Ever find yourself itching for a fast-forward button on the path to your grandest goals? Join me, Todd Rhoades, and the insightful Eric Geiger, as we unravel the seductive illusions of shortcuts to success. As we set our sights on those Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals, we often become ensnared in a web of quick fixes and easy outs - but let's face it, the sweet taste of a shortcut often leads to a bitter end. In our conversation, we confront the devious triad of temptations that promise to speed up our journey, yet more often than not, steer us off course.
Together, we dig into the gritty truth that genuine credibility is a long game, with no express lanes or cheat codes, and why mission clarity can't be zapped into existence like a meal in a microwave. We also reveal the painstaking yet rewarding process of nurturing growth in others under your leadership. Eric Geiger shares his expertise on why these shortcuts are not just detours, but traps that can lead to the undoing of even the stoutest leadership. If you're ready to embrace the climb and secure the real triumphs in your ministry, this is one conversation you won't want to miss.
Ever find yourself itching for a fast-forward button on the path to your grandest goals? Join me, Todd Rhoades, and the insightful Eric Geiger, as we unravel the seductive illusions of shortcuts to success. As we set our sights on those Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals, we often become ensnared in a web of quick fixes and easy outs - but let's face it, the sweet taste of a shortcut often leads to a bitter end. In our conversation, we confront the devious triad of temptations that promise to speed up our journey, yet more often than not, steer us off course.
Together, we dig into the gritty truth that genuine credibility is a long game, with no express lanes or cheat codes, and why mission clarity can't be zapped into existence like a meal in a microwave. We also reveal the painstaking yet rewarding process of nurturing growth in others under your leadership. Eric Geiger shares his expertise on why these shortcuts are not just detours, but traps that can lead to the undoing of even the stoutest leadership. If you're ready to embrace the climb and secure the real triumphs in your ministry, this is one conversation you won't want to miss.
maybe you're like me I love planning, I love goal setting, but, like most, I'm probably much better at dreaming and planning than actually carrying out the plan and seeing the final result. We're going to talk about that today With the title of this podcast. That shortcut could actually be a trap. Thanks for listening to the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. My name is Todd Rhodes, one of the co-founders over here at chemistrystaffingcom.
Speaker 1:
Jim Collins, the author, made the phrase BHAG popular. I don't know if you're familiar with BHAG, but it's an acronym that means Big, hairy, audacious Goal. That's a BHAG. And back when Jim wrote the book Good to Great, many church leaders adopted this and adopted this BHAG Big, hairy, audacious Goal terminology. And many of us plan our year, our ministry, year around, our BHAGs. They're fun to dream about, they're fun to plan out, but BHAGs let's face it, bhags are hard work. They're big, hairy, audacious goals and they're like I said, they're fun to dream about there, but they're really hard to carry out and our tendency at least mine, is to look for shortcuts. How can I achieve this huge goal quicker and faster and with less efforts? And yes, even BHAGs bring out our latent laziness at times, at least they do in me. So the problem is, when it comes to these big, hairy, audacious goals, shortcuts hardly ever work. In fact, shortcuts can totally derail you from achieving what you really want that big, hairy, audacious goal, long-term goal. The shortcuts can actually derail you and thwart your progress.
Speaker 1:
Eric Geiger points out in a blog post that there are really three shortcuts that you're tempted to make as you tackle, kind of your big annual ministry goals, and I want to talk about each one of these briefly. The first is the shortcut of developing credibility. A world of platforms has exasperated the reality that people can quickly work to develop their brand. I hate the word. I'm going to go ahead and pause this here. Pause, pause, pause, pause, pause. Eric Geiger points out three shortcuts that you're going to be tempted to take when you look at your big long-term goals, but you just can't. These are shortcuts that you might think you could take but you really can't. And the first is developing credibility. And there's no shortcut to developing credibility. It just takes long work and we've seen a lot of people that really built a ministry brand that outpaced their internal character, and it's really tragic that leaders can plan their image while haphazardly planning their own development.
Speaker 1:
Credibility is a leader. It has to be the result of sustained integrity over long periods of time. There's no shortcut to developing credibility and it might sound stupid, but the way to develop credibility is to be credible. Short attempts to shortcut credibility will inevitably cause people to act in ways that are inconsistent with reality. We've seen many people that their platform has outpaced their character, which leads to many times moral failure and just leadership failure. Overall, there's no shortcut when it comes to developing credibility.
Speaker 1:
Secondly, there's no shortcut in clarifying mission. Leaders and organizations in ministry. We all long for a kind of a clearing, clear and compelling mission that defines them and gives us our significance. But clarifying and communicating mission you can't do a shortcut to that. It takes investment of time and energy. It takes time to listen. It takes time to learn the culture that you're in. It takes time to understand opportunities. It takes time to develop language alongside others and to articulate that direction.
Speaker 1:
And there's no way to take a shortcut here. I think Eric says you can't photocopy a mission. There's no way to take a shortcut here. I think Eric says you can't photocopy a mission, you can't microwave that. It rarely grabs people because it lacks the leader's conviction and it takes time. It just takes time. You can't take a shortcut when you're developing or declaring or defending your mission.
Speaker 1:
And then, finally, the last area is in the area of developing others. You can't take a shortcut in developing others. Leadership development it's long and it's difficult, and developing others is one of your. It's one of the things that you have to do as a leader, but it's not often. You don't often see the results of that work for years. It's a long haul. Developing others is a long haul. It is a lifetime endeavor for a leader, and leaders who are attracted to shortcuts will absolutely try to take shortcuts here in developing others. So we talked about three areas that you can't do a shortcut in. Developing credibility that's a long-term play. Clarifying your mission it takes time. And developing others it takes sometimes years.
Speaker 1:
So as you decide, as you get excited, as you dream about BHAGs and your big, hairy, audacious goals that you're going to demolish over the next one year or five years, remember the credibility and mission and development of those around you. They can't be faked, they can't be skipped over, they can't be hijacked, they can't be shortcutted. You need to build them into your plan now and that big, hairy, audacious goal that you want to accomplish in one year is going to probably take much longer and it's going to be much harder than what you think. That's encouraging, isn't it? It's going to be longer and harder. Todd said it's going to be longer and harder. That's not what you want to hear, but it's the truth. It's the truth. God has called us to be faithful. Those big, hairy, audacious goals are incredibly important, but they're long-term and they take hard work and if you try to short circuit or you try to shortcut it, you're going to get yourself in trouble. I can tell you that.
Speaker 1:
I'd love to hear your feedback on this. On shortcuts, what have you learned about tackling these BHAGs in ministry? Should there even be a BHAG? Should you even have a big, hairy, audacious goal? Should you just say, no, I'm going to serve God faithfully here. I don't need any big, hairy, audacious goal. That's all leadership bunk. I would love to hear what you think you can reach out to me anytime. I read each and every email that comes in. Podcast at chemistrystaffingcom. Podcast at chemistrystaffingcom. I would love to hear from you. Maybe send along, maybe where you listen to the podcast every day. Maybe send along a topic idea that you think it would be great for me to discuss here on the podcast. I would love to hear from you Podcast at chemistrystaffingcom. Okay, until tomorrow. Hope you have a great day.