Steer: Eight Practices to Drive Leadership

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3 Sentence Summary

Pastor Joel Wayne’s leadership manual is a short read that highlights eight essential practices for managing people and organizations with greater influence. He teaches how to communicate your purpose, build a winning culture, motivate your team, and hold people accountable for reaching their goals. It’s a practical workbook with application questions at the end of each chapter designed to encourage self-reflection and action.

5 Key Takeaways

1. Great leaders clearly communicate a compelling vision, mission, and destination.
2. Hire people who add horsepower. They will move you to your destination faster.
3. Mature leadership invites accountability and sets clear expectations.
4. It’s easier to sustain motivation when you have a definite purpose that is something bigger than yourself.
5. Do not run away from confrontation. Leaders must have the courage to pull splinters before they manifest into larger problems.

Steer Summary

1. Map Your Destination

• If you cannot clearly communicate the role, purpose, and destination of your organization, you are cheating your organization and employees
• Do you know your destination?
• Your desired destination should be determined by how you believe your organization can influence others (Mission Statement)
• People need to understand where they are going, not only where you don’t want them to go.
• You must determine if your current vehicle (structure of your organization) can allow you to accomplish what you’ve been called to do.
• There is a cost to doing nothing.
• Add people to your team who add horsepower. These are people who value the destination and purpose of the organization.
• One of the greatest threats to your team are those who are dead weight.
• A clear plan and destination matter. Without it, people are easily distracted.

2. Lead Hard

• You become a great leader when the hope of what you may gain for others is greater than the fear of what you may lose for yourself.
• After three years, an organization is a reflection of its leadership.
• People must first buy-in to the leader who is setting the course
• Leading well is empowering others with a clear purpose
• Mature leadership invites accountability.
• Ask others around you how they think things are going. Ask what they would change. Ask if the purpose and destination has been communicated.

3. Shifting Culture

• The culture you build reveals what you value most.
• Leaders have the opportunity to influence and inspire their organization and the culture as a whole. Their words and actions cause people to either bend positively or negatively.
• Begin meetings by allowing others to share positive experiences, or “wins” from the previous week.
• You celebrate what you value and value what you celebrate.

4. Keep Your Motivation

• It’s easier to sustain motivation when your purpose is something greater than yourself
• Bigger purpose yields greater motivation.
• A clear purpose is hugely motivating.
• Face your fears. What is your greatest fear in accomplishing your purpose?

5. Establishing Default Settings

• What are the habits of your organization?
• Observe what people do when things get stressful.
• Develop systems to help facilitate good decision making.

6. Building Expectations

• Everything you do says something about you.
• Leaders let too many things slide because we are tired or don’t have the courage to cope with correcting someone or something.
• A leader must communicate clear expectations in order for others to perform at their best.
• To grade without clear expectations leads to a lack of trust and respect.

7. Pulling Splinters

• Recognizing and dealing with splinters within your organization prevents irritation and frustration
• Many of us fear confrontation, but without confrontation, wounds will fester.

Splinters Often Ignored

• Someone with a poor attitude
• People who don’t know what is expected and lack clarity
• Another leader who tries to assume your responsibility
• Someone with a lack of purpose due to little direction/vision
• Someone who pulls with less strength than the rest of the team
• People who take credit for everything
• People who grumble and complain

How to Prevent Splinters

• Write out and clearly define expectations for positions and roles
• Plan time to address splinters (no one wants to be surprised)
• Don’t buy into negative talk, slander, and gossip.
• Conduct weekly one-on-ones
• Encourage feedback

8. Hitting the Reset Button

• You need grit and a sense of urgency to hit the reset button

Questions to Help Determine the Need for a Reset

• Does customer care take a back seat?
• Is an agenda being pushed that doesn’t move toward the vision of the organization?
• Are you frustrated with the drama among colleagues?
• Do you detest mediocrity in your organization?
• Have you lost the passion from when you began?
• Do you desire to see an organization do more than you have ever imagined, regardless of how far it has previously come?

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• The 21 Indispensable Qualities of A Leader: Becoming the Person Others Will Want to Follow
• The Obstacle Is The Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph
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