Speaking Your Dream into Reality with Wit and Wisdom

And it's sort of part of it , because I mean it's visionary communication but it's being able to take that vision , take that strategic plan that you have in your head of companies , of biblical people in the past , and be able to express that , be able to paint the picture with your words , with your different ways that you express yourself .

We were talking about just the way you expressed yourself and some of the things is a little bit different than how a lot of other people did . You expressed yourself from the writing standpoint . You expressed yourself differently . Where I'm a communication , stand up in front of the room and talk to people , rah-rah and motivate .

But I'm a very direct and when I say rah-rah and motivate , I'm not the rah-rah motivate person . My sister is a rah-rah motivate person . I'm a very rah-rah , motivate , to the point and state the facts person . So I'm very straight and to the point . I'm not one of the cheerleader types where it's going to stand up there in the front .

So we each have a little bit of a different way to express ourselves with our vision , to be able to project those words out to people , exactly right .

But this , this throwing some dad jokes there .

I'm getting to where , I'm enjoying it and I'm reading some series Jack Reacher series and Marvin Tolum bar series and you know those kind of things and I'm really enjoying it . But I but I thought , okay , what's my goal for the year of how many books ? Maybe one book a month , to just see if I can do that . I think that's a reasonable goal .

I hope I can . But I picked up this book that I never thought I would actually ever be reading . It's about anti gravity . So book about anti gravity and you know what ? It is impossible to put down .

I've thought about this for years and years and years working in the church and I've always thought that God can do amazing things with anyone who's willing to clean a toilet .

You know there's always a lot of activity going on in the church or even in that you're preparing for a vacation , Bible school or some camp in the summer or whatever . And the question is , do your leaders actually participate in the grunt work or do they expect other people to do that ?

And it's reminded me of a guy that's just an amazing guy that actually trends our trees and his name is Tony and he's an arborist . And we've had other companies come out and trim our trees at our home .

But this guy is amazing and I'll probably never use anyone else just because of his work ethic and to me it communicates the vision of his company , and that vision would be to make your trees as beautiful as possible . Well , when we had him come out and give us a bid , I thought , well , this is a pretty good bid .

And then I saw his work ethic and he's up there in the trees with this crew . I mean , he's not standing on the ground , he's not , you know , leaving his crew off and then go bid in another job . He's actually in the trees working with his crew . And to me , what does that communicate ? To me , it communicates that he's a part of the vision .

He's willing to sweat and do the grunt work and rake the stuff off the ground and throw the ropes and clean up the truck and all that stuff with his crew . And to me I was like , wow , I really like that ethic , I really like that .

And so for me , when I think of vision or communication , it's not just having a vision , it's not just communicating it verbally , it's communicate it with your actions . Are you communicating with your daily activity that you want to be a part of helping that vision happen ?

If I depart all the wisdom in there , are any of the top managers going to be in my class ? Well , now we're too busy , we can't make it .

Do you understand that everything that I'm teaching them today , if you are not behind , if you're not reinforcing everything that I say in this meeting on a daily basis and articulating that , then it is not going to stick with them , it's going to be a short-term solution . And the managers have to be in there .

They have to be bought into what I'm trying to teach your people and your company . Because if the managers aren't bought in , if the CEO , the president , the CFO , whatever it might be it doesn't buy into this , then it's just words . Right , it needs to become a company culture and that's where that visionary communication .

So many times , people just create a vision . They get together in an office with three or four people and then they create a vision statement , right , they put it on the website , then we're good .

But I mean , the part of visionary communication is taking it down , is living it through your actions , through your words , painting that picture , making sure that they see you .

If you're touting that we're the biggest Christian company in the world , but you are living a life that is definitely not a Christian life , then your actions are speaking louder than your vision , and that's one of those things that all this stuff has to tie together a little bit Exactly right .

So one of the things I did we had a huge whiteboard I think this thing was like eight feet long in our staff meeting room and we'd met every Tuesday at 10 o'clock and I would have different colored markers and I'd let everybody share what they needed to share and then I would normally be last .

Sometimes I would be first if I needed to set the agenda for the day . But then one of the things we'd do and like okay , so we're getting ready to plan now . We would have already planned for the summer , because we'd have a staff retreat , like in August and really calendar out the hold next year . But okay , so we just finished with Christmas .

Let's evaluate that , but let's make sure everybody's on the same page with what's happening over the next at least eight months until school starts . And so I would get up with the whiteboard and the markers and I would like backdate everything . So we'd start okay , this is what's gonna happen in August . Okay , we gotta do this , this and this and this .

So what do we need to be doing right now , this week , in order for that Vacation Bible School to happen , or for that camp to happen , or for that mission trip to happen , or whatever and I think that's true with any company you say , okay , we gotta get this product out by the end of next year or we're gonna have it out for Christmas next year .

What do we need to be doing right now and how can I help as the leader or as a CEO or CFO , how can I help help make that happen ?

That doesn't fit who I am as a leader , but at the same time I would cement things with a handout , probably my way to go about it , because I believe in reinforcing and what you were doing was very effective because people were reading it and if you're combining the visual with the auditory and that's gonna make the impact and you threw the nice little colors

in there for a bonus and you know that you take it one step above us every time . You know , but that's all right . But you know , but that's the visionary communication . They understand it . If I just started doing that with a white board and colors and everything , my guys would look at me like what's going ?

Now , one of the things that I always talk about is , you know a couple of the big ones that I think of visionary communication . For me that really stand out is Steve Jobs in Apple . I mean , he really created this vision .

He not only he , integrated himself in it , he made sure that everybody you know all the people in the company they understood the vision they . So he was very good at articulating it . And I guess another one that I think is really , really good would be Martin Luther King . You know the high . I have a dream speech .

I think that is something that you articulate . You know in history that have really stood out to me as some of the bigger ones as far as visionary communication .

And so let's just bring that down to say a family level , okay . And so sometimes the parents , or let's just say the dad or the mom , has an idea , like for a vacation , but they don't tell anybody . And then all of a sudden something happens and their plans get interrupted and they get upset .

Well , if you had to set down from the beginning , you know like right now , and plan out your summer vacation and say , okay , how are we gonna make , what do we need to do right now for us to go on this trip in July ? Let's make a checklist of what do we need to do and who's gonna do that .

Oh , okay , you're gonna do , you're gonna do this part , you're gonna do this part , you need to do this part . And so everybody has buy-in and I think that's the key when the leader shares the vision and I think that's one of the main responsibilities of the leader is to share the vision .

The question is how much buy-in does the leader actually show with their actions , His or her actions ? How much do they actually buy-in to the vision so that the person , the lowest person on the chain they actually see that the leader is there with them ?

He has the vision from God , he has the thought , he has the knowledge , and then he has to create that into followers and he has to live by his actions and do things . You know how does one go about making sure ? I mean , one of the biggest things for me is to make sure you get the translation right . Right , you know ? And ?

But I mean there's gotta be something inside you that resonates for you to be able to go down that path from a biblical standpoint .

But if we look at first century history , we know that persecution of the Christians just started ramping up . It was bad with the martyrdom of Stephen and it just continued to get worse and worse and worse and by the end of the first century and then continued . It was absolutely horrific .

But then we read the letters of Paul , especially in 1 Corinthians 15 , we read the letter of Peter and other writers , and he was there , what they're communicating , and they could do it because they had experienced persecution . They were experiencing , hey , the vision might not be a good life on this side of heaven .

You know you're gonna have trials , you're gonna have tribulations , you're going to have difficult times , but the vision is you've gotta think beyond the grave , you've gotta think that we're gonna have eternal peace and joy with Jesus in heaven .

And so , yes , we are having a difficult time now , but we've got to keep our sight above this earth and we're going to do that together . And the thing about it is . Paul could say that because he had experienced that persecution . He was speaking from experience . Peter could say that because he experienced it from experience .

In fact , all the disciples in that first century experienced that kind of thing , so they could speak from experience , and I think that was one of the reasons their message was so effective is because they lived what they were actually communicating .

And the other people who read their letters , who saw their lives , they said no , no , this person isn't just sitting in their own room writing about a difficult time . They've actually experienced it and their communication has integrity to it .

I might be upset that something doesn't happen in the time , but how are you reevaluating , how are you incorporating some of your short-term objectives into that long-term perspective ? And I think that's what we all try to strive for .

And then one of the things that I would get into and you can let me know about on the biblical side is how you evaluate , how you reevaluate , how you change up . How do you get feedback from your followers to know if we need to go into a different path to create a different vision ?

And I think that's a high quality of a leader to be able to take your visionary communication . I've done this with people as far as in executive coaching .

It's tough to do sometimes because they think they're great leaders and great speakers and they're communicating well and when , in fact , that they're not very good at communicating and they've got an image , alter ego , that everybody believes and I've mentioned it many times in examples and to be able to re-do some of the clients and stuff and to work with them to

accentuate their skills and their true life skills , because so many times visionary leaders and visions , when visionary leaders are trying to communicate , they create this persona . They want to be this , this almighty and all this stuff , and trying to create this , I'm bigger than life , and a lot of times that's not the way to go .

Just be yourself , be normal , communicate the vision with excitement , because that's where the passion is going to come from . And I have a friend that does this .

He creates , he tries to create this big , big , big thing to get everybody motivated , and everybody knows it's a big big thing and it's not where they're at and it demotivates as much as it motivates .

So let's just take an example that everybody experienced , or let's just say practically , and that is what happened during COVID . So you had your plans , whether you're building a new house or you're starting a new business . I can't imagine the tragedy of all the people in the food industry during COVID .

They had to shut down their restaurants or they had to only do carry out and that wasn't enough and they just went through some challenging times . And most companies went through some challenging times during COVID , especially at the beginning . But you had to step back and think okay , how am I going to communicate now what our vision is ?

We're going to , I know , at the church we were planning to have services , all this kind of stuff , and then all of a sudden on Friday I think it was like one o'clock we got the word from the bishop nope , you can't do that this week , you've got to shut it down and only do online , and we had to work really hard as a team to communicate with one

another and so make sure everybody understood what the new vision was . We're going to only do this online . We'd have no idea how long that's going to be for us , but we need to have better communication in the midst of this challenging time than we did before , because we get one shot . We do it live . We can't go back .

When you're doing something live in church and something happens , you have a chance to maybe make up for it , but when you're taping it or doing it live online , you don't have that option , and so we learned a lot very quickly . But one of the keys was everybody was on the same page .

We did daily communication about what we wanted to do , why we wanted to do it , what we needed to change , and it was a big learning curve for us and for many , many people it was , but I think we were effective in the long run by making sure everybody knew what the vision was . Let's take an example .

Because I mean that was it discussed , it was it thought about ? Do you know where I'm trying to go with this ?

But a lot of times we forget the overall vision of where we're trying to do because we had to regroup and do so many other things that we a lot of companies , in my opinion lost their overall direction during COVID because they had to regroup so much that they were in a fight or fight response instead of being proactive the whole time .

They were proactive with their task to keep business going , but a lot of times people lost their vision about we're not in a grow and we still try to accomplish our goals of the year . We're in a reactive just to survive , and I understand that that does have impact on people because I mean , that was a trying time . We didn't know what was going on .

But I know a lot of people , a lot of companies I've dealt with they just sort of lost their whole visionary strategy during COVID because nobody addressed it .

They were in just a reactive mode instead of a proactive mode and I think a lot of companies are just now , or within the last year , getting to the point where they're seeing their vision , they're getting back to a normalcy of their corporation and I was just sort of curious on the church .

But we were out of our building I'm thinking for about three or four months and we only had a worship online , and then that was starting in the middle of March , and then so , by say , july , we were back in the building for worship , but we didn't have our Sunday school , small groups , bible studies .

We didn't have those in the building for another year and we had to cancel our vacation Bible school . We did stuff online , we had to cancel our mission trips and therefore , at least a year we were basically in survival mode .

And so once we got a handle on that and the impact of that initial COVID pandemic was not behind us , but we had a handle on it then we could regroup and think , okay , how do we now move forward with the vision of the growing the kingdom of God ? So that was our vision not just growing , but getting people more involved .

It was very hard to do that when you couldn't be in your building . We were not set up to do small groups at homes and even if those were set up , we wouldn't have encouraged that just because of people who had been together . So there was a lot of things that we didn't do . We were just in survival mode , I would think for a good year .

And then , once we were back in the building , we could see it in our attendance and our giving and our activities and our mission outreach , our community involvement . It started gaining momentum then , but it took about a year and a half in order for that to get back up . And once that started and we could tell , okay , we said probably in the summer .

Okay , we're gonna get back into our building with our Sunday school and all those kind of things by September of 21, . I think that's when it was . Then we could say okay , now that we're back in our building , what can we now do ?

Because we would visit all the people that visited our church , we would communicate with them , and if you just have online and you know how many people potentially are watching , but you don't have any communication with them as who they are , it's hard to follow up . It's hard to do those kinds of things that we'd normally do .

So I understand if a company was in just survival mode during that period of time . The question is how long were you in survival mode ? And let me ask you a question because this is sort of a setup .

Absolutely it would be stressful , but I think it would be less stressful because you've done it before and I think that , to me , is part of visionary communication as far as action .

Because if I'm , if I've and I've worked for before I was a pastor , you know I had jobs . I worked for a bridge building company . I loaded a refrigerated 18 wheeler trucks when I was in seminary just to have the money , you know , to go to school . But let's just if your boss is not out there , you know humping it with you .

If you're , if your boss is sitting in the truck or they're off bidding another job and you're out there , then it's like what's the motivation ?

So if there is another challenging time hopefully never another pandemic like that , a shutdown , I would hope a boss or the head manager or whatever would be right there with their employees working just as hard , if not harder , to encourage them , to motivate them , to let them know hey , we're in this together .

I think that is part of the visionary communication is hey , no , this is our vision . It's not just your vision or my vision . You're going to implement it , it's our vision . We're going to see this happen .

people still have this vision in the head . And now it's changed . And what we changed , something else and we changed that's never going to catch on . You know . You know we've had a lot of biblical people in the Bible that we've mentioned . That had Noah .

I mean , think of if Noah changed his visionary communication every 10 years for him right and you know what would have happened . I mean , that's one of the things is consistency and to be able to stay .

I mean , we have to adapt based on feedback and evaluation , but you still have to have the overlying theme involved with everything as far as your communication .

And so I don't know I know there's some statistics out there I don't know them off the top of my head to say , okay , the bigger the company , if you have five employees , okay , you can sit down and think , oh , how do we tweak it ?

But if you have 500 employees or 50 at the church , we had normally 47 , 48 , depending upon the time of the year employees and we try to stay with that vision consistently . I think we changed it .

You know I was there right at 13 and a half years , and I mean one church , 14 years , one year to 10 , we try I think we changed it one time , you know , in that 10 years , just because it's you got and not just your staff , but your whole congregation needs to grasp it and live it out and if you keep changing it's just adds to confusion .

I think that's a huge one for me to have in your vision , Anything stand out to you Keep it simple .

Now you need to be that cheerleader because you have to think okay , I want my employee that I just hired to also carry on the vision I want them to understand , I want them to live it , I want them to be able to communicate that to their family , to whoever I think by that's the way to pass the vision on to every employee that you have .