2 Leadership Books

 

Issue No. 692 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting (Sept. 25, 2026) asks if you should read another leadership book—or use the money for lunch? Plus, click here for back issues posted at the new location for John Pearson’s Buckets Blog, including my review of A Talent for Giving: Creating a More Generous Society That Benefits Everyone. And check out these bite-sized book summaries (7- to 9-minute videos)—perfect for your weekly staff meeting.   Another leadership book? Are you serious, John? You need help!    "The Messy Everyday Reality" Really, Pearson? The world needs two more books on leadership? Well…perhaps. Read my short reviews of two new books—and then you decide:    • Read none, one, or both?    • Delegate your reading?    • Or announce to your spouse or a colleague: “Instead of buying another book, I’m taking you out to lunch today!” The Catalyst CEO:  Why CEOs Can't Lead Transformation Alone —And What the Best Do Instead by Constantine G. Alexandrakis (Sept. 22, 2026) The Panoramic Leader:  How Great Leaders See Differently Cornelia Choe and Marshall Goldsmith (July 7, 2026) THE CATALYST CEO Favorite Chapter: The introduction. Really! Read that and you’re hooked. One of the author’s team members at Russell Reynolds (the global leadership company) writes about the “ghosts” of your predecessors, “who somehow seem to get wiser and taller the moment they leave office.” LOL! Favorite Quote: “To be clear, this book isn't intended to be some grand thesis on transformation. The world already has plenty of those. McKinsey, BCG, PwC, and others have written thousands of pages full of strategies, models, and insights about how organizations change. Most of them are excellent. But what they don't often capture is the human part: the messy everyday reality of how you get your teams to actually own the transformation journey and see through it." Favorite Takeaway: Every chapter concludes with a summary, “The Transformation Ledger.” More zingers than you can count—and these are just from Chapter 1, “Strike the Match.” (Required reading.)    • “If you don’t define the burning platform, someone else will, usually a journalist.”    • “You can’t outsource urgency; the CEO has to feel it, and make others feel it, too.”    • “Comfort is more dangerous than competition.”    • “Manufactured urgency beats manufactured excuses.”    • “If everyone looks calm, you may be leading them into irrelevance.”    • “Transformation is a muscle, not a miracle.”    • “The real enemy is rarely outside the building; it’s the voice that says, ‘We’ve always done it this way.’” Favorite Question: From Chapter 10, “What I Wish I’d Known About Becoming a Catalyst CEO,” the author asks, “Do you see your role as the ultimate decision-maker, or the person who enables better decisions?” (That’s just one of eight poke-in-the-rib questions in this final chapter—another must-read.) I’m guessing he’s read one or both books by Dennis Bakke, Joy at Work (2006 book-of-the-year) and/or The Decision Maker (read my review, “The Problem Was Me.”) Watch for My 2nd Review! I just might convince you that Chapter 2, “Get the Board Onboard” will be your favorite chapter.    • When Greg Creed became the CEO of Yum! (KFC, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, etc.), he admits that he “could toss out a hundred ideas before breakfast.” But through new CEO eyes, he faced a board-approved “sprawling list of 36 priorities that the company was expected to deliver.” (Must-read: how he reduced that list to four!)    • “Brutal simplicity beats polite abstraction. A hard truth lands faster than a hundred charts. If it stings, it sticks.”    • “If you don’t translate, you don’t persuade. Boards don’t want 50-page decks; they want a story they can tell themselves on the car ride home.”    • Read the research: “Global Board Culture and Director Behaviors Study.” THE PANORAMIC LEADER Favorite Chapter: “Expertise can sow the seed of blindness,” is just one of dozens of wake-up alarms in Chapter 4, “Mindset First.” In addition to detailing the creativity of the Spanish restaurant, El Bulli, authors Cornelia Choe and Marshall Goldsmith deliver a stunning graphic on page 81, “When Mastery Becomes Risk – The Hidden Cost of Unconscious Competence.” The four levels up to the mountain top:    • Unconscious Incompetence (the bottom of the mountain)    • Conscious Incompetence    • Conscious Competence    • Unconscious Competence (the top of the mountain—yikes!) Favorite Quote: (Marshall Goldsmith is no slouch! I named What Got You Here Won’t Get You There my 2013 book-of-the-year, thanks to Gordon Flinn.) Yet "the World's #1 leadership thinker and executive coach" transparently shares the feedback he received from his mentor. Dr. Paul Hersey told him, “You are completely screwing up. You are selling the same thing day after day after day. You are not thinking, you are not writing, and you are not developing new material. If you continue doing what you are now, you will have a successful life, but you will never become the person you could be—and you will regret it. You can be more.”  Favorite Warning: (Maybe? Maybe not? Read another leadership book?) “According to research published by the Corporate Executive Board, at least half—somewhere between 50 percent and 70 percent—of new executives fail within their first 18 months on the job. That number is as shocking as it is catastrophic, for both the leaders who are affected by this silent epidemic and for the organizations they lead.” Favorite Question: “How often do I actively seek out contradictory information or dissenting opinions to guard against confirmation bias in my personal decisions?” Watch for My 2nd Review! I made more than 30 notes for my review but I promised a short review today. So I’m planning a second review later this year. Watch for:    • Yes, you need to view the dance floor from the balcony, but you also need to invite others to join you on the balcony—“people who see the world differently”—and can spot the “gatecrashers” you may be ignoring. (This reminded me of Ram Charan’s “perceptual acuity dinners.”)    • Why, when co-author Cornelia Choe received an honorary Ph.D. from UCLA’s Anderson School of Management, she led a standing ovation for the bottom half of the class!    • Yikes. Why Apple pulled the plug on their $10 billion project to build a fully autonomous car. (The authors name the culprit: the core problem at Apple—and yes, pun intended.) SO…read one book, two books, delegate your reading…or buy lunch? TO ORDER FROM AMAZON, click on the titles for: [   ] The Panoramic Leader: How Great Leaders See Differently, by Cornelia Choe and Marshall Goldsmith.  [   ] The Catalyst CEO: Why CEOs Can't Lead Transformation Alone—And What the Best Do Instead, by Constantine G. Alexandrakis. Listen on Libro (6 hours, 50 minutes). (And thanks to the publishers for sending review copies.)         YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS: 1) Cornelia Choe and Marshall Goldsmith write, “Leaders don't fail for lack of intelligence. They fail because they're navigating with partial maps. We call this perspective blindness—the tendency to mistake an incomplete view of reality for the whole. In an increasingly volatile world, that mistake compounds quickly. Panoramic leadership is a strategic advantage.” QUESTION: What are you missing? Who should read The Panoramic Leader? 2) Constantine G. Alexandrakis quotes Mark Twain, “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you in trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” QUESTION: How are you going to find out what you know that ain’t so? 3) Click here for my favorite cartoon, plus mini-reviews of six more leadership books including True North: Leading Authentically in Today's Workplace, Emerging Leader Edition, by Zach Clayton and Bill George. Who will read and report on one of these books?          SECOND READS: Fresh Solutions From Classic Books You have changed—and your problems have changed—since you read this the first time! Resource #60 of 99: Thinkpak: A Brainstorming Card Deck For your team meeting this week, inspire a team member to lead your “10 Minutes for Lifelong Learning” session by featuring Resource #60 of 99 in our series, “Second Reads.” The big idea: REREAD TO LEAD! Discover how your favorite books (and articles) still have more to teach you and the people you’re coaching and mentoring. Thinkpak:  A Brainstorming Card Deck by Michael Michalko (June 1, 2006)   Imagine being called “one of the most highly acclaimed creativity experts in the world.” That’s Michael Michalko, who organized a team of NATO intelligence specialists and international academics in Frankfurt, Germany, to research, collect, and categorize all known inventive-thinking methods.”    • Read my review (Issue No. 261, Nov. 26, 2012)    • Order from Amazon.    • Management Bucket #20 of 20: The Meetings Bucket The result: the “S.C.A.M.P.E.R." process. This fun-to-use brainstorming card deck has 56 cards including two instructional cards, four or five cards for each of the nine key processes, plus seven cards with creative ways to evaluate ideas. It’s a brilliant instant brainstorming system. But caution! It could be dangerous to your boring, status quo meetings!   CLICK HERE FOR BOOKS BY JOHN     View the AI-generated summary of “Mistake #3: Reading Too Narrowly—Stuck in My Lane. I should have read a book on ‘how to read a book’ 50 years ago.” (8 minutes). See the workbook, Mastering Mistake Making: My 25 Memorable Mistakes—and What I Learned (10 Minutes for Lifelong Learning Workbook), by John Pearson with Jason Pearson. NOTICE! Effective Oct. 1, 2025, all 657 eNews issues, previously archived on Typepad.com are slowly (!) being moved to a new website here at John Pearson's Buckets Blog. Learning to Lead View the AI-generated summary video (8 minutes) of John’s 2019 book-of-the-year, Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead, by Jim Mattis and Bing West. (Read the review.) BONUS! As of today, 30 video podcasts (7 to 9 minutes each) are posted here. Perfect life-long learning snippets for your weekly staff meeting. MORE RESOURCES: • BLOG: Pails in Comparison • SUBSCRIBE: Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews • JOHN'S BOOK REVIEWS: on Amazon  • WEBSITE: Management Buckets • BLOG: Governance of Christ-Centered Organizations • PODCASTS: John Pearson's Buckets Podcasts  Finding Lost Golf Balls! John Vawter (author, pastor, coach to pastors, and very funny guy) reports that American golfers lose 300 million golf balls per year! His hilarious book is now in paperback. Your golfing friends will love this! Just 61 pages. Read my review. View the YouTube video summary.

4 Steps for Board Member Recruitment

 

Issue No. 260 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting (Oct. 30, 2012) features a new governance toolkit for your next board meeting. The resource from ECFA includes a short DVD and viewing guides for each board member. Plus check out my Management Buckets website with dozens of resources and downloadable worksheets for your staff meetings. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Board Recruitment: Don't Propose Marriage on Your First Date! A Chinese proverb says, “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is today.” That’s also relevant counsel for your board member recruitment process.  The best time to discern board member criteria and qualifications is before you invite inappropriate people onto your board. But moving from “slot-filling” to a thoughtful discernment process is not easy.   There’s help!  The new ECFA Governance Toolbox Series has launched and the first title in the series is “Recruiting Board Members: Leveraging the 4 Phases of Board Recruitment—Cultivation, Recruitment, Orientation and Engagement.”   This “View-Inspire-Engage” toolbox includes a 13-minute DVD, 12 Board Member Read-and-Engage Viewing Guides, and a Facilitator Guide with just-in-time help to engage your board on this fork-in-the-road core competency.  The Facilitator Guide provides three discussion options:     Option 1: 15-30 minute board discussion    Option 2: 30-60 minute discussion    Option 3: Board Retreat (or a 2-hour session)   The fast-moving DVD features a short In-the-Trenches Board Story on recruitment: “The Shortest Board Term in the History of the World.”  It’s humorous, but poignant. Perhaps your board members will see themselves in the “got-the-binder-joined-the-board” video clip.   When viewing the video, each board member will follow along with the colorful 20-page Read-and-Engage Viewing Guide—and will then interact with the 27 self-assessment questions from the four phases of board recruitment.  Example:   SELF-ASSESSMENT QUESTIONS: How strongly do you agree or disagree with the following statements?   CULTIVATION: “We follow the best practice of ‘dating’ a board prospect—over an appropriate period of time—before ‘proposing marriage.’”   CULTIVATION: “We ensure that a board prospect’s spouse, family (and sometimes employer) is aware of the ‘time, talent and treasure’ requirements of board service.”   RECRUITMENT: “Compared to the due diligence our senior leaders exercise when hiring staff, our board exercises a high level of due diligence when discerning a board prospect’s suitability for board service.”   RECRUITMENT: “We go slow and rely on the 18- to 36-month cultivation process by encouraging potential prospects to serve in key volunteer roles to assess their diligence and faithfulness.”   ORIENTATION: “Our orientation process includes required reading of at least one governance book, such as The Imperfect Board Member, by Jim Brown, or Owning Up: The 14 Questions Every Board Member Needs to Ask, by Ram Charan.” (Read the blog series: 14 posts.)   ORIENTATION: “Our orientation process involves at least 5 to 10 hours of orientation, over a period of several months, and concludes with a written or online feedback survey.”   ENGAGEMENT: “We know and leverage ‘The 3 Powerful S’s’ (Spiritual Gifts, Strengths and Styles) of our board members. We are also students of our CEO’s unique strengths and giftedness—and his/her preferred working style.”   ENGAGEMENT: “We can point, with delight, to numerous examples of how God-honoring board members—fully engaged—have leveraged their giftedness to help us make strategic, fork-in-the-road, spiritually discerning decisions to the glory of God!”   These are just 8 of the 27 questions listed in the toolbox. In addition, there is a starter page on board qualifications, “Board Nominees Must Meet Our 6 Ds Criteria.” They include: 1) Discerning Decision-Maker, 2) Demonstrated Passion, 3) Documented Team Player, 4) Diligent and Faithful Participant, 5) Doer (he or she “walks the talk” and reference checks affirm a God-honoring lifestyle and character), and 6) Donor.   The Facilitator Guide provides a link to a hidden webpage with bonus resources and templates, such as a sample table of contents (31 tabs) for a Board Nominee Orientation Binder, plus “The Board Bucket” chapter from my book, Mastering the Management Buckets.  I’ve worked with ECFA on the concept and writing of the first two toolkits—so I recommend them highly!  More titles are coming.   To order from ECFA, click on this link: ECFA Governance Toolbox Series No. 1:  Recruiting Board Members.  -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions: 1) The DVD in the ECFA Governance Toolbox Series quotes Elton Trueblood, “Pious shoddy is still shoddy.” How would you describe your board’s competencies in each of the four phases of: Cultivation, Recruitment, Orientation, and Engagement? Shoddy? Pious Shoddy? Excellent?  2) In the Recruitment phase, the toolkit suggests that a prospect, prior to serving on the board, should already be a generous giver per Matthew 6:21, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” The viewing guide notes, “Many organizations define ‘generous’ as prioritizing your organization in the Top-3 of a person’s annual giving. Board members at all income levels can be generous.” What is our board’s expectation (or policy) on board member generosity?   Honing the Smithereens Out of a Perfectly Adequate System Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets: 20 Critical Competencies for Leading Your Business or Nonprofit One of the big ideas in Chapter 18, The Systems Bucket, in my book, Mastering the Management Buckets, is to resist the urge to tinker endlessly to perfect the flawless system. Perfection is not the goal.   It’s not always prudent to wait until all your ducks are in a row.  Sometimes even systems people must agree that “good is good enough” and it’s time to launch the project. Too much tinkering to get it “right” may create an unintended consequence—overhead overload.   Some of your team members are systems zealots and have overused skills. Some may hone the smithereens out of a perfectly adequate system. Others, addicted to perfection, rarely finish a project.  You may have a team member—a genius—who is unable to tolerate non-geniuses. “Why don’t they get it?” So, what should you do?   Read Chapter 18 and check out the resources on the Systems Bucket webpage, including a unique add-water-and-stir book that is amazingly simple, yet profound. FYI: For Your Improvement: A Guide for Development and Coaching, from two feedback experts.        MORE RESOURCES: • BLOG: Pails in Comparison • SUBSCRIBE: Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews • JOHN'S BOOK REVIEWS: on Amazon  • WEBSITE: Management Buckets • BLOG: Governance of Christ-Centered Organizations • PODCASTS: John Pearson's Buckets Podcasts  NOTICE! Effective Oct. 1, 2025, all 657 eNews issues, previously archived on Typepad.com are slowly (!) being moved to a new website here at John Pearson's Buckets Blog ECFA Blog on “Governance of Christ-centered Organizations”   Read John's blog post, "More Huckster Than Holy?" and check out the new ECFA Governance Toolbox Series No. 1: Recruiting Board Members (DVD and Viewing Guides).

Be the Director I Could Follow

 

Issue No. 347 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting (Aug. 3, 2016) champions a multi-discipline approach to books and leadership.  And this reminder: click here to check out my 20 management buckets (core competencies). Lifelong Learners Soak Up Lessons From... Camp Directors!  I've noticed this. Observant leaders (aka lifelong learners) often soak up leadership and management lessons from outside of their disciplines. Trust me. You can learn a lot from camp directors! Must-read: this issue’s insightful niche book, Be the Director I Could Follow, by Earl D. Taylor. The author invited me to write the foreword—and I’ve listed six reasons you should read the book. Harvard Business Review’s classic article, “7 Surprises for the New CEO,” is a wake-up call for both corporate and nonprofit leaders—including camp directors. Surprise Number Five is a shocker: “You Are Not the Boss.” Few articles and books equal the honesty and warnings from these co-authors. So I was blessed and privileged when Earl invited me to write the foreword to Be the Director I Could Follow (A Camp Director's Manual). His written labor of love—transparently delivered with warts and all—is a valuable survival kit for new and growing camping leaders [and all leaders] who will find not seven, but dozens of surprises in their leadership journeys.  Oh, my. How I wish Earl’s wit and wisdom had been in print decades ago when I invested 11 immensely challenging (but thoroughly satisfying) years as a camp director in Illinois and Washington. I would have read this book every week! Then when I was privileged to lead what is now called Christian Camp and Conference Association (CCCA), I would have gifted his book to hundreds of struggling (but amazingly committed) men and women who loved Jesus and led remarkable camping ministries. Be the Director I Could Follow is a feast for new leaders and old leaders. In addition to Earl’s savvy smarts from his in-the-trenches school of hits and misses, he’s invited four of my Christian camping heroes (Dick Angelo, Brian Ogne, Enoch Olson, and Tom Robertson) to serve up their common sense approach to leadership. Brilliant!  Here are six reasons you MUST read this book—and share it with your team:   1. Twitter-Worthy Quotations Sprinkled Throughout the Book. Amazing stuff! Like John Maxwell’s insight: “The only thing a title can buy is a little time—either to increase your level of influence with others or to undermine it.” 2. Brian Ogne’s Four Principles of Funding Your Ministry. My favorite: “People give money to success, not to distress.” 3. Tom Robertson’s Transparent Confession. “…I needed to settle the glory issue. Either I got it or God got it. I was not meant to carry the glory belonging to God. It was so freeing to lay that burden down.” 4. Enoch Olson’s Sacred Task. “As the visionary I had the sacred task of proclaiming a vision of a future that did not yet exist ... for a people with the means to bring that future into a present reality.” (Note: Enoch wrote his chapter at age 85 and noted, “With the help of many, my style of leadership is still improving which means it is a growing process. There are real reasons why some leaders succeed and others fail.”) 5. Dick Angelo’s 7-Day Prayer List. “The best practice that a young or old director can get into is to take all the cares of the week, make a list of them, and daily spend time in prayer over them. Keep that list at least a week ahead all the time. That way, one prays for the need today, as well as always praying for the needs of the next several days.” Yikes! How did I miss this discernment insight? While grace abounds, I wish I had started this 50 years ago, not this week.  6. Earl Taylor’s Metric That Matters Most—the Happiness File. “I do keep a close watch on the finances of the camp; without enough money, the camp begins to flounder and morale and facilities go downhill. Staff likes to be paid. But I have an even more important system to measure the success of the camp: it is called my ‘happiness file.’ In my desk, I keep a file of all the good reports I hear from parents, churches, and campers.” Great insight—great idea! Recently, I heard a millennial youth leader share this at a large conference: “Next month I turn 30—and it will be the fifth anniversary of that moment in my life when I discovered I didn’t know everything!” None of us know everything—but that realization is critical. I just learned a lot more—and had several important nudges-in-my-ribs from the Holy Spirit as a result of reading Be the Director I Could Follow.  To order from Amazon, click on the title for Be the Director I Could Follow (A Camp Director's Manual), by Earl D. Taylor. Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions: 1) Many leaders urge us to read outside of our professions and disciplines. What book have you read recently that fits this admonition? 2) Earl Taylor notes that he reads about 30 books a year. In the appendix, he lists 75 books that are on his Kindle, including A Year With Peter Drucker, Execution, Necessary Endings, and Leaders Eat Last.  What is your reading goal for this year? 3) View my "Mistake #5" from the Mistake-Makers Podcast [2026]. NOTICE! Effective Oct. 1, 2025, all 657 eNews issues, previously archived on Typepad.com are slowly (!) being moved to a new website here at John Pearson's Buckets Blog. Inspiring All 4 Social Styles to Read Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets: 20 Critical Competencies for Leading Your Business or Nonprofit In Earl Taylor’s book (above), he begins Chapter 9, “Become an Innovator,” with this powerful quotation from Antonine de St. Exupery: “If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.” While that’s a great quote—it doesn’t work for “Drivers.” Instead, customize your “leaders are readers” motivation plan to your team members based on the four social styles: Analytical, Driver, Amiable, Expressive. Each style will respond to a different motivational approach.  For example, Expressives will want to win a reading competition, while Analyticals will value content. Amiables will read if it will help their relationships with you. Drivers will prefer shorter page counts with bottom line end-of-chapter summaries. While you should understand your own style—and what motivates you to read—don’t make the mistake of thinking “one size fits all.” For more resources from “The Book Bucket,” Chapter 5, in Mastering the Management Buckets, visit this webpage which includes three master lists of book recommendations.    MORE RESOURCES: • BLOG: Pails in Comparison • SUBSCRIBE: Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews • JOHN'S BOOK REVIEWS: on Amazon  • WEBSITE: Management Buckets • BLOG: Governance of Christ-Centered Organizations • PODCASTS: John Pearson's Buckets Podcasts  ECFA BLOG on “Governance of Christ-centered Organizations” – Add your thoughts and comments to John Pearson’s recent blog, "The Widow's Mite Is NOT the Gold Standard of Giving."

How to Deliver a TED Talk

 

Issue No. 256 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting (Sept. 5. 2012) features a short, but sweet, how-to-give-a-talk toolbox—leveraging the tricks of the trade of the “world’s most inspiring presentations.”  And…by the way…guess what Yahoo’s new CEO, Marissa Mayer, has mandated? Weekly staff meetings—every Friday—reports the Wall Street Journal. Plus check out my Management Buckets website with dozens of resources and downloadable worksheets for your staff meetings. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Top TEDTalk Secrets If I were writing my Buckets book today, I would add another core competency, The Speaker Bucket (No. 21). In one of my Top-10 books for 2008, I quoted Bert Decker, author of You've Got to Be Believed to Be Heard: “Your ability to communicate is the single most important skill determining your success in every aspect of your life.  You dare not make the mistake of thinking that communication is nothing but dumping information on another person.” As co-dependents to bad speakers, somehow we allow mind-numbing keynote addresses, board and committee presentations, staff reports, and—oh my!—sermons, to turn our minds to mush—as we patiently wait for that magical phrase, “And in conclusion…”   The solution? At your next staff meeting, coach your wanna-be-presenters with books from your “Speaker Bucket” bookshelf.  Here’s another good one:   How to Deliver a TED Talk: Secrets of the World’s Most Inspiring Presentations, by Jeremey Donovan.   The author researched hundreds of online videos of the most popular 18-minute talks presented at the highly acclaimed TED Conferences. In just 107 big-print, fast-reading pages, he boils it all down. But it’s not a speaking-tips-for-dummies blah/blah/blah book, it’s much, much better—and rich in detail where it matters.   If you’re not familiar with TED Conferences (“Riveting Talks by Remarkable People”), check out the website. The 2013 conference is Feb. 25 to March 1 in Long Beach, Calif., and attendance is by application only. Cost: $7,500 per person (not a typo). Did I mention it’s already sold out? A same-date conference is in Palm Springs for just $2,500 per person. TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is often described as “the ultimate brain spa.” Donovan’s prepare-a-talk toolkit has two sections: “Content, Story & Structure” and “Delivery & Design.” The detailed chapters range from “How to Craft Your Catchphrase” to “How to Conclude Your Talk.” (Pastors: please read this…please!!) Golfers are constantly challenged to master a zillion golf swing details—all at the same time (head down!). Ditto speaking tips (head up!). Yet Donovan gently brings the reader/would-be speaker along the journey, one practical step at a time:    --Humor: “The fundamental principle to remember is that humor is rooted in surprise.”    --Stories: “If you would like to bore people to tears until they tear out their hair and claw their eyes out, then hammer them with facts for the entire 18 minutes of your TEDTalk.”     --PowerPoints: “…four of the ten most viewed TED presenters used no slides in their talks.” Yet if you must, the author recommends the 7x7 rule, limiting each slide to no more than seven bullets and no more than seven words per bullet. He quotes speaking coach Craig Valentine, “Use slides as a place where you take off and land. Nothing more.”   The author dissects Malcolm Gladwell’s popular TEDTalk, “Choice, Happiness and Spaghetti” (more than 2 million views).  In the video, Gladwell invests all 18 minutes in telling a story about Dr. Howard Moskowitz, market researcher and psychophysicist, and his unusual spaghetti sauce crusade with the food industry. Click here to watch the video.   Donovan’s lesson? “Malcolm Gladwell’s second clever choice was to make Howard Moskowitz the hero. As a speaker, one of the worst things you can do is put yourself on a pedestal. Position yourself as an equal, perhaps a guide, but not superior to your listeners.”   About 74 percent of all people suffer from the fear of public speaking (known as Glossophobia).  This book could help your boss, your direct reports, your board members, your volunteers—and dozens of others. And as we say often, “Delegate Your Reading” to someone on your team—and then add this helpful toolbox to your resource shelf—and mentor your people with niche books and niche chapters.   By the way, adds Donovan in Chapter 7: How to Conclude Your Talk, “When you provide a clear signal that you are moving to the end of your speech, people will increase their level of attention.” (Hang on, this eNews will terminate shortly.)   So this is the third book I’ve added to my ad hoc “Speaker Bucket” shelf.  Another good one is 15 Minutes Including Q&A: A Plan to Save the World From Lousy Presentations, by Joey Asher. Read my review. To order this book from Amazon, click on the title for How to Deliver a TED Talk: Secrets of the World’s Most Inspiring Presentations, by Jeremey Donovan. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions: 1) Around-the-room (30 seconds or less per person): tell us about the most effective speaker or presenter you have heard in the last two years—and why. 2) According to Jeremey Donovan, “the average TEDTalk employs language at a sixth grade level.”  And he adds, “In my moderately scientific analysis, the most viewed TED speakers deliver an average of one joke per minute in their keynote speeches.” What do you think about that stat? ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Defog Financial Reports With Dashboards Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets: 20 Critical Competencies for Leading Your Business or Nonprofit One of the big ideas in Chapter 15 in my book, Mastering the Management Buckets, is is to eliminate the fog of numbers-only financial reports by leveraging the visual clarity of dashboards. The dashboard on an airplane delivers instant feedback. Ditto a financial dashboard.  For more help (for nonprofits), read The Nonprofit Dashboard: A Tool for Tracking Progress, from BoardSource. The book includes a CD-ROM with add-water-and-stir spreadsheet templates. For more help and recommended books, visit The Budget Bucket webpage.      MORE RESOURCES: • BLOG: Pails in Comparison • SUBSCRIBE: Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews • JOHN'S BOOK REVIEWS: on Amazon  • WEBSITE: Management Buckets • BLOG: Governance of Christ-Centered Organizations • PODCASTS: John Pearson's Buckets Podcasts  NOTICE! Effective Oct. 1, 2025, all 657 eNews issues, previously archived on Typepad.com are slowly (!) being moved to a new website here at John Pearson's Buckets Blog. ECFA Blog on “Governance of Christ-centered Organizations”   Add your thoughts to John's latest blog post asking if there is a difference between "secular" and "Christ-centered" board governance.

Pursuing God’s Will Together

 

Issue No. 254 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting (July 24, 2012) features a just-published book on spiritual discernment by Ruth Haley Barton—whose previous book, Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership, was my 2009 Book-of-the-Year. Her latest is equally powerful.  Plus check out my Management Buckets website with dozens of resources and downloadable worksheets for your staff meetings. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- From Decision-making to Discernment Warning! This is a dangerous book (I’ll explain). And it’s certainly a no-brainer Top-10 book for 2012 for pastors, ministry leaders and board members. It might even be my No. 1 Book-of-the-Year pick, but the year’s not over yet. Ruth Haley Barton has the audacity to write, “Just because something is strategic does not necessarily mean it is God’s will for us right now.” She says that our staff meetings and board meetings must move from decision-making to discernment. “Spiritual discernment is the ability to distinguish between good (that which is of God and draws us closer to God) and evil (that which is not of God and draws us away from God).” She adds, “Many of us have been taught that leadership is having the answer, and we come into meetings we are leading prepared to bestow that wisdom on our trusty followers; we might ask God for wisdom in a prayer that sounds very spiritual, but the truth is, there isn’t much room for God to do or say anything other than what we already have in mind.” Spiritual leadership has a different flavor believes the author and founder of the Transforming Center. “There are many qualities that contribute to good leadership, but it is our commitment to discerning and doing the will of God through the help of the Holy Spirit that distinguishes spiritual leadership from other kinds of leadership.” And there’s the problem: most of us want to do the will of God, but few of us are willing to invest the time to learn, practice and facilitate a spiritual discernment process.  (Raise your hand if your board has a designated “discernmentarian.” How about a wise sage? Barton says you need both.) About 75 pages into this dangerous book, I grieved the wasted years of clever PowerPoints, flipchart busy-work, 31-tab binders and too many frequent flier miles…just soldiering on…when, in fact, I was focused on the wrong thing. To think that, instead, we could have actually heard from Almighty God Himself! Ruth Haley Barton got my attention in 2009 with her extraordinary book, Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership, especially the chapters on spiritual discernment. Then several clients mentored me with stunning moments of discernment. The blinders fell off. I began to see God’s work with new eyes.  You will too, if you do the hard work of reading, reflecting and praying through this book—but don’t do it alone. Each chapter begins with Barton’s keeping-it-real continuing story of Grace Church, a fictitious megachurch in the Pacific Northwest. Grace has vision, passion, a gifted top-notch team “and they wore cool jeans.” Trust me—she’s been in our churches, sniffed around, and knows way too much! Dangerous? Have you every gathered your team or board for a fork-in-the-road decision and prayed for “holy indifference” (a good thing)? She writes, “At the beginning of any leadership discernment process, it is good to be reminded to ask for the grace to be indifferent to matters of ego, prestige, organizational politics, personal opinion, personal advantage or even ownership of a pet project. We ask God for the grace to desire his will—nothing more, nothing less, nothing else.” “If we do not reach the point of indifference, or if we are not at least honest about the fact that we are not indifferent, the discernment process becomes little more than a rigged election.” Dangerous? How about instead of feeble attempts at conflict resolution, you practice conflict transformation—and, says Barton—it’s a prerequisite to the discernment process. Dangerous? “Have you ever been part of a meeting in which people were so tired that they made a decision just so they could go home? Have you ever participated in a decision-making process knowing that you were resorting to ‘sloppy desperation’ just because you were exhausted?” You’ll appreciate the been there/done that elephant-in-the-room stories—and how a spiritual discernment process can lead you to a healthy culture. Barton will inspire you—and give you tools—for the priority task of discerning your team’s values. Her ten guidelines for “entering into and maintaining a listening posture” are both brilliant and practical. You’ll want to laminate the list and bring it to every meeting. (Hey, Hank! Read No. 3 again! “DO NOT INTERRUPT!”) Dangerous? Barton warns us about attempting spiritual discernment when there are no spiritually discerning people in the room. So she plows deep into that field with practical exercises for preparing the ground. (The harvest takes time.) But the point of all this is not more visionary leadership, better decisions, S.M.A.R.T. goals, bigger budgets or fewer staff or board conflicts. “The main point of discerning the will of God is to do it.” And then she encourages us with I Thess. 5:24, “…the one who has called you will be faithful to bring it to pass.” I just bought 30 copies. To order this book from Amazon, click on the title for Pursuing God’s Will Together: A Discernment Practice for Leadership Groups, by Ruth Haley Barton. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions: 1) Ruth Haley Barton says that “conflict happens in all relationships; the only question is what we will do when it does.” Why might “conflict transformation” (versus conflict avoidance) be a bedrock value that must be in place before you begin a spiritual discernment process? 2) Overwhelmed? Too much to do? Doing the work of three people? Barton says that a spiritual discernment process will help us realize that “When we refuse to live within our limits, we wear out ourselves and those who lead with us.” What are other reasons why discernment is so important? Are You Battle-ready? Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets: 20 Critical Competencies for Leading Your Business or Nonprofit One of the big ideas in Chapter 13 (The Crisis Bucket) in my book, Mastering the Management Buckets, is to be battle-ready.   Peter Drucker said, “Fortunately or unfortunately, the one predictable thing in any organization is the crisis.  That always comes. That’s when you do depend on the leader.”  He said that the job of the leader is to build an organization that is “battle-ready, that has high morale, that knows how to behave, that trusts itself, and where people trust one another.”   If the shocking crisis that devastated the community of Aurora, Colo., last week were to happen near your church or ministry—would you be battle-ready? For more resources, visit the Crisis Bucket webpage and download the worksheet, “Plan Now for Your Next Crisis.” NOTICE! Effective Oct. 1, 2025, all 657 eNews issues, previously archived on Typepad.com are slowly (!) being moved to a new website here at John Pearson's Buckets Blog MORE RESOURCES: • BLOG: Pails in Comparison • SUBSCRIBE: Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews • JOHN'S BOOK REVIEWS: on Amazon  • WEBSITE: Management Buckets • BLOG: Governance of Christ-Centered Organizations • PODCASTS: John Pearson's Buckets Podcasts  ECFA Blog on “Governance of Christ-centered Organizations."  Read my blog, “Great Boards & the Elephants in the Room.”