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Episode: Building a Culture that Attracts the Right Leaders

Author: Life.Church
Duration: 00:26:15

Episode Shownotes

If you want a high-performing team tomorrow, develop a great culture today. In this episode, Craig shares how to design a culture that consistently attracts and builds great leaders. Watch video and download the leader guide: https://www.life.church/leadershippodcast/building-a-culture-that-attracts-the-right-leaders/ 

Full Transcript

00:00:00 Speaker_00
The very best leaders obsess about developing the right leaders. Why?

00:00:05 Speaker_00
Because the right leaders will find the right location, and the right leaders will launch the right products, and they'll design the right branding, and they'll create the right advertising strategy. Why?

00:00:14 Speaker_00
Because the potential of your organization rests on the strength of its people. Hey, welcome back to another episode of the Craig Rochelle Leadership Podcast, where my goal and my passion is to help you become a leader that people love to follow.

00:00:35 Speaker_00
And if you're new to our community, we drop a brand new teaching on the first Thursday of each month, but we're actually wrapping up a multiple week series answering your questions. And I wanna do this again next year.

00:00:47 Speaker_00
So if you have any more questions, comments, feedback, you wanna say anything to us, email us anytime at leadershipatlife.church. and we love hearing from you. I wanna encourage you, wherever you consume this content, hit subscribe right now.

00:01:03 Speaker_00
And a big thank you for posting on social media. I'll shout out Sky Reedy and Jerison Medina and Allison Patterson. Thank you guys for posting.

00:01:12 Speaker_00
Anytime you invite others to be a part of our community, we may repost it as well and just wanna say thank you. Now, your time is valuable, so let's get to work. Mark asked the question, very, very important.

00:01:24 Speaker_00
He asked, how do you attract the right people who are willing to be a part of your organization and want to work with you?

00:01:32 Speaker_00
And then he talked about making sure they're missionally aligned, they have the right passion, the right calling, and are aligned with the right values. Really important. How do you attract the right people to be a part of your organization?

00:01:44 Speaker_00
And Mark, this is super important. Why? Because the potential of your organization rests on the strength of its people. The potential of your organization always rests on the strength of its people.

00:01:56 Speaker_00
Your potential impact, it always reflects the quality of your leaders. So Mark, you're very, very wise to think about the people. Unfortunately, so many leaders don't really understand this truth.

00:02:09 Speaker_00
A lot of leaders obsess about things that I would call like organizational strategy. They'll focus on first, like finding the right location, or launching the right products, or designing the right brand, or creating the right advertising strategy.

00:02:24 Speaker_00
And there's nothing horrible with those things, but I would suggest a better approach, and that is this. Many leaders obsess about developing the right strategy. But the best leaders obsess about developing the right leaders. I want to say it again.

00:02:38 Speaker_00
So many people, they're just like, hey, strategy, and what do we do next? But the very best leaders obsess about developing the right leaders. Why?

00:02:47 Speaker_00
Because the right leaders will find the right location, and the right leaders will launch the right products, and they'll design the right branding, and they'll create the right advertising strategy. Why?

00:02:57 Speaker_00
Because the potential of your organization rests on the strength of its people. So what do you want? You want the right leaders. And you want the leaders that match your mission, reflect your values, share your calling, and lead with aligning values.

00:03:17 Speaker_00
In other words, you always want talented leaders, right? But you don't just want talented leaders. You want talented leaders that align with your values. Super important. And so, Mark, you asked, how do you attract those people? Good question.

00:03:33 Speaker_00
but I'm kind of obsessive about wording. I'm gonna suggest one little tweak to your question. Okay, Mark, just bear with me. I think this is important. Instead of asking, how do you attract the right leaders?

00:03:43 Speaker_00
I would suggest adding one little word that will reshape how you think about leaders. And I'd add this word. How do you attract and build the right leaders? One little word. I know it sounds nitpicky. It is nitpicky, but it's really, really important.

00:03:59 Speaker_00
I would suggest this. As often as possible, Think build before attract as often as possible. When you're looking at developing your team, think build before attract.

00:04:12 Speaker_00
Whenever leaders from like anywhere around the world might visit our organization and spend time with our staff, I'm always blessed because they say like, where do you find these world-class leaders? I mean, they're amazing.

00:04:23 Speaker_00
Like, I mean, deep in the organization, they have passion, they serve with excellence, they're really, really smart, they're great at creating systems. Where do you find these world-class leaders?

00:04:33 Speaker_00
And I always just say very humbly, but truthfully, we don't find great leaders, we build them. We don't just try to attract them. We build them systematically, strategically, intentionally with a plan.

00:04:47 Speaker_00
And I would love to talk about how do you build leaders in detail. And honestly, that's kind of the main theme of this whole podcast. And so I just wanna state that, and it's impossible to answer that briefly.

00:04:59 Speaker_00
So what I wanna do, Mark, I wanna focus on the heart of your question, and we'll answer it this way, ask it this way. How do you attract and build the leaders that align missionally?

00:05:10 Speaker_00
And so we'll start with the big premise, and then we'll drill down to specifics. This is not just about putting out like a clear and compelling job description to attract and build, and of course you wanna do that.

00:05:22 Speaker_00
But we're gonna think more about creating a culture that is so compelling that the right people, the right leaders are drawn to it. And so then the next obvious question is how do we do that, right? How do we create a culture

00:05:37 Speaker_00
that is worthy of world-class leaders?

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How do we create a culture that's so vibrant, so mission-focused, so unified with so much power, direction, and intentionality that the best leaders or the people with the most potential actually wanna be a part of that culture? Let's talk about it.

00:05:56 Speaker_00
What is your culture? How is it created? Your culture is created by default or design. every single time. It's created by default or by design. In other words, your culture, it seems obvious, but it's so true.

00:06:11 Speaker_00
It is a result of what you have intentionally created or what you have unintentionally allowed. What is your culture? It's the unwritten rules. It's how people think. It's how people behave.

00:06:24 Speaker_00
And it's always a result of what you intentionally create or unintentionally allow. And so to state the obvious, but we need to say it.

00:06:33 Speaker_00
is I don't care how much you care, how hard you work, you will never create a healthy, strong, thriving culture by accident. And so important, you'll never attract, build, and retain the right people when you tolerate an unhealthy culture.

00:06:51 Speaker_00
Your culture matters more than you can imagine. So let's get practical and talk about it. If you wanna attract and build missionally aligned leaders, what do you do? We're gonna talk about three things.

00:07:03 Speaker_00
Number one, you wanna be clear about what you value. You wanna be really, really clear about what you value. Now, why does this matter? It matters because you don't attract what you want You attract who you are.

00:07:16 Speaker_00
You don't just say, hey, I want to attract leaders that are excellent if you don't lead with excellence. You don't just attract leaders that are humble if you're full of pride. You don't just attract what you want. You attract who you are.

00:07:30 Speaker_00
So you're not just out there like trying to find the right people. You're creating the type of organization that the right people wanna join. And so if you need help creating values, I've got some additional episodes on values, all on cultural values.

00:07:47 Speaker_00
I'll recommend two of them to you, and then we'll link to these two in the leader guide, and we'll also link to some other ones. Two episodes you'll want to listen to, episode 67,

00:07:58 Speaker_00
It's called building a strong culture where I interviewed Jerry Hurley He is the kind of like the cultural architect here and in episode 119 is creating a workplace your team doesn't want to leave We'll link to those two as well as a few others to talk really more in depth about culture So let's talk about your values for just a moment

00:08:19 Speaker_00
How do you create the values? Well, you start with what you love and what you hate, what you love and what you righteously hate, what you stand for and what you don't ever wanna tolerate.

00:08:29 Speaker_00
And then you're gonna pick three, four, five, six, never more than seven values. And you want your values to be very, very clear, very compelling and memorable. You want everyone to know these values.

00:08:43 Speaker_00
You want them to not just be words on the wall in the hall, but you want them to be burned on the hearts of your leaders. And you might say, OK, why get so excited, Craig, about your values? Because they create everything.

00:08:57 Speaker_00
What you value determines what you do. What you value determines what you do. What you believe determines how you behave. So what you want to do is you want to be super, super clear. These are the values. These are the things that we stand for.

00:09:12 Speaker_00
in our organization, and we don't bend on those. So if you want to attract and build the right leaders, first, you have to be really, really clear about what you value.

00:09:21 Speaker_00
The second thing is you want to create a culture that unwaveringly reflects and protects your values. You want a culture that says this is what we do, and when we do it, and how we do it, and we never ever do it that way no matter what. Why?

00:09:37 Speaker_00
Again, I'll say it. Your culture is created by default or by design. Your culture is a reflection of what you create or what you tolerate.

00:09:48 Speaker_00
So if you're looking at your culture today and you're going, we're not really getting the kind of people we want, it's probably because you don't have the kind of culture that you really want to attract those people.

00:09:56 Speaker_00
So if you don't like your culture, stop tolerating it and start creating it. And again, I don't have time to go deep on this subject, but it really is important to make it as simple as I can. Like, how do you do it in just a few words?

00:10:10 Speaker_00
How do you create culture? As simply as I can say it is you're gonna be clear about what you value and you're gonna reward it when you see it. and correct it when you don't. That's it. I could unpack that for an hour, but we'll just do it in 30 seconds.

00:10:24 Speaker_00
You want to create culture. You're going to be really, really clear. This is what we value. And then as a leader, every time someone lives in those values. You report it. You reward it. You celebrate it. You cheer them on. You say, hey, there it was.

00:10:36 Speaker_00
That was great. You talk about it at meetings. You reward it when you see it, and you correct it when you don't. And you do that over and over and over again. And what you're doing is you're teaching your team how you think.

00:10:48 Speaker_00
how you behave, how you act, how you respond. And honestly, you're teaching them why you care about what you're doing because it reflects your values. What does a strong culture do? It actually corrects wrong behavior.

00:11:03 Speaker_00
When the culture is strong, wrong behavior stands out, and the culture, the team, corrects it really, really quickly.

00:11:11 Speaker_00
It's not easy, and you're gonna wanna work really, really hard, like starting now, starting yesterday, starting immediately on establishing a strong culture.

00:11:19 Speaker_00
And when you work hard on creating the right culture, the right culture will work hard for you. Let me say it again. When you work hard on creating the right culture, then the right culture will work for you.

00:11:31 Speaker_00
It's gonna drive the right behaviors and it's gonna correct the wrong ones. And then all of a sudden, this culture, this is like your advertisement.

00:11:41 Speaker_00
People say, I wanna be a part of that because you've got clarity, you've got direction, you've got mission, you've got passion. And the good news is it just takes consistency over time. You reward it and you correct it. Do that consistently over time.

00:11:55 Speaker_00
The bad news is you're never finished. They're always creating culture. Because once you create it, then you have to righteously guard it.

00:12:04 Speaker_00
So every meeting, all the time, everywhere, anytime you're with people, you're talking values, you're celebrating it, you're correcting when it's not there. Why? Because vision leaks and values drift. Vision leaks and values drift.

00:12:18 Speaker_00
So as a leader, you're the chief reminding officer. Here's what we stand for, here's where we're going, here's what we believe, here's what we value. Why? If you want the right people, you have to create the right culture.

00:12:29 Speaker_00
So, number one, be clear about what you value. Number two, create a culture that is unwavering. It unwaveringly reflects and protects your values. Now let's talk about the people.

00:12:43 Speaker_00
Number three, what you want to do is you want to interview or recruit for values over talent. This is gonna make you mad, and it's actually hard for me to say it, but this is true. You're gonna interview or recruit for values over talent.

00:12:59 Speaker_00
And you may say, ah, I can't quite buy that. Like for years, I really, I kind of thought it, but was afraid to say it out loud. It just took me years and years to see it over and over again.

00:13:09 Speaker_00
I have to say it, and I want you to hear it, and I beg you to believe me. Recruit for values over talent. Don't stop listening, call me a leadership heretic. Yes, of course you want smart leaders. Yes, you want bright leaders.

00:13:23 Speaker_00
Yes, you want gifted leaders. Yes, you want leaders with talent. Yes, but take it to the bank. When talent isn't rooted in strong values, the results will be shallow and short-lived.

00:13:36 Speaker_00
Let me say it again, and I want you to hear it, and if you've led for any time, you know it's true. When talent isn't rooted in strong values, the result will be shallow and short-lived.

00:13:48 Speaker_00
Without character, someone's gifts, they quickly become liabilities. I mean, they can be incredibly talented, but if they don't have character, they're gonna fall apart and create organizational disasters right and left.

00:14:01 Speaker_00
And I would give you an example, but if you've been leading for any time at all, you've lived it, right?

00:14:06 Speaker_00
We've all been around the talented leader that lacks integrity, or the capable leader that loses her temper, or the brilliant, charismatic leader that lacks consistency, or is over-demanding, or whatever it is, and it doesn't matter how capable they are.

00:14:22 Speaker_00
If their values are organizationally misaligned, they will end up leading the other team members into the wrong place. you have to get it right.

00:14:32 Speaker_00
And I wanna be really, really clear and tell you this, that they don't even have to have what I call like bad values, like lacking integrity to be a liability. The values can simply be like different from yours, and that can be a problem.

00:14:45 Speaker_00
And I'll try to explain, and I don't wanna bore you with my pastoral details, but I am a pastor, and there are so many different ways to do church. Our way is one way to do church. It is not the best way. It's just one way. And it reflects our gifts.

00:15:04 Speaker_00
our context, our passions, and our values. If I was born in a different part of the world and people thought differently, we would read the same Bible and maybe apply it with different values.

00:15:15 Speaker_00
And so, again, I don't wanna bore you with my world, but there are some pastors that value discipleship over evangelism. You have to disciple, that's what matters. Others value evangelism over discipleship, and that's all that matters.

00:15:28 Speaker_00
Others say they're equally important and you have to do them both well. So what do we have? A very capable and godly pastor might not do well in a church that has different values. All the values are God-honoring. They're just a little bit different.

00:15:44 Speaker_00
They're prioritized in a different way. In our context, if we tried to hire a pastor that was talented, but doesn't like big churches fundamentally, They're not gonna do well here, right?

00:15:55 Speaker_00
If we're recruiting somebody and they're a strong Christian, but they think that leadership is unspiritual, that they're not gonna succeed here because the values have to be aligned.

00:16:06 Speaker_00
And I give you those examples to tell you that the same is true for you. There's something that you value that makes you unique.

00:16:14 Speaker_00
There's something deep inside you, whether you lead a nonprofit or a business or a church or whatever it is, your family, that makes your family unique. And so you wanna be really, really clear on what those values are.

00:16:25 Speaker_00
And when you're recruiting people, you wanna recruit people that share your values. And so you're gonna design your interview process or your recruiting strategy to try to discover these values. And again,

00:16:39 Speaker_00
If they're completely incapable and share your values, we're not hiring them. We want capable, gifted people that have aligned values. And so let's talk about how to do it. Let's say...

00:16:51 Speaker_00
You lead a startup business, and you value integrity, innovation, and resiliency. You want people to lead with integrity. They're going to act with honesty, transparency, and strong moral principles.

00:17:04 Speaker_00
So you're in an interview process, or you're casually getting to know someone. You're going to want to ask them some questions that help reveal Do they have integrity or not? I'll give you a couple questions.

00:17:15 Speaker_00
You might just ask him, hey, describe a time when you had to make a hard decision to do something that was right, but difficult. And you want them to talk about it. They had to make a decision.

00:17:27 Speaker_00
Ask them, was there ever a time when you did something at work that you regretted? And how do you handle it? You're digging to see, do they have integrity? What do they do when it's difficult? Let's say it's innovation.

00:17:37 Speaker_00
You want to find out, do they continually seek creative solutions and improve the organization? So you might ask them, hey, tell me about a time when you introduced a new idea that led to a positive change.

00:17:51 Speaker_00
Or you might ask them, how do you approach a project when you don't yet have a clear solution? What steps do you take to find a path forward? And what you're doing is you're getting into their thought process. Can they problem solve?

00:18:03 Speaker_00
Have they created ideas that have actually led to something significant? Resiliency, one more. The ability to fail and recover quickly. A lot of leaders look pretty good, and then they fall apart.

00:18:14 Speaker_00
And so you might ask, hey, did you ever work for a difficult boss? Tell me about how'd you handle it and what'd you learn? And so how do they do under pressure? You might ask, have you ever found yourself overwhelmed at work with too much to do?

00:18:28 Speaker_00
What'd you do? And at that point, if they say they quit, here's a hack, don't hire them. But that's just a side note.

00:18:34 Speaker_00
And what I want to do just to help you, because this is really important, is to create your own value-driven questions, is I'm going to give you a running start. We've created a list. I call it 100 Value-Driven Interview Questions.

00:18:48 Speaker_00
And this is a document that has a list of some of the most common organizational values. And there are a hundred interview questions that will help you discover your candidates' values. It'll be in the leader guide.

00:19:03 Speaker_00
If you don't yet get the leader guide, go to life.church slash leadership podcast, and then we'll send you the 100 value-driven questions. And I promise you, I promise you,

00:19:13 Speaker_00
You would rather have a B-level leader with aligned values than an A player with misaligned values. Remember this, it's so important, is you can always teach skills, but you can't teach values. You can always help someone improve in their skills,

00:19:29 Speaker_00
You can't change their heart. Only God can do that. So if you or your team find yourself hesitating, you're recruiting someone, you're in an interview process, and you're like, I'm not sure if she's gonna fit in.

00:19:41 Speaker_00
Or he's great, but he seems a little bit off. Don't talk yourself into hiring that person, especially when you're desperate. You have to be really on guard when you're desperate.

00:19:50 Speaker_00
You have to remind yourself what you do is really, really, really important. And you'd rather wait longer to find the right person than hire the wrong one when you're desperate. Why? Because culture is built by the people you hire.

00:20:03 Speaker_00
If you hire people with the wrong values, you'll never have the right culture. And without the right culture, you can never attract, build, and retain the right leaders. Side thought, this is important.

00:20:16 Speaker_00
If you have a culture that you love, it's healthy, thriving, and you're proud of it, as often as possible, hire and promote from within.

00:20:24 Speaker_00
Meaning, instead of going out and hiring some executive VP from some other organization, bringing them into your healthy culture, anytime you bring someone from the outside, in at a high level is really, really risky.

00:20:36 Speaker_00
It's like bringing an organ into your body. You don't know if it's gonna take or not. So if you have a really healthy organization, like in our church, we recruit from our church. When we promote, we almost always, almost always promote from within.

00:20:48 Speaker_00
But if you don't like your culture,

00:20:51 Speaker_00
let's say you took over a job, or let's say you're a new youth pastor at a church that was dysfunctional, whatever, and you're trying to change your culture, then you might actually be wise to look outside and find those outside that exhibit your values and bring them in to start overwhelming your culture with new people that reflect the values of where you want to go.

00:21:13 Speaker_00
What do we do? We're trying to recruit, build, train, release the right leaders. I wanna tell you this, you're not gonna get it right every time. You will make mistakes and we all do.

00:21:23 Speaker_00
And I'll say humbly and thankfully, like sincerely thankfully, that I'm honored to serve with one of the longest tenured teams that I've seen in any organization.

00:21:34 Speaker_00
If you can imagine this, our top four leaders have been together for over a quarter of a century, for over 25 years. And these are some of the most talented spiritual leaders I've ever seen in any field, business, nonprofit, whatever.

00:21:50 Speaker_00
And this is a team that has led a church that continues to grow and thrive almost three decades into it. That's incredibly rare. So what am I? Obviously, I'm a leadership genius, right? Okay, not at all.

00:22:04 Speaker_00
When I started, I was a 20-year-old seminary grad that had never led anything.

00:22:09 Speaker_00
And to be really transparent with you, every single first hire of every category, the category of kids ministry, student ministry, executive team, pastoral care, every single first hire is not here anymore.

00:22:24 Speaker_00
In other words, I didn't get it right the first time. And almost nobody would get it right the first time, every single time.

00:22:29 Speaker_00
And it took me a few years to start learning who I was as a leader, starting to learn to lead, starting even to formulate what our values were.

00:22:38 Speaker_00
It took me several years and quite a bit of work to start putting together a team that has now lasted a long period of time. So you're going to make some mistakes. And you're going to have to make some corrections.

00:22:49 Speaker_00
What I want you to do is when you make a mistake, and you will, admit it really, really quickly. And you're going to have to remove some people on the way that aren't right. And you're never going to get it right 100% of the time.

00:23:00 Speaker_00
When you make a mistake, you admit it, and you correct it. You admit it. And you were correct.

00:23:05 Speaker_00
And right now, if you have some leaders, especially in higher levels right now, or it could even be like a volunteer at your nonprofit on the weekend or whatever, if you have a leader with misaligned values, it's like having a house with a cracked foundation.

00:23:22 Speaker_00
It may not be visible right now, but it actually makes a whole organization unstable. And you may say, like, you're being kind of dramatic. I'm being truthful with you.

00:23:31 Speaker_00
If you have leaders with misaligned values, and especially if they're high up in the organization, it makes the whole thing unstable.

00:23:37 Speaker_00
What you have to do, and this is one of the reasons leadership's not easy, is if you've got a key leader or a key volunteer and they have misaligned values and they're a problem, you have to deal with a problem leader.

00:23:48 Speaker_00
And I want to say, if you don't deal with the problem, you have no idea how much credibility you're going to lose for the rest of the team. We're all looking on going, there's a problem and our leader's not dealing with the problem.

00:23:58 Speaker_00
So if you don't deal with a problem, eventually the problem isn't the problem, but you're the problem because you're not dealing with the root issue. So we've covered a lot of ground and let's just kind of wrap it up. What are you?

00:24:11 Speaker_00
You are a mission-focused, value-driven servant leader. Whenever the mission is clear, the decisions are easy. Whenever the values are clear and celebrated, the culture becomes healthy. Healthy cultures attract healthy leaders.

00:24:25 Speaker_00
But you aren't just attracting, you are building. And building is hard work. It takes a lot of time. And when you attract great leaders, when you build great leaders, and you wanna retain great leaders, what are you gonna do? You have to let them lead.

00:24:40 Speaker_00
You have to cheer them on, you have to take risks, and you have to celebrate the wins.

00:24:45 Speaker_00
And before long, it may take three years, five years, it could take a while, but before long, you're gonna wake up and realize you're part of something special, part of something special.

00:24:57 Speaker_00
And I wanna tell you, it is almost impossible to fathom what God can do through a team of growing leaders aligned with missional passion and shared values. I'm gonna wrap it up with one closing statement.

00:25:10 Speaker_00
Before I do, I wanna help you grow in your leadership, and we're gonna give away some free books. If you'd like to get Pat Lincione's book, Five Dysfunctions of a Team, it is a book I read years and years ago. It helped shape me.

00:25:23 Speaker_00
Hop over to YouTube, type in the comments section. I wanna be on a great team. I wanna be on a great team. Type that in at YouTube. We're gonna give away five copies of Pat's book, and I wrap it up by saying this.

00:25:36 Speaker_00
When you humbly submit yourself to grow and be led into a mission that really matters, surround yourself with like-minded leaders, wholly obsessed to a mission, one day you'll wake up and say, wow, somehow, together, apart with other great servant leaders, we're actually making a difference in the world.

00:25:55 Speaker_00
And I want you to know you have that in you. You can make a difference. you can find the right people. But not just find the right people, you can build the right people. And together you can build each other. And when you all get better, guess what?

00:26:06 Speaker_00
Everyone wins. Because we know that everyone wins when the leader gets better.