Creating a cycle of excellence …

Some of the most excellent organizations and churches are those where the followership actually “pushes” the leadership with an expectation of excellence!

Let’s look at how that can happen. It’s a simplistic cycle:

• You have to start with excellent leaders.
• Those excellent leaders provide excellent leadership and examples to the followership..
• Those excellent leaders invest in, equip, enable, and support their followership to not only achieve their own levels of excellence, but to have an individual hunger for excellence.
• The followership experiences growth and succeeds at achieving personal levels of excellence, and from that develops their own desire to pursue excellence.
• From there, the followership then looks expectantly to their leaders to continue to provide excellent leadership.
• Now the leadership is motivated to continue to bring their best because their followership is looking to them, and expecting, excellent leadership.

Let’s look at a couple of examples.

Apple is a great example from the business world. Steve Jobs has raised the bar in pursuing the level of quality products his company provides its customers. That push for excellence has developed and fed a demand and expectation for excellence from Apple’s leadership. Now, Apple fans “push” Apple leaders with an ongoing expectation of excellence.

In the church, I watched as a great pastor took a medium-sized church and grew it into a mega-church while at the same time taking a Christian college and growing it into a Christian university.

This pastor was a gifted preacher; his preaching was at a level of excellence that took people deep into scripture. It was excellent preaching that “fed the sheep” and that also developed a hunger for excellent teaching of the Word.

This pastor surrounded himself with a family of leaders who equipped and served the followership, helping them to grow in spiritual maturity. As the followership grew, they developed their own hunger for growing in Christlikeness, and developed an expectation of excellence from their leaders.

Now the followership was “pushing” its leadership with an expectation of ongoing excellence in ministry.

Some lessons we can apply from this:

• Don’t cut corners in the selection of your leaders. Recently I was talking with an elder of a church that is in transition with it’s leadership team. The elder insisted the church can’t afford to hire the quality of senior minister it will take to lead them beyond the challenges they have been facing. I stressed the church could not afford not to do what it takes to get the right leader. Anything less will keep them mired in mediocrity, at best.

• It takes more than an example from leaders, it takes a total investment. Leaders have to pour themselves into their followers, helping them to grow, succeed and mature in order to develop a followership that desires and pursues its own excellence.

• Followers have their own work to do. Leaders can’t grow for them. Followers have to study, learn, stretch, apply, and mature. They can be helped by examples, teaching, training, and leadership, but they have to do their own work. Leaders have to challenge their followers to do the work only they can do, and to pursue excellence.

The final outcome is a cycle of excellence that eventually creates a culture of excellence, something you’ll find at the core of great organizations and churches.

Scotty