Five Ways To Use Core Values

One goal of “Ministers on Fire” TM is to help ministers treat their ministry the same as CEO’s of other business’s. Successful chief executives have many traits in common, one being that they know their core values and use them in all their business dealings. We look at five of those here, and suggest ways ministers can duplicate these strategies to not only grow successful churches, but to grow themselves as persons.
 

1. Self Evaluation
To run a complex organization requires self knowledge. When an executive is aware of his or her core values, every movement related to organizational leadership can be driven by those values. It is a simple task to evaluate daily how well we have honored these. A violation of any of our values for even a moment will stick out like a sore thumb and give us instant emotional feedback. It is difficult to feel successful and effective when we have let ourselves down.
 

2. Bringing the team together

Developing a winning team is vital to the CEO. Being aware of one’s own values allows us to bring people on to the team and evaluating them to see how they support the whole of the organization. It is not necessary that every team member have the same core values as the minister, but it helps in the team building selection process to know where people place value. Congruency between the individuals values and the task for which they are being considered will go a long way to insure efficiency in the organization.

3. Staff evaluation

One of the most difficult things a chief executive has to do is evaluate a staff member. As the leader of a church, it can become even more trying because so much of the staff is either part time, volunteer, or underpaid. If any person on the staff is to have a beneficial effect upon the whole, however, they must hold the values of the system in mind no matter what they are doing to contribute. Once a person has joined the staff, if they are aware of the overall values as revealed to them upon taking the position, it become a simple matter to see if they measure up. If, for instance, one of your values is punctuality, and that has been made clear at the outset, a person who is chronically tardy is easy to spot and making corrections becomes easier. In many ways, this causes a staff to become almost self-evaluating, which gives you as leader more time for important things.

4. Decision making

How often is a chief executive officer called upon to make a decision? Basically, isn’t that what they do? A CEO of a corporation would never sidestep making a decision about the day to day operation of the business by saying something like, “I’ll take it up with the Board.” It’s the Board’s job to hire the CEO. It is the CEO’s job to run the business. We recommend making all decisions using the three Q’s. Quick, quality and quantitative. Here are the three questions to ask yourself about any decision to be made:

• How can I make this decision quickly, or in a reasonable amount of time?

• How can I best assure that this decision will add to the quality of either my work or the overall performance of the system?  And finally,

• How will I be able to measure the success or failure of making this decision?

Notice that if personal and system values are well documented these three questions become rudimentary. Congruency with values will always determine the answer.

5. Time management

When it comes to time, we are all equally blessed. It is the way in which we use time that sets us apart. There are a multitude of systems for time management available, but it becomes simpler to set up any system if we begin by asking this question about every item on our to-do list, “Does this task fulfill one of my values?” If it does, add it to your day’s activities. If it doesn’t and it still needs doing, find someone better suited to do it. The greatest time waster for executives and ministers is doing things outside the range of his or her core values. Doing only your own job will cut hours off your work week!

Task at hand + core value = success!