An Interview with Michael Hyatt

...Is divided into four sections:

Foundations
Relationships
Systems
Balance

In my leadership work, I group skills and strategies into the four areas above. First, Foundations give the leader the clarity to know how to lead the team because the final result in clear; second, build and maintain effective relationship to assist in getting to the vision; next, develop effective systems allowing each team member to excel and to work together efficiently; and finally, create balance in work, in life, and between work and life.

The format for this year consists of interviews with Christian leaders from many different types of leadership styles and perspectives - some pastors, some musicians, some lay leaders, some Christian business professionals, and more. This month’s edition of Monday Morning Email's “Leadership Tools” is an interview with Michael Hyatt. Michael is currently the Chairman of Thomas Nelson Publishers, the largest Christian publisher in the world and the seventh largest trade book publisher in the United States. He began his career at Word Publishing while a senior at Baylor University. In the 30 years since then, he has worked in nearly every facet of book publishing, including serving as the CEO of Thomas Nelson for six years. He is also the former Chairman of the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association. His blog, MichaelHyatt.com, is ranked by Google in the top one-half percent of all blogs with almost 250,000 visitors a month. He also has more than 90,000 followers on Twitter.  

INTRODUCTION

Hugh Ballou:Welcome, Michael. Will you share some information about yourself with our readers?

Michael Hyatt: I've been married to my wife for almost 33 years. Her name is Gail, and together we have five daughters. We have three sons-in-law, and five, soon to be seven grandchildren. My oldest daughter is adopting two from Uganda. They're in time; they're just waiting to get the final, final approval from the Ugandan government to go pick those up. But, I've worked in the publishing industry my entire career. I began at Word publishing, I was a student at Baylor University and when I finished there, I went on to work for Word a total of six years. I came to Thomas Nelson, left, started my own company. Then I came back to Thomas Nelson, where I was the CEO now for the last 5 years. And just concluded my tenure there, although I remain the chairman of the company.

Ballou: So you're in a transition right now.

Hyatt: I am right in the middle of it.

Ballou: Perfect. Those are exciting periods also for those of us who served the church. There are lots of transitions and those are important times.

FOUNDATIONS

Ballou: I teach and have four categories that I like to interview people with on leadership. And the first one is about the foundations. As a leader, it's important to know what you want to accomplish and to have a clear vision that's clearly articulated. And so you can speak in the context of transition or just in general terms. But share with the leaders some ideas that are important to you about having a clearly defined vision as a leader in the church.

Hyatt: Yeah. I think vision is really important. I think particularly as Christian leaders, we have to always hold our vision with an open hand, because sometimes what we think we're about and what we want to accomplish sometimes gets interrupted by God's purposes for us. But it's all good, and I think you know, all things being equal, I'd rather have a vision of where I'm going and moving in, in a direction and let God stir me and nudge me a little bit to the right, or to the left as I'm in the process of moving forward. But yeah, I think it's important to have a clear vision. I also think it's important to get the team aligned around that vision so every one can be involved in it and own it for themselves. I think to have a vision without it being shared or without it taking more than just you, probably your vision's not big enough. And if you've got a big vision, it's going to take a lot of people to make it happen. And, you need other people to do that.

Ballou: Part of a strong foundation of a leader is the personal skill set. It takes a skill set to be able to articulate the vision and share it clearly with others, but what other skills as a church leader do you think people ought to focus on to make stronger.

Hyatt: Well I think for sure, Hugh, that leaders need to be able to listen well. I'm always suspicious of a leader who has great clarity but doesn't really listen and all he wants to do is bulldoze everybody else. And get his vision accomplished. And I think it's really critically important to be able to listen to other people, to be able to pick up on the nuances of what they may be sharing because they may be seeing things that you don't see. Or that you're not aware of. Or you don't have the experience to really apprehend.

So I think, as a fundamental skill as a leader, you've got to be able to listen, be able to hear people. And even if ultimately you decide to go another direction, or slightly different direction, it's really important that people feel that they've been heard. That they've had the chance to contribute to the vision and, and it makes it much easier for them to own it. So, I think listening is a huge one. I know there are lots of Christians, and as you know, some believe in the gift of tongues, some don't believe in it. But regardless, we should all believe in the gift of the ears. That's what really counts.

Ballou: Especially musicians. We spend a lifetime cultivating our listening skills and those can be transferred to other areas of leadership as well.

 

RELATIONSHIPS

Ballou: That's a fundamental piece of relationship for me. My second category is about relationships - building and maintaining effective relationships. I think, in my sense, leadership is a lot about relationship. Ministry is about relationship. So, share some thoughts in this category of how we work together in relationship in leadership and ministry.

Hyatt: Well, I, like you, think relationships are the key to getting things done. I think it's great to have a vision. It's great to be able to have all these organizational skills. It's important to have the right structure. All that stuff is important, but none of it's as important as relationship.

And I think that that is the most fundamental reality in the universe and as Christians I think, to understand the doctrine of the trinity is to understand that God was in a relationship with himself before the foundation of the world. And, that whole relational component is critical in leadership. I think it involves a lot of things.

In my own life, as a leader I think there was a time when I don't think I would have admitted that relationships were important. I just didn't invest in them like I should, I thought that if I had relationships with the people I worked with, and those were healthy. That that was sufficient. But I think it's really important to have peer relationships outside of work that can provide the kind of support that will really sustain you and rejuvenate you and get you through in the long haul. And I've got just several close personal friendships now that are so important to me, especially in this time of transition. Those are the people that are really there for me, that listen to me, that encourage me, that help me find myself sometimes when I'm not clear. And they bring clarity into the relationship. So, I think friendships are critically important. Relationships within the organization are important as well.

Ballou: They all want your time. As I read what you write and see your tweets and those things, my sense is that you’re a person that sets really clear boundaries for yourself. Leaders in church have everybody wanting their time. How do you control everybody wanting our time? And how do you set some boundaries for yourself?

Hyatt: Well that's a great question. I think that some church leaders, in my observation, because everybody wants their time, have not allowed themselves any close personal friends. In fact, I recently read a statistic that 70% of pastors, and I don't know how it relates to worship leaders but 70% of pastors don't have a close personal friend or couldn't identify a close personal friend. Which is terrible because we weren't intended to get through life without that. So I think it's important to have the boundaries on the one hand, but not let the fact that everybody wants a piece of us become an excuse for not giving ourselves to anyone.

And so I do set those boundaries. I know who my five or six closest friends are - those are the people that get priority. And what it really means is that I have to say no a lot to people that are acquaintances that want a piece of me. I just don't have time. If I say yes to everybody, then I really end up saying yes to no one. So, what I have to do is to be able to say no to a lot of those people that are on the periphery or to point them to some other way that that maybe we can connect like my blog or twitter or whatever.

But, I just I can't really give my attention to everybody so it has to be a few and I think Jesus modeled this beautifully. You know he did have a ministry to the masses but, then he had another ministry to the 70, he had another ministry to the 12. But, he was really deeply concerned about those 12 and particularly the 3 which he had an intimacy that superseded everything else.

SYSTEMS

Ballou: Perfect. Have you ever been in a boring, unproductive meeting? Have you ever led one?

Hyatt: Yes, I have. Yes, I'm afraid I have.

Ballou: That’s one of my areas of expertise. Yes, sometimes I have in the past led bad meetings.

My next area is systems. We tend to get bogged down in systems. Now as a conductor we know that a poorly led rehearsal, poorly planned and poorly executed rehearsal, means a bad performance, but I find leaders in the church who have bad meetings but expect good results. So there are other systems like that that we as leaders have some control over. So, in the broad area of systems, not just meetings, but the systems that we have in our jobs leading people, what thoughts have you got to share that would inspire us to create better systems?

Hyatt: Well I always think, if I'm trying to create anything, whether it's a work system or it's how I conduct meetings whether they are large or small, I'm always thinking of the idea, in the back of my mind, of a template. If I'm going to have to reuse this, how can I engineer it so that I maximize and optimize the time or the system for everyone involved? So, with meetings for example, I've written about this on my blog at MichaelHyatt.com. But, I've said things like okay, look, establish hard edges - Have a defined beginning time, don't reward people that are late and finish when you said that you were going to finish.
The worst thing about a meeting is a meeting that drags on and on, that has no hard edge at the end of it. Make sure that you create an agenda and don't go to a meeting with a written agenda. That, to me, even if it's simple, or you're not even sure, give yourself a track to run over, to run through. Otherwise, how do you know when the meetings over? State the desired outcome. You know, what's the purpose of this?

And I've seen staff meetings or meetings that had gone on for years, where people forgot what the reason was, that they got together to begin with. It’s just kind of like this organizational undergrowth that, that continues that nobody stops and says, wait a second. Why are we continuing to do this? So, to get back to your original question I think, creating a template, regardless of what it is is important.

Right now, as you mentioned, I'm in a transition, I'm moving out of a big corporate office where I had a couple of assistants and I had people to do things, to where now I'm having to manage my own calendar. I'm having to do my own filing. It's actually fascinating to me. Because it's given me a chance to ask, okay, what's the best way I can do this now? And I just made the decision this afternoon - I was about to go out and buy a filing cabinet - And I said, no, I'm going totally paperless. Based on what I know about technology today, I can do that. And I don't have to have all this paper cluttering it up. Those are just some of the things that I'm doing now.

Ballou: I've made that commitment as well and it's liberating and I can find things. As long as I have backup. I'm safe, as long as I have backups.

BALANCE

Ballou: Number four out of four areas that I focus on in helping leaders reach their potential is, in music terms, I call it value the rests. The rests in music are present for a very distinct purpose. A composer put them there. In life we have a challenge sometimes following the rule of the Sabbath. We've been given that inspiration, that biblical mandate for keeping the Sabbath. But, there's lots of ways that balance is important in our lives. Not only creating a boundary or balance between work and personal life but, the multiple facets of our being, the physical, spiritual, emotional, intellectual part of our being. And then, how do we manage multiple priorities? And so, you're in a new chapter but you've been in organizations. You've probably worked with church staff people who are out of balance. So what would you say to readers about anything, any aspect of balance in our leadership life?

Hyatt: I think balance is critically important. I think it's really easy as a leader to get out of balance, and I've seen people who are very dedicated, who expend all of their energy in one area, to the detriment of other areas, and then ultimately those areas come back demanding attention with a vengeance.

I like your example or your metaphor of music using rests in music, they are there for a reason and it's the same reason that if you look at a printed page there are margins there. There's got to be white space in your life to give you room to breathe, and the Sabbath is a good example of that.

But, the best way that I know to do it is to create a life plan, and I advocate this on my website and people can download a free copy of my e-book on that topic, “Creating Your Own Life Plan”. But, it basically uses the metaphor of accounts, like accounting, where the major areas of your life are different accounts. And some accounts may be overdrawn, some of them may be running close to overdrawn, some of them may be very full and you have a surplus in them. But, it's important to identify, I think, what those accounts are and make sure that you proactively give attention to them, so they don't surface later and become a problem for you.

A great example of that, in fact, is that I told the new CEO at Thomas Nelson, “You know, whatever you do, Mark, make sure you give attention to your family.” Because I've seen too many CEOs not give attention to that and especially when their kids are small, as his are, and then later on because the kids haven't had attention they start to act out and then it becomes a huge problem for the executive or the leader because he can't get attention to the primary thing he was hired to do and fortunately for Mark he has a great marriage, he's got a great relationship with his kids but I think that's just an example of one area that's easy to let get out of balance in our drive to be successful and we’ve got to redefine success so it's not just in one aspect but it's in the totality of our life. But frankly, begin with ourselves and taking care of ourselves, if we're not healthy emotionally, spiritually, and physically, we're not going to be of any use to anybody else.

Ballou: That's key. That is so important. I'm going to link to your website for the life plan. I've downloaded that e-book and plan to work on it. I bet you're a person that's very disciplined because you write, you're prolific and you create some really good stuff. So, do you plan, do you set appointments with yourself to do the important things like your writing and the other things you talk about? Do you put that in your calendar?

Hyatt: Yeah, I really do. In fact, I'm right in the middle of this now because everything's changed. I work with a system of creating, and I've written about this on my blog, kind of the ideal week, like if I can completely and be in control of a 100 percent of my week, which I never am, but if I could be, what would it look like?

And so, for example, in this season of my life, I just had this discussion with my wife. I really want to dedicate the mornings to writing. I don't want to be interrupted during that time. I don't want to set meetings or phone conferences for that time because that's my most productive, creative time and I'll schedule the afternoons for those kinds of things.

But, I have a very set routine that I try to go through in the morning that begins with prayer and with the reading of scripture, with exercise, you know, it's pretty, ritualistic if you will, or regimented. And I let those things, not legalistically lorded over me, but serve me in the sense of giving me a track to run on so that I make sure I get what matters most done every day. In fact, I called this, in one blog post, I said it's like slaying your dragons before breakfast so they don't eat your lunch. So for me, it's about getting those most important things done early.

WRAP UP

Ballou: Outstanding. You've given us a lot of information. As we conclude the interview is there an overall leadership tip that you'd like to share with people?

Hyatt: Yes, I would say it’s this, Hugh, and that's another great question, but I would say overall, it's live your life with intention.

Don't just be whipsawed by the things that come at you reacting and so many of us spend too much time reacting to the demands, to the expectations of others without getting still and getting quiet and saying, “OK, how can I live my life more intentionally, more proactively, more on purpose?” And, I think, when we do that, we come to the end of our days hopefully, with a deep sense of satisfaction and we can say to God, “I gave it my very best. I've offered you my very best.” And we can hear from Him, “Well done now, my good and faithful servant.”

Ballou: Amen! Wonderful, wonderful thoughts. Thank you so much for sharing your time today, and uh, I will link to your blog at the bottom. And , hopefully people go and enjoy your writing. I certainly have. Thank you, Michael Hyatt for sharing your wisdom with us today.

Hyatt: Thank you, Hugh. Great to be with you.

RESOURCES

MichaelHyatt.com

Creating Your Personal Life Plan