the “stresses of senseless struggles”
In the “Leader of the Future,”, Peter Drucker is quoted as having observed that some of the best leaders in any neighborhood are “ministers, priests, and rabbis” who he said “demonstrate a staggering array of talents” and who he claimed were “somehow almost always overlooked when we think and write about leadership.”
But according to last week’s front-page report in the New York Times, “Taking a Break from the Lord’s Work,” as good as they are and in spite of the good they do – some clergy leaders are not doing so well themselves.
The article draws from several corroborating studies reporting that a good number of the clergy are “unhealthy and unhappy” and “would change jobs if they could.”
They struggle with obesity and hypertension, use antidepressants above the average, and in contrast to the general population suffer from falling life expectancy.
And the simple remedy from these studies? – “taking more time off.” Evidently, the Sabbath cycle of regular rest is being ignored.
Too many clergy have become obsessive/compulsive, falling prey to the competitive, success-driven leadership patterns of secular culture. Among other things they don’t take enough time off. When they do they don’t really disconnect.
They are increasingly under pressure to produce congregational growth in spite of declining attendance patterns. A shepherd caring for the flock is expected to become an entrepreneurial CEO.
And there is no escape even with a day off or a vacation given their 24/7 connection to cell-phones, the Internet, and constant contact with email, texting, and twittering.
Something more than timeout is needed to prevent clergy burnout.
I know of an otherwise successful long-term pastor with a remarkable growth record, who now in the midst of his sabbatical is talking about quitting.
The necessary balance of action and reflection, work and rest does not necessarily relieve stress and anxiety. Rest can become restlessness.
While thinking about the article I reread a book I’ve had around for many years: “The Stress of Life,” written by the medical doctor Hans Selye, who over fifty years ago did ground-breaking research on how our bodies respond to and sometimes cause stress. He wrote about good stress and bad stress and how to achieve balance so that we don’t wear ourselves out prematurely.
We all live with everyday stress, which Selye described as the normal “wear and tear” of life. To live a fulfilled life he said we must find a way to avoid the “stresses of senseless struggles.”
This is especially true for leaders. Senseless stress discourages their followers as well as themselves.
Selye’s research helped him avoid bad stress by adopting personal “rules of conduct” or short-term, long-term and ultimate aims.
The studies cited in the NY Times article seem to be urging clergy leaders back to their high calling of leading by example the way to fulfilled living.
Mon • Aug 2nd, 2010 • by Tom Nees • Comments 5
and why we are wrong about being wrong
How often do leaders admit to mistakes? It seldom happens.
“Acts accountably for personal mistakes” is one of the statements I use in seeking feedback for leaders from those who know them best. Good leaders get high scores.
And yet, too often even good leaders struggle to admit their mistakes and take corrective action. Why?
It’s a very human tendency according to Kathryn Schultz in her new book: “Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error.” In his New York Times review, Daniel Gilbert writes about “why it feels so good to be right.” Schultz, he writes, wonders “why we make mistakes, why we don’t know we are making them and what to do when recognition dawns.”
These are important questions for leaders, with consequences for their followers as well as themselves.
Schultz explores why we love being right even though there is plenty of evidence that our perceptions are often wrong. She tells us “why we see what isn’t there, believe what isn’t true and remember what didn’t happen.”
Even if we stifle the urge to say “I told you so,” the thought as well as the statement she says, is a “way of making the point that not only was I right, I was also right about being right.”
We’re living through times of catastrophic failures – the Gulf Coast oil spill, economic blunders that threaten all of us, counterproductive wars – yet few if any of our leaders have admitted to or acted accountably for mistakes.
Some leaders must think they are paid to be right. It’s as if positional authority or rank gives them the right to be right – all of the time.
Leaders need to be right more than they are wrong. But no one is right all of the time. Schultz adds that we are simply “wrong about being wrong.”
Followers are more inclined to partner with leaders who know when they are wrong and act accountably for personal mistakes rather than those who ignore, or even worse, cover up their errors at all costs.
Wed • Jul 21st, 2010 • by Tom Nees • Comments 3
I’ve been in groups that called themselves teams and really weren’t. And I’ve also been on teams and know how challenging, as well as rewarding, teamwork can be.
A team leader is like a player/coach—extremely rare in sports—but essential in organizations.
Leaders seldom if ever lead alone. They serve with peers and followers in a variety of partnerships including groups and teams.
Here are 7 parallel characteristics of groups and teams.
Groups
Teams
There is nothing wrong with a good group. Groups shouldn’t necessarily try to become teams. However, some goals and objectives can only be achieved with effective teams and good team leaders.
Wed • Jul 14th, 2010 • by Tom Nees • Comments 5
I’ve been coaching leadership groups and teams recently. The iWAM team report provides a good way to help leaders in a group or on a team to understand the range of behavior patterns with which they engage one another.
For instance, the iWAM self-assessment informs leaders about how high or low they are with initiation and patience. I’ve found that high initiation leaders tend to be low on patience, but not always.
It is important for leaders in a group or on a team to know this about one another. A high patience leader may not be resistant to action and change. He or she just needs more time to reflect before acting.
High initiation can become too much of a good thing if the leader becomes hyperactive and insistent. Likewise a high patience leader runs the risk of being passive and too laid back.
In a group or on a team, every leadership strength can produce a toxic or allergic reaction from others.
The key here is balance. I’ve noticed that good leaders balance and adjust their behavior patterns to prevent their strengths from becoming pitfalls.
Through groups and teams, leaders engage in a partnership with their followers. The leader’s role is not to dominate or to try to be the smartest person in the room.
It is to help the group or team to be effective, which begins with knowing about one another and understanding how to leverage strengths for a common mission or project.
Please contact me for information about how to use the iWAM for your group and team development.
NEXT WEEK – the difference between groups and teams
Sun • May 16th, 2010 • by Tom Nees • Comments 3
graduation address at Eastern Nazarene College
May 15, 2010, Quincy, Massachusetts
Congratulations – graduates and families and friends on this important milestone. Thanks to President McGee, the faculty and staff of ENC – who have contributed so much to these newest graduates and so many others through the years.
In preparation for this moment I have learned some things about Millennials—ages 18-29, which includes most of you—the first generation to come of age in the 21st Century
This is some of what The Pew Research Center has discovered about you.
You are—
“confident, self-expressive, liberal, upbeat and open to change.”
“You are more ethnically and racially diverse than older adults. You are less religious, less likely to have served in the military, and are on track to become the most educated generation in American history.”
“Your entry into careers and first jobs has been badly set back by the Great Recession, but you are more upbeat than your elders about your own economic future as well as about the overall state of the nation.
“You embrace multiple modes of self-expression. Three-quarters have created a profile on a social networking site. One in five have posted a video of themselves online. Nearly 4 in 10 have a tattoo (and for most who do, one is not enough: about half of those with tattoos have 2 to 5 and 18% have 6 or more.
“Nearly 1 in 4 of you have a piercing in some place other than an earlobe – about 6 times the share of older adults who’ve done this.
“But your look-at-me tendencies are not without limits. Most millennials have placed boundaries on their social media profiles. And 70% say your tattoos are hidden beneath your clothing.”
“You are less skeptical than your elders about government. More so than other generations, you believe government should do more to solve problems.”
“You are the least overtly religious American generation in modern times. Yet not belonging does not necessarily mean not believing. Millennials pray about as often as their elders did in their own youth.”
“Only about 6 in 10 of you were raised with both parents.”
“Just about 1 in 5 millennials are married now, half the share of your parent’s generation.”
“You get along well with your parents.”
“You respect your elders.”
I have been thinking about another group of millennials in my hometown, Annapolis, Maryland — about to graduate from the US Naval Academy
Graduation for the midshipmen at the Naval Academy comes with a bachelors of science degree and a commission as an officer in the Navy or Marine Corps.
These young men and women are immediately thrust into assignments of leadership – making life and death decisions for those under their command with responsibility for multi-million and –billion dollar ships, aircraft and submarines.
Every graduate has been taught, trained and commissioned for leadership.
Brian Weigelt, the senior Protestant Chaplain at the US Naval Academy told me of an address by Lieutenant General George Flynn of the Marine Corps to the midshipmen who have chosen to become Marine officers.
The General said, “until now, throughout your college years, it’s all been about you—your education, your classes and grades, your careers and future. But now,” he said, “upon graduation, it’s no longer about you, it’s about them—the troops you will lead, the people who will depend upon your knowledge and skill.”
This ceremony is more than graduation from Eastern Nazarene College. For you too, this is your commencement to leadership.
While you may not receive an official commission or job with authority, in a less formal, but no less important way, when you step off this platform, diploma in hand, responsibility for leadership while come to you regardless of your career plans.
It’s no longer about you—it’s about those you will lead into an unknown future.
Leadership is not necessarily positional, and doesn’t require authority. All of you can be, and in fact are leaders. You will have to decide who and how you will lead.
Current events are teaching us about the critical need for new leadership for the welfare, if not the survival of the planet.
The Times Square bomb placed in an SUV by Faisal Shahzad is a reminder that we live in a perilously divided and dangerous world.
We are at war, a conflict military leaders tell us cannot be won by the military. It is a war for minds and hearts, a war where our nuclear deterrent, built at such great expense during the Cold War, is unnecessary and irrelevant.
We need new millennial leaders, committed to the common good, eager for new ways to wage peace rather than wars that cannot be won.
A mile beneath the ocean surface where the burned-out oil rig managed by BP once stood – over 200,000 gallons a day of crude oil are now gushing into the pristine waters of the Gulf of Mexico, washing up on the white sandy beaches of the Gulf Coast, destroying the marine and wildlife in its wake.
As bad as it is, it is miniscule compared to the damage past generations have inflicted on the environment. We are in the process of destroying beyond repair the water, the air and land, this gift of God’s creation for which we have been given stewardship.
In his new book, “Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet,” Bill McKibben writes, “Forget about saving the planet ‘for our grandchildren.’ We are already standing in their shoes.” McKibben deliberately misspells earth with two “a’s” to reinforce the point that planet earth, as we once knew it, is gone forever “carbonized out of existence.”
The planet needs you millennial leaders to find new ways to preserve and protect what’s left of this incredibly beautiful and fragile ecosphere. We can’t go on this way. If you believe, as I hope you do, that we are stewards of the earth, all of us must lead and work to reverse our excessive, if not sinful consumption and the destruction of non-renewable resources.
The recent earthquake in Haiti, which killed more than 200,000 people, awakened us to the presence of extreme poverty within a short boat ride from our own shores.
It wasn’t the earthquake alone that killed people in Haiti. It was poverty.
Over one billion people on the planet barely survive on less that $1 dollar a day – an additional two billion more struggle on not much more.
In a recent video Esther Duflo, the young professor of development economics from MIT, reminds us that “There’s something like a Haiti earthquake every eight days.”
That is, 25,000 children around the world die of preventable causes every day. Nearly one million die each year from malaria for want of simple precautions such as bed nets.
I have the privilege of leading Nazarene Compassionate Ministries, Inc., a support organization for Nazarene relief and development work around the world. We have just launched “Saving a Generation” – an HIV/AIDS project in Swaziland where 42 percent of the women of childbearing age are HIV positive.
According to recent reports we are losing the battle with this global pandemic. Every day six thousand people in sub-Sahara Africa die from HIV/AIDS.
From the PEW report we learn that while you millennials are less religious you are no less spiritual than older generations.
You pray as much as your parents, you’re just not inclined to do so in a church. It’s no wonder given the extent of church abuse in all faith traditions.
Churches that exist for their own interests – buildings, attendance, money – rather than the social as well as the spiritual welfare of all God’s children have a hard time retaining their own let alone attracting new believers.
The world, including the church, needs a new generation of millennial leaders, given to spiritual and moral values. The so-called Great Recession resulted from unrestrained greed and a lack of moral leadership by both business and political leaders.
We need moral millennials to lead in more responsible, if not with spiritual values.
As ENC alumni you will always remember your values-added education. Here your spiritual and moral formation has been as important as your intellectual development.
Given what you believe and know, what are you going to do about these challenges?
I spent 25 years of my life in what was then one of the toughest neighborhoods in Washington, DC—once referred to by a Washington Post pundit as “a pit stop on the way to hell.”
One day I came upon the arrest of a young man by a “jump squad” –police officers disguised in ragged clothes and old cars. I joined the crowd gathered to watch as the young man, suspected of dealing drugs, was thrown to ground, held face downed and handcuffed.
His mother was screaming at the police that he was innocent. And the police were threatening her and others with arrest for obstruction of justice should they get too close.
Then she screamed at me. I didn’t know her—but she knew me as a minister at the nearby Community of Hope. In her despair she cried out to me, “What are you going to do about it?”
I don’t remember what I did or didn’t do, but I’ll never forget the question, and my inescapable interaction with a world of hurt.
Confronted as we are with the startling statistics of war, poverty, ecological destruction and moral collapse—the question is for you too.
What are you going to do about it?
If you, like me, were raised in a church culture, you may remember the youth groups where you were reminded of these words written by the Apostle Paul to his protégé Timothy.
“Don’t let anyone look down upon you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith, in purity. . . . do not neglect your gift.” 1 Timothy 4:12
To you new generation millennials, allow me to paraphrase – “don’t let anyone look down upon you because you are young leaders . . . do not neglect your gift of leadership.”
Take charge. Lead the way. The world needs you.
Mon • Apr 12th, 2010 • by Tom Nees • Comments 0
the surprising speech by
Secretary of Defense Robert F. Gates to the Brigade of Midshipmen
at the US Naval Academy, April 8, 2010
Gates: Defy Authority When Needed — a remarkable newspaper headline reporting on Defense Secretary Gates’ address to the Naval Academy on April 8, 2010. Urging future military officers to “defy authority” goes against everything we know about how to succeed in a command and control culture, whether military or any other organization.
Conventional wisdom says that institutional leaders should avoid rocking the boat or making waves – to use sailing metaphors. They need to be loyal, go along to get along.
But Gates told them, “The time will come for each of you when you must stand alone and make an unpopular decision.” In their service to the nation they would need courage to not only put themselves in harm’s way but to “buck the brass,” a clear call to avoid becoming yes-men and women and refuse to be caught up in group-think.
He offered them several striking examples of successful military leaders who persisted, some to the point of insubordination, before their ideas were accepted and proven valuable.
Gates was not really suggesting that the Naval Academy midshipmen rebel. He just wants them to become leaders who welcome and invite unconventional, even contrary opinions. Good leaders, he said “create a climate that encourages candor among subordinates.”
When leaders resist candid feedback, subordinates feel pressure to tell them what they want to hear or simply say nothing. Telling the truth and offering contrary opinions can be risky. Defying authority is needed when leaders won’t listen.
While he encouraged the midshipmen to “defy authority when needed,” what he was really calling for was a leadership culture where “vision and insight” are welcomed rather than resisted, where subordinates don’t have to defy authority to be heard.
Evidently he doesn’t expect that kind of change from senior leaders anytime soon. So he advised these young leaders-in-training to “defy authority when needed” – a different kind of call to arms.
As their senior leader, Secretary Gates was received with repeated applause, most enthusiastically when he closed with this commitment to the young men and women under his command. “I consider myself personally responsible for each and every one of you. When I send you into harm’s way, as I will, I will do everything in my power to see that you have what you need to accomplish your mission and return home safely.”
That’s responsible leadership.
Mon • Mar 29th, 2010 • by Tom Nees • Comments 0
when you are at the mercy of what you cannot see
If you’ve read the bestseller “Blind Side: Evolution of a Game” by sports-writer Michael Lewis or seen the movie adaptation, you know the story. It’s about how Michael Oher, a black kid from Memphis – underprivileged but physically talented with academic potential – is discovered and eventually accepted into a private Christian school. With little chance of success on the football field or in the classroom he is adopted in by an affluent, evangelical, white family and tutored by the mother – a movie role for which Sandra Bullock won an Academy Award.
The title “Blind Side,” is a story of its own.
Lewis writes that after a career ending injury to Washington Redskins’ quarterback Joe Theismann in 1985, professional football teams knew they needed big, strong, fast left offensive tackles to protect the blind side of their right-handed quarterbacks.
Michael Oher fit the description and was spotted by scouts early. Out of high school he received a scholarship to play for Ole Miss and later drafted by the Baltimore Ravens where he plays—you guessed it, left tackle.
Left tackles are among the highest paid players in the NFL. On passing plays they must protect the blind side of the even higher paid right-handed quarterbacks.
We are more familiar with our own blind side when driving. Even with dual rearview mirrors there is a spot behind us that we can’t see. We’re always in danger of being blind-sided.
There is an application here to leadership as well life. A quarterback, Lewis writes, “is at the mercy of what he can’t see.” Aren’t we all?
In leadership coaching I occasionally organize a support team to meet with a leader for no other purpose than helping the leader succeed. It’s like having the support and protection of an offensive line including a good left tackle.
All of us, leaders included, have blind sides. Marshall Goldsmith describes “the success delusion” in his book “What Got You Here Won’t Get You There.” Successful leaders, he has learned, are often blind to their own shortcomings. Big picture leaders are particularly vulnerable.
The best protection from being blindsided is to seek feedback from people who see what we cannot see. Without a good feedback loop the big picture can become an illusion.
Ever hear the comment, “I’ve got your back” – which means someone is looking out for you – protecting your blind side? We need protection from own delusions as well as from circumstances over which we have no control.
You can bet that Baltimore Orioles’ quarterback Joe Flacco is glad Michael Oher has his blind side.
Mon • Mar 8th, 2010 • by Tom Nees • Comments 0
three questions to help overcome adversity
Adversities hit leaders like earthquakes writes Lisa J. Marshall in “Speak the Truth and Point to Hope: the leaders journey to maturity”. Without warning everything is shaken. The ground shifts. Nothing remains the same.
“Getting fired, the loss of loved ones through death or divorce, a deeply felt spiritual experience, nearly dying oneself, having to fire people, even an organizational collapse of some kind . . . What all such experiences have in common is the sense of a tectonic plate shift, after which life is never quite the same.”
Noted writer and leadership development consultant John Baldoni has a video on “How to Bounce Back from Adversity.” (Baldoni’s book “Lead by Example” – has been chosen as one of the best leadership books in 2009) His video is worth a couple of minutes of your time. Leaders he says should debrief adversity with three questions:
One thing for sure – adversity will come. Bad things happen to good people. Leaders make mistakes.
It’s not what happens to you as much as how you handle what happens to you that makes the difference between success and failure.
After digging out of the death and destruction left by earthquakes in Haiti and now Chile, leaders there are asking the questions – what happened? how could we have done better? and, what have we learned?
In spite of their despair and grief, Haitians and Chileans are hoping for a better day—like a phoenix rising out of the rubble.
So it is with leaders who bounce back, overcome adversity, and never give up.
Mon • Mar 1st, 2010 • by Tom Nees • Comments 0
During the winter Olympics the announcer for the two-man bobsled competition explained that the pilot must not allow himself to be controlled by the track. I wondered about that. The track is a given. It doesn’t do anything. It’s just there. How can it determine the result?
I learned that if the bobsled pilot allows the track to control him it will mean defeat if not disaster. So it is with leadership. There are givens for every leader, circumstances they do not create yet must control.
Leadership like bobsledding requires skill—the skill to guide with a steady hand. Sometimes the givens are well known—like the bobsled course where teams have the opportunity to practice in advance. No surprises there. But even though they’ve been down the track many times, success requires focus, concentration and determination.
In leadership, as in life, we are not given the opportunity to practice in advance. And the givens are always changing—nothing remains the same. Discontinuous, unpredictable change is more often than not the course of life. When the course keeps changing we may find ourselves reacting, trying to hold on, out of control, unsure of the outcome.
Successful leaders take charge of themselves as well as their bobsled/assignment.
I’ve seen leaders lose it emotionally. They continue to go through the motions for a while but they have given up on the inside—like coasting down the bobsled track hoping to finish without overturning.
Others lose control of the bobsled itself. However talented, well trained and committed, through a lack of focus and discipline they allow the demands of their assignment to shape them. I have seen it often. The job shapes the leader rather than the leader shaping the job.
In Olympic competition split seconds separate the winners from the rest. Fortunately, in leadership as in life we don’t have to compete to succeed.
Nevertheless the leader in a bobsled is either controlled by or in control of the track.