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The Good Old Days and Other Works of Fiction

By Susan Beaumont & Associates / December 6, 2019 / 0 Comments

When were your glory days? Pose this question and a congregation’s leaders will often tell stories of high attendance, engaged participation, and buildings that couldn’t hold it all. Glory-era memories are almost always recounted as blissful, happy times of pure goodness. However, parts of the story rarely get told—including how the seeds of decline may […]

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5 Practices for Coaxing Order out of Chaos

By Susan Beaumont & Associates / October 29, 2019 / 0 Comments

Chaos is a natural by-product of innovation. Innovation happens best in conditions of upheaval, disturbance, and dissonance. However, people expect their leaders to keep things calm, predictable, and orderly. How do we coax order out of chaos without squelching innovation? Stages of Innovation Innovation occurs in predictable stages. It begins with a disturbance in the status quo, […]

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7 Ways to Inspire Confidence While Saying “I Don’t Know”

By Susan Beaumont & Associates / October 29, 2019 / 0 Comments

People look to leaders to fix organizational problems; a leader who fails to resolve a problem quickly may be labelled weak or ineffectual. However, it isn’t in anyone’s best interest for a leader to start fixing things when the way ahead isn’t clear. How does a leader say, “I don’t know what to do next,” […]

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Fixing a Toxic Team

By Susan Beaumont & Associates / November 1, 2018 / 0 Comments

When the culture of a team goes toxic, the team leader may ask, “Do I have to fire someone to fix this?” Sometimes the answer is yes: one well-negotiated dismissal of a volunteer or staff member sometimes turns a team around. More often, though, the problem is rooted in group behavior, so the dismissal of […]

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Disappointed in Your Followers? Try Cultivating Awe!

By Susan Beaumont & Associates / July 18, 2017 / 2 Comments

Every leader has experienced this frustration. You put your best leadership vision and energy foreword but you are met with an uninspired response. You hope for a reaction that is lively, expansive, generous and creative. Instead, your followers are unimaginative, scarcity-minded and inwardly-focused. What’s a leader to do? Turning the tide might be easier than […]

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Five Things to Consider Before Inviting Visitors into the Boardroom

By Susan Beaumont & Associates / May 17, 2017 / 4 Comments

Inclusion, transparency and trust are important values for many congregations. To promote these values, congregations often adopt open board meetings. Members who do not serve on the governing board are welcome to attend the board’s meetings. They may or may not be allowed to weigh in with their opinions. Are open board meetings a good […]

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Making Space for Middle Ground

By Susan Beaumont & Associates / March 16, 2017 / 4 Comments

We are a nation divided and those divisions are creeping into congregational life. It grows increasingly difficult to hold an ideological middle ground in politics, theology, or leadership. Pastors climb into pulpits fearful that a simple sermon topic will be interpreted as a political statement. Decision-making is heavy-laden with ideological spin, making it difficult to […]

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Taming the Bureaucracy Beast

By Susan Beaumont & Associates / October 13, 2015 / 0 Comments

The church needs innovation, experimentation and risk taking.  The church has bureaucracy; inactivity in the name of good order and process. Senseless bureaucracy keeps us endlessly mired in reporting, approval seeking and communication. We end up with repetitive meetings, multiple levels of approval, over-reliance on procedure, and postponed decision making until everyone is informed and […]

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Working Around Incompetence on the Team

By Susan Beaumont & Associates / May 11, 2015 / 0 Comments

We aspire to build staff teams of competent, motivated individuals who work in dogged pursuit of a clearly articulated vision. What most of us have are teams with some outstanding staff and some not so outstanding staff, working side by side towards a vision that seems clear, on some days. Most of you are grappling […]

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Breaking Our Dependence on Praise

By Susan Beaumont & Associates / October 28, 2014 / 0 Comments

“You like me.  You really like me!”  Let’s face it. We are all guilty of defining our self-worth by what others think. When people praise us we feel successful.  Are we? Courageous and adaptive leadership requires leaning into our own incompetence, and pointing out the incompetence of our congregations.  Leading beyond our own competence will […]

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