Book Review: Axiom

I’ve always wondered what it would be like to sit down at Starbucks with Bill Hybels, senior pastor of Willow Creek Church, and ask him some leadership questions.  I don’t know if that will ever happen…but I believe his book Axiom is definitely the next best thing.  I had the privilege of visiting Willow Creek for the Prevailing Student Ministries conference back in 1999.  God used that conference to solidify for me the calling He had placed on my life to invest in students.  Axiom is full of leadership nuggets that are useful for leaders in all different areas.  If you have some leadership development money available in your budget…but not enough to travel to a conference, pick up a copy of this book for everyone on your team and dig in together.

Below I have pasted the notes I highlighted while reading Axiom…

• Sometimes whole visions live or die on the basis of the words the leader chooses for articulating that vision.
• Axioms bolster a culture and steady it against the winds of change. Choose the right words and you’ll set up everyone you lead for a level of effectiveness you never thought could be achieved.
• The nature of human beings is such that we tend not to drift into better behaviors. We usually have to be asked by someone to consider taking it up a level.
• Have a bold plan for explosive growth! Expect God to answer your fervent prayers and to do his part in bringing people your way. Just be sure to tend to the needs that all that growth will bring.
• At the core of leadership sits the power of vision, in my estimation the most potent offensive weapon in the leader’s arsenal. It has been defined dozens of ways, but for me, the crispest articulation of vision is that it’s a “picture of the future that produces passion in people.”
• These leaders wake up every day ready to do battle on behalf of their God-given visions for one simple reason: their commendation is coming. “Well done,” Christ promises to say to them. “Well done. You did it as an owner, all the way to the end.” Take the owner path, my friend. Your followers will notice and will be inspired to do great things for God’s glory.
• Train and embolden your staff members to grow their own leadership and then to shoot high when someone needs to be added to the team. Encourage them to go after the brightest, most accomplished, most effective leaders they can find. In so doing, you will continually upgrade your organization’s leadership capabilities.
• Leaders traffic in idea creation. The best leaders I know are ferociously disciplined about seeking them out and incredibly committed to stewarding them well.
• If you and I really believe that the local church is the hope of the world, then I believe we should do everything in our power to make sure that, at least from a financial perspective, the ministry can thrive well into the future.
• When you can tell it’s time for a vision refill, use every communication means available to you to repaint the picture of the future that fills everybody with passion.
• Anytime you see God-honoring values being lived out genuinely and consistently, it’s fair to assume that a leader decided to identify a handful of values and put a Bunsen burner underneath them. Every time she or he taught about the value or publicly praised someone for living that value out, it was like raising the temperature of that burner. Perseverance. Compassion. Servanthood. Generosity. Whatever the value, if it’s alive and well in a local church today, it’s not by accident. It’s only there because of intentional, committed, dedicated effort.
• What you value in your church must be raised up, taught about, and celebrated on a regular basis. And to force yourself to honor key values annually, you must institutionalize them somehow.
• Great leaders know that when they assemble teams around them, they can’t merely assign tasks for people to check off a list. Instead, they must launch an all-out DNA-infusion campaign to make sure everyone is on the same “values” page.
• In Galatians 6:2, the apostle Paul says that we fulfill the law of Christ when we agree to “carry one another’s burdens.” The people you lead have to know they’re part of a burden-carrying team. They have to know there’s an avenue for them to convey whatever personal or professional calamity they face. They have to know they can trust their colleagues to hear them out. Simply put, your followers have to know it’s legal to admit that while they may be sitting across the conference-room table wearing a smile and a trendy outfit, nothing is fine or fitting quite right on the inside.
• When followers wonder how joyful they should be about their work, all they should have to do is observe their leader’s joy level. “How joyful is he?” they ask themselves. “How joyful is she? Because that’s how joyful I will be!” When they wonder how determined they should be in their jobs, all they should have to do is observe their leader’s level of determination. “That’s how determined we’ll be!”
• Stay prayed up, rested up, and committed to entering the tunnel of chaos whenever the Spirit prompts. It’s one of the truest tests of character and love.
• The Ephesians 4 “truth in love” passage starts off with Paul telling Christ-followers to “live a life worthy of the calling you have received.” He runs through what makes up this type of life, things like humility, gentleness, patience, and peace. Leader, insist on leading in a manner that contributes to unity, even in the heat of disagreement.
• A little tool I started using to control my passion when confronted with costly mistakes was to begin the conversation with the words, “Help me understand.”
• Real-time coaching is not my original idea. While Jesus walked planet Earth, his leadership style was undeniably characterized by the propensity to stick his team members in challenging, real-life situations and then affirm them for what they did right and coach them when they needed a little redirection.
• I knew that if we didn’t establish a system whereby meaningful, candid evaluations were given, under-performance would be tolerated and our ministry would never live up to its redemptive potential.
• The healthiest organizations I see are not conflict-free. They are just ridiculously committed to keeping short accounts.
• Next time you’re in the midst of a kingdom fight, pray and fight hard, but at the end of the battle, make sure you honor the unique contribution of each individual who made the victory happen. They have to know that while you prioritize progress, you prioritize people even higher.
• “What would we do to advance the kingdom of God if there was nothing to stop us from doing it?”
• Lead with a bias toward action. Surround yourself with others who have a bias toward action. You will never regret it.
• The sustainability concept is catching on in kingdom circles, and its arrival is long overdue. As leaders of the most important endeavor on planet Earth, we have to get better about implementing what we can sustain. The people we partner with deserve it.
• When a leader creates a risk-tolerant environment where contributors are consistently encouraged to go out on a ledge and try something new, that leader tends to attract like-minded risk-takers to his or her camp.
• Ministry leaders are in the people business. And because people are perpetual works in progress, there is no end to the amount of work we could do to serve them better.
• Having a daily finish line means work stays at work when I head home.
• Finish lines allow us those moments of emotional completion. They help us hear God say, “Enough is enough.” They remind us that we are more than leadership machines. If you’ve never created your own finish lines—and established the requisite rituals to accompany them—do it now. Daily, weekly, monthly, annually; you’ll never regret it.
• Debriefings are not about judgment and condemnation and ripping something to shreds; they are about taking responsibility for the good, the bad, and the ugly. They are about learning from each and every leadership play in hopes of improving play over the long haul.
• Leaders must invite people to slow down, do the hard work of honest evaluation, and marshal their best thoughts and ideas for improvement if their organizations are ever going to get better on a continual basis.
• Effective ministry leadership has a lot to do with keeping spirits buoyed and people uplifted so that they feel appreciated for going above and beyond what they would give in a typical job. I’m a firm believer that we’re never going to end up with the most God-honoring results possible unless we’re all still having fun along the way.
• All progress hinges on diligent leaders, God’s preferred method for transforming the world.
• When you read, you invite new information into your subconscious mind. You may spend ten full hours going cover to cover and at the end feel like you’re none the wiser. But then a day or a week later, you face a leadership dilemma that you are able to solve only because you read that book.
• I have little patience with leaders who get themselves into leadership binds and then confess that they haven’t read a leadership book in years. If you’re a serious-minded leader, you will read. You will read all you can. You will read when you feel like it, and you will read when you don’t. You will do whatever you have to do to increase your leadership input, because you know as well as I do that it will make you better.
• The more varied the environments in which you exercise your leadership gift, the stronger that gift will become. Lead something besides your main thing. You will become a far more effective leader.
• Promptness is about character, and leaders are not beyond the rules that govern things like courtesy and character.
• Admitting your mistakes says something profound about your basic integrity as a leader. “I took a risk here and thought it would turn out a certain way, but it didn’t. It’s my fault. You were probably more objective about this situation, yet I didn’t take your advice. I didn’t heed your counsel, and I’m very sorry.” These are the words of a trustworthy leader.
• So a piece of hard-won advice: Buck the system. Observe your Sabbath. Take your time off. Max out your vacation days. Drag your kids on ministry trips with you. And never look back. When it comes to your family, the only one fighting for it is you.