RLL 21: 'Pups Under the Bed: Consistency is Key'

'Pups Under the Bed: Consistency Is Key'

Last night, we had a pretty giant rainstorm. The noise of the rain woke both my wife and me in the dark hours of the early morning. The other noise that woke us, though, was of one of our dogs whining outside our bedroom door. This is not entirely unusual, because our newer dog (Bruiser) has a habit of waking us in the night to let him outside to go to the bathroom. However, when we heard the noise of the rain, we realized that 'outside' is the very last place this dog wanted to go right now. He wanted in our bedroom, where we were, because he was afraid of the storm.

The pups love getting to be on the couch at their grandparents' house!

Our other dog, Butterscotch, is also very afraid of storms: the noise, the lightning, all of it causes her to shudder and whine and find a place where she can bunker down until the weather improves. We don't know if our dogs are afraid of storms just as a part of their natural make-up--I know lots of pet owners have dogs with similar feelings about bad weather--or if it is more due to their background. What we do know is this: when there is bad weather, the dogs absolutely want to be wherever we are.

So when Bruiser woke us in the middle of the night, my wife got up and let Bruiser into our bedroom. Most nights he sleeps in my recliner in the den, in part because he likes it and in part because Bruiser is a bit of a loud sleeper most of the time: he's part bulldog and thus makes that snuffly-snoring noise a lot. But last night, after being allowed to come into our room, he was as quiet as a mouse. When I woke up this morning, both dogs came crawling out from under our bed (that's Butterscotch's usual sleep spot at night), ready to begin the day.

In that moment, I was struck by the dogs and how they operate like clockwork: when there is bad weather, they find us. They need to know that they are going to be protected and safe and dry. They need consistency, and they need to be reassured about it on a regular basis. And I find this is true in our positions of leadership as well. We need to provide models of consistency and stability for our audiences: our children, our employees, our players, whatever it may be.

They also love getting into the recliner whenever anyone sits down! 

This principle is true throughout life: we may not always like or agree with whatever the rules are, but as long as they are being enforced consistently we can live with them. On the other side of the coin, when there is a situation that needs to be reconciled, we appreciate knowing that whoever is in charge will take care of it, and that provides us with stability and confidence in our leaders. This is the type of leadership we should strive to exercise: consistent and stable.

When we are inconsistent with our leadership, when we only enforce the rules occasionally, there will almost always be problems. This is true in a home when a child never really knows the boundaries because the parents are permissive one day and ultra-strict the next (for more on this, read any of the amazing books by Dr. Kevin Leman). This is true in a town when the laws are applied unfairly, even seemingly small things such as who gets pulled over in a speed trap. This is true in a company when certain employees are allowed to get away with shirking their duties while others have to pick up the slack. Inconsistency always leads to confusion, and this almost inevitably turns into frustration and anger.

Remember how frustrating it was as a child when your sibling got away with something that you got in trouble for? Or as a student when some classmates got away with the same behavior that got you reprimanded? Or even as an adult when we see injustice in the news or in our own towns? These issues are all due to inconsistency in leadership, and it is up to us, the leaders, to provide the consistency and stability that can solve these problems.

So today, let's commit to being consistent leaders, leaders who can be depended upon for stability in our organizations. Let us provide our audiences with confidence, because they know that whatever happens, we will be there to help sort it out. This will require wisdom, and it will require humility, so also be sure to ask a few trusted advisers to point out to you any areas of inconsistency that they see, in order that you can improve in these areas.

Action Step: Look for areas of inconsistency in your life and leadership, and decide on one way in which you can address the issue and provide more consistency for those in your charge.

RLL 20--Church Camp and Yellow Card: Difficult Conversations and Leadership

Church Camp and Yellow Card:

Difficult Conversations

This past weekend was a busy one in the Hawbaker household: one daughter had a Friday night soccer game followed by a weekend-long church camp. The other daughter had a basketball tournament all day Saturday, and my wife’s family was celebrating Chinese New Year (her brother’s family adopted a young girl from China a couple years ago, and so this has become a new family tradition). In addition to all of those things, my soccer team had a tournament as well, and so I was busy coaching most of the weekend.

After the rush ended this morning, I was reflecting on the various events, and in doing so I was struck by one common theme that came up for me which has a direct bearing on leadership: difficult conversations and why they are necessary. For me, there were three such talks that particularly stood out this weekend: one conversation with my daughter, one with a referee, and one with an opposing coach. What they all had in common was that they were focused on topics that make me uneasy, or which required me to accept responsibility for things I had done poorly. But, after having engaged in all three of them I also came away realizing that each situation was better because of having had those conversations.

The first conversation was with my daughter on Friday afternoon, and it was admittedly the least difficult of the three. She is almost fourteen years old, and the topic of the conversation was about friends and boys and young teenage relationships in general. I have never been a fan of my daughters growing up, mostly because I remember being a teenage boy and thus am familiar with how they think. I also know that, no matter what I do, the girls will grow up; and so, I know the best thing is to continue having these difficult conversations, even when they make me uncomfortable.

Hanging out with the daughters on a fun afternoon

Thankfully, my older daughter is very open with me when we talk: she tells me about the boy she likes, and she tells me how her friends tease her about it. She tells me about how the other boys in her group of friends give her a hard time and make her face turn red. And she tells me how excited she gets when she sees the particular boy that she likes. All of these things make me varying degrees of uncomfortable, for different reasons: it’s hard that she’s growing up, and I want to protect her from teasing and from heartache, and yet I know that those are situations that she mostly will have to learn to navigate on her own.

Thus, as her father, the best thing I can do is to try to provide guidance so that when she is faced with various situations she is as prepared as possible to make good decisions. As a leader, this is what we must do in our various contexts, whether at home at work or in a volunteer position. When there is a difficult issue, I know that many times the easiest option is to ignore it and hope that it works itself out, but I also know from experience that that rarely occurs. Thus it becomes necessary to have these conversations in order to facilitate a better environment or culture for the group. In this case, the goal of having these talks with my older daughter is to help her make decisions that are good for her in both the short term and the long term.

The other two conversations revolved around my soccer tournament this weekend. During our Friday night game, the play was very physical and rather heated, and I became concerned that players might get hurt. In my frustration I purposely yelled in such a way as to force the referee to issue me a yellow card, which (for those who are unfamiliar with soccer terminology) is an official warning and type of rebuke. If a coach or player receives two in the same game, he or she is ejected and cannot return. In addition to that, while things were still heated, I had a verbal exchange with the opposing coach, which almost never goes well. He responded in kind, and both of us came across looking rather immature and setting a poor example for our players. Those mistakes were actually the easier parts of the situation.

The hard part was that when the game ended Friday night, I felt unsettled about the whole situation. I knew I had behaved poorly and that I needed to attempt to reconcile those situations. So I went to the referee and I apologized for yelling the way I had. I still didn’t agree with her decisions, nor did I appreciate how she approached the situation. However, the truth of the matter is that, as the referee, her decisions are the ones that matter; my opinion is merely my opinion, and it makes no difference in her decision-making. As I told my team afterward, I had treated her merely as a referee, and in doing so I failed to treat her as a person who is refereeing.

The same thing was true in my exchange with the opposing coach. I unconsciously ceased to view him as a person, instead viewing him as just an opponent, and when I did that I allowed my frustration to get the better of me. However, I also knew that after the game I was still not in a great frame of mind to try to apologize, and so I waited and then went and found him in between games on Saturday. We talked, we both apologized and shook hands, and I believe we both went away from the exchange feeling better. He admitted that he hadn’t taken my words personally, that he knew it was all in the heat of competition, and I appreciated his honesty. We still didn’t agree about the game or some of the calls, but now we were disagreeing cordially, as opposed to disagreeing angrily. And the difference there is crucial to leadership.

Disagreements that become personal often become elevated very quickly, and then the disagreement often morphs into personal attacks rather than just a disagreement about an external situation. We also observe this in family life, when what started as a disagreement over what television channel to watch turns into a name-calling fest where feelings and relationships are damaged.

In sports, as in life, it’s very easy to forget that people are people, and so we often treat workers as workers rather than as people who are working at a particular job. Think of the hotel clerks, waiters, or cashiers that we have all seen mistreated by irritable customers (and remember that sometimes we are those irritable customers). In family situations we often allow our emotions to get the best of us and we resort to personal attacks, using hurtful names or bringing up often irrelevant past wrongs simply for the sake of ‘winning’ an argument. (Does that ever really happen? There’s a chapter about that topic in my book coming out this summer!)

But when we remember that people are people, and we try to treat them with the respect that all humans deserve, it makes us more humble. When I’m angry about a referee’s call, I need to be reminded that the referee’s decision matters more than mine; that’s not always fun or even fair, but it’s still true. And how often do we say that sort of things to children and young people? “Life’s not fair.” It’s true for adults, too, though we often tend to forget it in our pride. As leaders, we cannot afford to let our pride cause us to dehumanize people, though this will happen to all of us. And when others dehumanize us and attack us, we must have the maturity and humility not to respond on kind. On the occasions when we have failed at both of those, as we inevitably will, may God grant us the humility and grace to go back and apologize and seek forgiveness, in the name of restoring good relationships.

Action Step: What difficult conversation do you need to have with someone in your circle? Ask yourself why you have been avoiding having it, and then decide if it’s worth it to continue putting it off.

RLL 18--'Ragged: 5 Lessons From Preseason Training'

Real Life Leading #18

Ragged: 5 Lessons From Preseason Training

This week was the first week of full training (not just running) for my high school soccer team’s new season, and I learned a handful of valuable lessons that I felt were worth passing on and applying in other areas of life. This is my fifth year coaching at Westbrook Christian School, and we’ve been very blessed to have had some pretty great success. As a result of that, sometimes my expectations were a bit too high for the first week, and it took me a few days to realize it. By the way, I also learned there is a difference between ‘expectations’ and ‘standards,’ but more on that in a minute.

Lesson 1: Expect things to be a bit ragged at first.

The 2017 seniors from WCS with their AHSAA State Runner-Up trophy. An amazing group of players!

Each of the past two seasons, our high school girls soccer team has made it to the state championship game. After that first appearance, we graduated seven seniors. After the second appearance, we graduated eight more seniors. So we have lost a significant amount of talent in the past couple seasons. However, we also have a lot of young players that are talented and promising. As a result of that, my expectations for the first week of training were sky-high, and so I was actually a little disappointed with our first couple of practices. It was only after discussing this with my wife and also my assistant coaches that I realized my expectations were unrealistic.

I find this is true in many areas of life: we have certain expectations based on past experiences, and then when the reality fails to meet the expectations, we are disappointed. This often happens with long-planned vacations or with Christmas-time family gatherings. We view our memories through ‘nostalgia goggles’ and then wonder why our present experiences don’t quite measure up to what we had pictured in our heads. This is what I was doing with my soccer team as well. When I stepped back to look at my team more objectively, I was also able to remember that even with those previous teams, our first few practices were pretty ragged.

This is natural for any new endeavor as well: remember what is was like the first time you tried to drive a stick-shift? Or the first time you used the vacuum cleaner as a child and got the cord tangled around various furniture? Whenever we begin a new season in our lives, we should expect it to take a while to smooth things out.

Lesson 2: Correct the mistakes and encourage the successes.

As the week of practice went on, I found that I had two primary tasks: correcting the mistakes and encouraging the successes of my players. Even the older, more experienced players needed to be reminded of certain aspects of technique and positioning, just as we often need to be reminded of certain things we’ve previously mastered. As C.S. Lewis once wrote, “We need to be reminded much more often than we need to be taught.”

In addition to correcting the mistakes, I also wanted to make sure that I was pointing out what my players were doing well. There's a saying in the teaching profession: "It's important to catch students doing things right." This is true at home, in an office, or on a playing field: if the leaders will catch people doing things right and point it out, especially things that were previously being done incorrectly, this has a lasting impact on the whole group.

Lesson 3: You have to be looking for the successes in order to see them.

Most people have experienced a situation in which we struggled with a task, finally overcame the obstacle, and then were bummed out when we realized that no one even noticed we’d finally achieved our goal. That’s a particularly frustrating place to be. So as leaders, we have to make sure that we’re constantly on the lookout for things that our followers are doing well so that we can be sure to notice them.

Some of the seniors and others from the 2016 AHSAA State-Runner up team. ALSO an amazing group of people!

At home, if my daughters clean up their rooms or do the dishes without being asked, I try to be sure to thank them for that so as to encourage this behavior again in the future. On the other hand, if they do extra housework and it goes unappreciated or unnoticed, they are less likely to repeat that same action again. So we need to be sure to pay attention in order to make sure we see the successes, even if they’re only small ones. When we catch people doing things well and then show them that we appreciate it, it can go a long way. But in order to do this, we have to be looking for the successes and victories.

Lesson 4: Set your standards high and keep them there.

Years ago when I was teaching at a large public school in Fayetteville, North Carolina, I heard my principal say, “Having a great school is easy: set your standards high and then keep them there.” He made it sound so simple. And then he continued, “Oh, and hire a good lawyer.” His point was two-fold: first, if we set and keep high standards, it will help to raise the level of performance (provided we go about this in the right way); and second, keeping high standards will always be met with resistance by those who do not want to put in the work of maintaining those high standards.

Fortunately, most of us don’t face the prospect of a lawsuit in the way that public schools often do. The point about high standards is true in every area of life, though, and it is the leader’s job to set the standards and keep them there. As I mentioned at the beginning, there is a difference between expectations and standards: our expectations are often based on past experiences even when the circumstances have changed, while our standards are what we hope to achieve and maintain in the future, taking the new circumstances into account. So as leaders, let’s have realistic expectations while also setting and maintaining high standards for our groups, teams, and businesses.

Lesson 5: It's crucial to lead the leaders.

Not all leaders are created equal, especially when it comes to influence. Most people have experienced the truth of this as children on a playground or as employees in an office. Some people have a commanding presence simply upon entering a room, while others may more easily fade into the background, whether by choice or due to circumstances. So as leaders one of our tasks is to pay attention to see who the primary influencers in the group are. Once we have identified them, then we need to be sure that we are especially focusing on helping them be the type of influence that we want in our groups.

On the soccer field, this means that I need to choose my captains carefully. My leaders are not always my most skilled players or my most vocal players, just as the leaders in an office are not always the employees who are making the most money or the ones getting the most public recognition. The leaders are the ones that change the atmosphere by their presence, whether positively or negatively. If we are to have a lasting impact on our groups, we need to begin by leading the leaders that are already emerging and also keeping an eye out for the next group of leaders so as to be preparing the groundwork for the future.

Action step: this week, pay extra attention to make sure that you are catching your audience doing things well and encouraging them for it. Let me know what you see and how you pointed it out to them.