Leadership By Email and Other Dumb Ideas

Email appears to be here to stay. I remember when I was ahead of the curve and only a few of my friends had email. Now only a few of my friends don't. It's a pervasive form of communication, though not always the best. Most of us have had issues with communicating via email. I've experienced people who have misunderstood the intention of my email as they attempted to deduce the tone. They thought I was mad, angry, critical, etc. when I really wasn't at all. I've also experienced sending numerous emails to people thinking that I'm keeping them up-to-date on a project, event, etc. only to some how have ended up in their junk folder, sifted out by their spam filter. Me spam? Oh the nerve of some computers. A new issue that I am seeing repeatedly right now is leaders trying to lead an organization using email. Recently I've seen leaders of small organizations (less than 15 people) that send out emails regarding a change in significant company policies & procedures, or the termination/promotion/resigning of an employee, and even, ... egads ... a change in company vision. People, listen to me. You cannot lead with email. You cannot effectively cast vision with email. I work with a lot of pastors. Recently had a conversation with a pastor about one of his leaders making some crucial errors in judgment and miss some opportunities that one would have that obvious. We talked and I asked, "Tell me about how you trained him for this position? Did he have a job description? How did you cast the church's vision to him?" He responded, "Well I sent him a couple of emails that clearly outlined what they were supposed to do." I said, "Yeah, but when you sat down with them to go over the details of their leadership position -- tell me about that meeting." [minor stammering] "Well, uh, we've mostly communicated via email." When you have leaders in your church you cannot expect them to know what to do because you've sent them email. To effectively lead a leader you have to spend time with them: casting vision, talking about the potential and your hopes for the ministry, discussing the pitfalls, what-if's, problems, victories, solutions, gold mines of the church. Email can't do that. You cannot keep your finger on the pulse of a team or leader via email. Part of my work is leading teams of leaders, empowering the leaders to lead. One constant mantra I make is that, "You can't expect a postal mailing to get people to attend your meeting/event/prayer gathering/etc." Mailings alone just don't work it anymore with the possible exception of handwritten greeting cards. When I was pastoring the deluge of postal mail was staggering and I just didn't read it all. I threw out a lot of important stuff along the way that I probably wished I didn't. My new mantra is becoming, "You can't expect an email to get people to your meeting/etc." and "You can't do leadership with email." People now have multiple accounts (I have a dozen) and get staggering amounts of email. If you are leading a team, email and postal mail are great to get details out, but if you really, really want people to show up email and postal mail can only be enhancements to your phone call. Don't lead with email. Let email aid your leadership. Maybe next time we'll talk about leaders with blogs who only post every couple of months and think all their followers know what their talking about or up to. They've never heard of Google Analytics.