Someone once told me that no one reads an email that they have to scroll down to read…she was talking about my emails. It’s true, if you can’t communicate something with certain clarity and the precise words then you aren’t really communicating…you’re jabbering.
I’ll admit I only minored in English (but it was mostly reading, not writing that I excelled at doing), so my grammar is nothing to write home about (pun intended BAM![pun is a literary term BAM!{That’s me showing off BAM(Okay enough!)}]) But anyway, my point is we can easily get sidetracked feeling like we need to communicate everything to parents, teens, ministers and members. When really there are only four things they probably care about:
- Vision – If you don’t communicate vision, no one will know where you are taking them. Vision should be clear and memorable. You should incorporate your vision into your teachings, your trainings, your letters, your website, you get the picture.
- Truth – What I’m referring to is authenticity. Many times we try to convey an image to parents that we have it together, to students it’s that we know all the answer, to our ministers is that we know everything. But we don’t need to have it all together, know all the answers and be this perfect leader, we need to be authentic. People trust, love and follow authenticity. If you communicate an image that’s false, you’ll be found out to be a fake.
- Expectations – Vision is the destiny, expectations are what move us towards the vision. If you tell others what you expect of them, then you not only set goals for them but you open up communication. If you communicate clear expectations it allows people to give you feedback of what’s real and what’s not. Expectations allow you to set goals, work as a team and be unified. If you just assume and never communicate, you expect nothing.
- Love – We want leaders who are fearless and fighters; however, we also want leaders who know how to show us love and compassion. When we can show students that we care about them then they’ll respond in positive ways. When we can tell parents that we are there for them, they’ll trust us. And when we can tell our ministers that their lives are important to us then they’ll invest in our vision.
Yeah people want to know when an event starts, how to plug their child into a certain program and who they can call when they have a question, but if you don’t share with them vision, truth, expectations and love then they aren’t going to do what you really want them to do…invest. We want parents, teens, and ministers to become active members of Christ’s church, the free pizza at the lock-in isn’t going to get it done.
I might have missed something, if you could create this list, what would you say is imperative to communicate?