Founder and Senior Pastor, Willow Creek Community Church
- Founded The Global Leadership Summit, now in 530+ cities and 90 countries
- Senior Pastor of Willow Creek Community Church, a pioneer in contemporary church strategy and one of America’s largest churches with more than 24,000 weekly attendees
- Committed to developing and mentoring leaders worldwide, including those in some of the most difficult, overlooked and under-resourced countries
- Best-selling author of more than 20 books including Courageous Leadership and Axiom: Powerful Leadership Proverbs
Session Notes
- Joshua 1:9 Be strong and courageous…
- Leadership demands a non-stop dose of fortitude
- Ending apartheid is a cause I’m fully prepared to die for. -Nelson Mandela
- 1) The courage to define a vision
- Vision is a picture of the future that creates passion in people.
- God made you a leader to move people from here to there.
- Every significant vision that’s birthed in you is going to put your courage to the test.
- Told the story of Willow Creek building a care center.
- Why any senior pastor would keep capable, fired-up women from full deployment in the church is beyond me.
- Do we blame the problems of the world on God or on gutless leaders who lacked courage and aborted their mission?
- Don’t die with a hidden vision shriveling up inside of you.
- 2) Courage to define reality
- Sometimes a leader must declare a “code red.” (Things are declining)
- Sometimes a leader must light a fire, declare the status quo is not acceptable and extremely dangerous. (Plateaued)
- Your whole team knows the reality of your current situation. They’re waiting for you to work up the courage to acknowledge it and start leading them out of it.
- 3) Courage to build a healthy culture
- Nothing has required more courage at Willow Creek than moving our team to a healthier culture.
- First step – bringing in an outside firm to measure our culture. Put it off a year due to fear.
- Used “Best Christian Workplace” assessment
- Initial assessment put them just above “toxic.” Put an action plan into place.
- What action steps did they take?
- People join organizations. They leave managers.
- Staff are now evaluated twice a year based on not just what they accomplish but how they do it.
- A staff culture will only ever be as healthy as the organization’s leader wants it to be.
- Delegating improving culture to HR is the kiss of death.
- We are no longer going to pay people to bruise and bust our culture.
- You will not believe how much more productive your people will be in a healthy culture is compared with a toxic culture.
- Missed some really good Pew research stats cited about employee engagement.
- 4) Courage to establish and enforce values
- The more I utilize social media the hungrier I get for true community. (uh, oh Bill. I disagree – virtual community is real community.)
- Social media provides the illusion of true community.
- Told story of how no one befriended a grieving friend in a church service.
- Commentary – doesn’t Bill’s story show lack of sincere, loving relationships is just as much a problem in “real life” and is not a social media problem?
- We are not going to allow people to leave services at Willow unwelcome or unnoticed.
- Made this a value at Willow. Created a “section strategy” to raise the level of community, care, and intentional engagement at Willow.
- It takes courage to go from vision to saying this is a value, this is who we are from this point forward.
- The courage for a leader to finish strong
- Some of the most rewarding experiences in a leader’s marathon are reserved for quite late in the race.
- At 22 years old before starting Willow… Lawyer: Why are you starting this church? Hybels: To change people’s lives. Lawyer: People don’t change. Hybels: I’m betting my whole life you’re wrong.
- You have to step out in faith even when you are vibrating in fear.
Thank you so much for doing this, I really appreciate it.
You’re welcome, Jim. Glad you found it helpful.