Transcript: Every Leader's Responsibility: Establishing Clarity, Navigating Feedback, and Resisting Complacency //Ezra Benjamin, Jewish Voice

Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast

"Every Leader's Responsibility: Establishing Clarity, Navigating Feedback, and Resisting Complacency“

May 20, 2024

Ezra Benjamin

Intro: How do you lead your team so you can achieve a sustainable strategy where people have clarity and ownership of your organization's mission and goals? And how do you keep growing as a leader to continue to invest in a thriving workplace culture? Well, today on the Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast, we'll look at how a flourishing Christian ministry continues to invest in employee engagement and leadership development. Listen in for practical steps that you can implement in your situation.

Welcome: Welcome to the Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast, your home for open, honest, and insightful conversations to help develop your leadership, your team, and build a flourishing workplace culture.

Al Lopus: Hello, I'm Al Lopus, the co-founder of the Best Christian Workplaces and author of the book Road to Flourishing: Eight Keys to Boost Employee Engagement and Well-Being. And I'm passionate about helping Christian leaders like you create engaged, flourishing workplaces.

I’m delighted to welcome Ezra Benjamin to the podcast today. Ezra’s the vice president of Global Ministry Affairs at Jewish Voice Ministries.

And throughout our conversation, you'll hear Ezra Benjamin talk about the keys of sustainable strategy; clarity; and regular communication; the importance of open and honest communication in creating inspirational leadership; how Leadership 360s help leaders see their blind spots and how others experience their leadership; and the importance to communicate; the desire for a staff to be on board and committed at a heart level of a ministry to be effective.

I think you're going to love this interview with Ezra Benjamin. But before we dive in, are you a Christian leader looking to take your leadership to the next level? Well, introducing the Best Christian Workplaces’ Leadership 360 and coaching, the transformative solution that will help you become the leader you're called to be. Our 360 survey and stakeholder-based coaching provides unparalleled insight into your leadership effectiveness, empowering you to make impactful changes. Unlock the keys to leading with purpose, integrity, in a Christ-centered approach that inspires your team. Don't settle for status-quo leadership. Invest in yourself and your organization today with Best Christian Workplaces’ Leadership 360 and coaching. Transform your impact. Start now. Learn more by going to workplaces.org/coaching, and check it out today.

And hello to our new listeners. Thanks for joining us as we honor your investment of time by creating invaluable lessons like this.

Well, let me tell you a little bit more about Ezra Benjamin, our guest today. Ezra has been with Jewish Voice for 14 years. He has served in the Global Outreach department for just over seven years. He started with Jewish Voice as a volunteer in an outreach to Ethiopia, where he served as a spiritual guide. He was deeply impacted by the mission and vision of Jewish Voice to reach and bless Jewish people scattered throughout the nations, especially the scattered Jewish communities throughout Africa and Asia. He joined the staff of Jewish Voice in 2010 as a logistics manager, handling the tactical preparation for and the implementation of Jewish Voice outreaches and festivals. He senses a strong calling to be a help, a blessing, and a light to his people, especially those hurting and suffering in remote communities of the world.

So, here’s my conversation with Ezra Benjamin.

Ezra, it’s great to have you on the podcast. I’m really looking forward to our conversation today.

Ezra Benjamin: Me, too, Al. Great to be back with you.

Al: Yeah. So, before we dive in into how you cultivate a flourishing workplace culture, some of our listeners might want to know more about the work that your organization does. So tell us a little bit about Jewish Voice, and is there a story of transformation that you can share that illustrates how your mission, how it works in the world?

Ezra: Sure. Well, Jewish Voice Ministries International is going on 60 years old here in a couple years and exists to share the Good News, the Gospel of Yeshua in Hebrew, or we say Jesus in English, with Jewish communities and their neighbors around the world. And really, I would encourage our listeners to think of the Jewish community actually as an unreached people group. And what do I mean by that? You may read the scriptures and say, well, the Lord has plenty to say about Israel—that's very true—Old Testament and New Testament alike. What we found in recent history, though, Al, is that there's a common misperception in the Christian community worldwide, and it's this idea, don't offend the Jews with the Gospel; they have their own path, and God will work it out. And that's actually not scriptural at all. We do see verses like Romans 11:26, “All Israel shall be saved,” and we believe that the Lord will be faithful to do that, but that really comes through hearing, right? We know the scriptures are very clear. Faith comes through hearing, and there's no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved, except that of Jesus, Yeshua. And so we're passionate here at Jewish Voice about proclaiming Good News to the unreached Jewish community around the world.

And then, even within the larger Jewish community, which numbers between 16 and 25 million worldwide, depending on how you count, there is particularly unreached people groups that we could call non-mainstream Jewish communities or scattered Jewish communities. Some call them lost tribes.

And so that's really how I got involved with Jewish Voice 16 years ago now, in fact, as a volunteer. And then, what had me so excited about joining the staff of what, at that time, was a new and growing international missions department is serving scattered Jewish communities, meeting practical needs in the name of Jesus, and creating a platform to share the Good News. And that's what we continue to do. Anywhere there's a Jewish community who is open to hearing that Good News, we want to go and share it.

Al: All right, 16 to 25 million, that's a good-sized target. There's no question. Yeah.

So, as you mentioned, you work to proclaim the life-giving message of Jesus the Messiah to Jewish people around the world. I really love that.

And our focus on this podcast is how leaders can create flourishing workplaces and a mission focused, with engaged employees. And yet, given the complicated situation in Israel right now, and, as it has been, we can't avoid talking about how Jewish Voice ministers in Israel and how the current war is impacting your ministry. So, give us a little bit of what's happening. Where are things? What are you seeing as a result of what's happening there?

Ezra: Absolutely. Well, Jewish Voice, at the direction of our board, is honored to actually tithe 10% of all donations that come in to partner ministries around the world. And 85 of those partner ministries last year, and it'll be close to 90 this year in 2024, are based in Israel. So Jewish Voice right now doesn't have direct ministry operations in Israel. Why is that? Not because we don't want to be there and because we're not passionate about reaching Israelis, but because we have great partners on the ground who are already meeting so many of those needs with such excellence. And so we partner with them. And that has been true for decades here at Jewish Voice. And it was only underscored after October 7, when, all of a sudden, the international landscape changed and war broke out at the hands of Hamas, Islamic jihadist terrorists, against Israel. And so in the last six months now and counting, believe it or not, six and a half months since that war broke out, we've been honored to be in regular contact with partners on the ground, both congregations, paracongregational ministries, those providing food and clothing for Israel defense force soldiers, those caring for families living around the Gaza envelope who have been displaced or whose homes have been destroyed, or even who have suffered the loss of a family member or a loved one due to the war. And so there's plenty of needs in Israel, and that will continue to grow, I'm sorry to say, but there are fantastic ministries we're connected with, making a real impact on the ground.

And our listeners may not know that Jewish believers in Jesus, or some would say Messianic Jews, were kind of kept on the fringes of Israeli society prior to the war. But as much as nobody would have wanted the circumstances of October 11, one of the ways that we see the Lord bringing good through a very difficult situation is actually the position of Jewish believers and Arab Christians in Israel. There's a couple million Arab Israelis, hundreds of thousands of whom are Christians, but those communities really being elevated because where others were hopeless or directionless, we've seen the believing communities, Al, really take a step forward and say, “We're going to meet practical needs. We're going to do it with confidence. We're going to do it with excellence. We're going to do it with urgency.” So, it's been a great honor to partner, and we'll continue to partner with partner ministries on the ground in Israel.

Al: Yeah. Great. Yeah. Jewish believers and Arab Christians both working together. Yeah. Well, that's fantastic. Well, that's a great picture in itself in a difficult time. So, well, thanks for the update, Ezra. That's fantastic. And we'll all continue to pray for this region as we pray for peace in the world.

But as Jewish Voice continues to reach out to the Jewish community around the world, you do this from a position of an organizational culture that's flourishing. And we believe that enhances the effectiveness of your ministry. So Jewish Voice uses the Best Christian Workplaces’ Employee Engagement Survey since 2016. Now that's going on seven years. And you've moved from healthy, I'd say 50 percentile or so, up to 80 percentile or so in terms of the health of your culture, relative to similar Christian organizations. So, one of the areas that is particularly interesting to me as I look at your results is sustainable strategy. I mean, those questions are right at the top of your top 10, and your staff are very clear about your strategy for ministry and the goals that you're working toward. So, what are some of the practical ways that our listeners can grab onto, the way you build the level of consensus around goals and strategy and keep people focused on the main thing at Jewish Voice? What are some of the things that you’d encourage our listeners to do?

Ezra: Sure. It’s a great question, Al. And about seven years ago now, it could be even longer, we worked with the Advantage group with Pat Lencioni and his team to begin to look at our culture, which at that time, as you said, was healthy in many ways but had a lot of room to grow. And we talked about that the last time we were together and just identifying some of the cultural gaps. And one of the things that the Advantage group has said to us and that we've read and we've really put into practice is this idea that leaders, the leadership in the organization—and I would say that's primarily your top-level executive leaders, but that should be true of department heads as well. Some might say, “Well, I'm middle management;” you're still a leader. You know, that could be its own podcast. Everybody who has a title manager, director, whatever is leading—but they said it's the responsibility of the leadership to do two things: establish clarity, and then overcommunicate that clarity. And I think the more that we've intentionally, regularly communicated the missional clarity that we have to our staff, the more we've realized we have to do it more.

So, we, for example, have an all-staff worship and teaching time every other week. It used to be every week, but that was not sustainable for us just because of the logistical burden involved in putting that program together. So, for an hour and a half, two hours every other week, we bring all of our staff together—and we have staff in 14 or 15 states and growing, as well as a team here at our headquarters in Phoenix—so that's both in person and live-stream remote, and we will teach 80% of the time on the biblical foundations of our missional mandate as a ministry. And you would think, you know, how many times can you preach on Romans 9, 10, 11? Or how many times can you talk about Jesus fulfilling what Moses and the prophets said the Messiah would be and do? But what we find, Al, is that every time we teach that, at least one staff person will pull us aside in the hallway afterwards and say, “I've never heard that,” or, “You know, I've never thought of it that way. You need to teach this more often.”

So, it was a battle for a few years, for the first few years, of our executive-leadership-team structure to labor over the clarity until it was established. But it's a discipline and an ongoing way to overcommunicate that clarity. So, I think that would be top of the list in terms of how we've instilled a confidence in our missional strategy among our staff.

Al: So, communicating a vision, mission, you know, even values, and being very clear about the next steps, the strategy. And so that's a, yeah, kind of a teaching and worship time every other week, 90 to 120 minutes. That is quite a commitment. No question about it.

Ezra: And it depends on who's teaching that day. When it's me, it tends toward 120 minutes because word economy was never my strong suit, Al, as our listeners may be realizing. But anyway, it's, you know, if people don't fall asleep, it's good content. And we record it all, as well. Especially the ones on missional clarity, we’ll actually save those and make them available for staff to listen to again.

Al: So, clarity and overcommunicate, and as Patrick Lencioni says, we're often chief reminding officers repeating. And that's the importance. And you know, you do so well not only in sustainable strategy but healthy communication, yeah, because you’re communicating that message in a new way over and over. Yeah.

So, we've got a sustainable strategy. And people are hearing over and over, and again, they're inspired by what they hear. But that leads us to another strong area, you know, which is inspirational leadership. And your staff feels like leaders are open and honest. And that's one of your strengths. Also, I've noticed that there's been quite a legacy of your senior-leadership team as you've worked together. So how do you invest in leadership development for your team? What are some of the specific ways that are, again, our listeners can grab hold of?

Ezra: Sure. I think what we learned—and I'll say we learned it the hard way, because the open-and-honest question was not always our strong suit, Al, as you have the data in front of you, I don't, but I'm sure you'll see that. So that's been an area of increasing growth for us.

And really, I would say, especially in the last seven or eight months, because we had a one-two punch at Jewish Voice. The first punch was October 7, when we woke up to the news that there had been an attack on Israel that was going to be ongoing. And the second punch was the sudden incapacitating medical emergency of our president and CEO, Jonathan Bernis, on October 29, which left him in a coma. And we had a sense in the Lord, “He's going to make it through this. He has work to complete.” But if you would have asked the doctors, they were not sure for a couple weeks. And that testimony is now out, and our listeners can find that if you Google it. But Jonathan, in the end, had, really, a miraculous liver transplant that was successful, and he's well on the path of recovery now.

But we faced this choice, Al, in October of last year, and it was this: are we going to hold information as a tightly controlled commodity and tell people only what they need to know—people meaning our staff—before our external constituency? Or are we going to take some risks and share everything people can know, knowing that it's going to be destabilizing, perhaps; that it may be confusing; that it may raise other questions; that it may elevate the concern or even anxiety level of our staff; but at the end of the day, to assure them we're all in this together, and the Lord, who knows the end from the beginning, is bigger than the surprises that war in the Middle East or the leader’s medical situation can throw at us?

So I think that really was the key determining factor for us, as we've done some focus groups post survey and asked staff, why do you feel that things are open and honest? What is inspiring? People said, “You know what? When things got really tough, you told us like it is, and you invited us in to shoulder the burden with you, and you communicated openly and honestly and regularly, and you didn't whitewash things that shouldn't be whitewashed. You acknowledged what was difficult, and you said what you were trying to do about it.”

So, really, in light of ongoing difficulties that started for us in October, we've seen a dramatic spike in morale. We've seen a dramatic spike in collective faith, kind of faith in the office, faith in the room among our staff, that the Lord can do miraculous things, and confidence that He's going to see Jewish Voice through the hard seasons. But that took our leaders really taking some risks and being pretty vulnerable.

So, that's my encouragement for leaders who are listening is, you know, you don't say everything, right? That’s the reality is there's things that we as leaders have to deal with that just are not appropriate to cascade, because without the context, staff throughout the ranks of the organization can't shoulder those burdens. It's ours to shoulder as leaders. But the question is, what can we share? because people have discernment. One of our former leaders here at Jewish Voice said, “You know what, Ezra? People have discernment. Eventually they figure out what's what. So the question is, do you want to lead that conversation as a leader, or do you want to stay on the sidelines and let the conversation happen around you?”

Al: And have everybody else spend a lot of time thinking about it, wondering, “Okay, what is it?” Yeah. You know, this is what came out of your staff’s observation. People felt that you invited them in to the conversation. Yeah. I think, yeah, when you can say, and for our listeners, when you've got difficult news particularly, maybe you can perceive that as destabilizing. But by being open, being honest, you know, transparent in the proper ways, yeah, you're inviting people in, and they become engaged. Yeah.

Ezra: And the other thing we said to our staff in sharing that news, you know, talking about the war in Israel and the very difficult news we were hearing from our partners on the ground and then talking openly about Jonathan's health crisis, we said to our staff, “It's okay to not be okay.” And I know our listeners may be listening saying, “Okay, that's very cliche,” but in fact it isn't. What we were saying was we recognize this is difficult times, and it's hard news to hear. And the more we can acknowledge that, the more we can be in this together. And we saw staff praying for one another, praying with one another. And so through the adversity came a real unity that we're enjoying right now. And we're not taking it for granted. We're actually fighting to maintain that unity. And again, it goes back to regular, open, honest, clear communication.

Al: Yeah. What you're describing is what we define is engagement, where there's an emotional connection to really help the organization succeed, meet its goals.

Well, you talk a lot about self-awareness. You're listening. You're doing listening tours with your staff about where things are. And another way you do that is using Leadership 360 reviews that we've worked on together. And, you know, the Leadership 360 survey combines real-time feedback and developmental goals to create a path towards leadership growth. And again, you’ve got a very cohesive leadership team, as you've described. You know, and the other beauty is it's structured around biblical concepts. And I've heard Christian leaders say that they've used secular tools, and they're tired of trying to baptize the secular tools.

Ezra: Sure, sure. But 360 is a great option.

Al: Yeah. So why did you choose to invest in the Leadership 360 reviews for year leaders? How does taking time to reflect on one's leadership style, strengths, opportunities for improvement, how does that build into your leaders?

Ezra: Yeah. Two things come to mind, Al. Firstly, that as leaders, we need to acknowledge that we have blind spots. There was a book I read probably 12 years ago now called Leadership and Self-Deception that really kind of rocked my world. And the idea is the higher up we go in leadership, the less people around us may be telling us the truth. And it's important that we have truth tellers around us, because we may be unaware of the things we do that for us are functional but for the people around us either are dysfunctional or infuriating or demoralizing or what. So the tool really allows you, if the people taking it are being honest, which is the giant asterisk here. I'll say if you're going to do a Leadership 360, be honest. Be honest in your feedback, because in the 360, for example, I've done it every few years here as I've been in a leadership transition with Jonathan, we have to evaluate ourselves. Be honest about what you're good at and what you're not. Don't whitewash that. And then if you're filling out a 360 evaluation for a leader, be honest. If you're not, it's not going to be helpful. But really identifying the blind spots is one key benefit.

And the other, the second that came to mind, Al, is that different people in the organization perceive us, or let me say, experience us as leaders differently. So one of the things that we needed to deal with is as we, you know—again, we worked with Lencioni group—we established this executive-leadership team, these kind of six to seven top leaders in the ministry; and we figured out how to have healthy conflict; we figured out how to challenge one another in leadership behaviors; we were all openly sharing with each other; there was constructive crosstalk; and we said, “Things are great.” And then on the BCWI survey, we saw from our directors, kind of that one level down in the organization, “Well, we don't think you're communicating very proactively at all, and we're not always sure your motives are the best towards us in the organization. And we don't know, you know, kind of feel cloak and daggered us.” And that was also some feedback that a couple of us got on our 360s. We're communicating great with the people we want to communicate with. But what about the people who are expecting us to communicate with them, who aren't on our radar?

So, my point is the 360 allows you to kind of cut the onion a number of different ways and see what's really there. And that was helpful because it could be that one portion of the organization thinks we're a fantastic leader, and another slice of the organization either never sees us or talks to us, or worse, has had bad experiences with us, feels that we're aloof, feels that we're, you know, not to be trusted.

Al: I trust you’re enjoying our podcast today. We’ll be right back after an important word for leaders.

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Al: And now, welcome back with Ezra Benjamin.

That's so effective, Ezra, yeah. And I appreciate your summary here. I mean, as a leader, it's so helpful to know how others are experiencing your leadership. That's just, you know, and to not be defensive about it, because you want to be effective, you want to be helpful, you want to be a good leader, and how are you impacting others through your leadership? How are they experiencing it? And yeah, that way, you can identify those blind spots and actually work on it. And it's like, it's a revelation, “Oh! I can do that.” I mean, yeah.

Ezra: That’s what it is. And some of the things are easy, Al. I'm thinking of two 360s ago for me. So this would have been about five years ago. Some of the most negative feedback that I received in the free-response section of the 360 was from kind of our general-staff pool, this sampling—you know, not everybody takes the 360. You do a sampling of each level of the organization, as you know very well—but some of the people farther down in our organizational chart actually wrote, “Ezra seems aloof,” and I thought, “Aloof. I'm very friendly with the people I work with every day.” And then one person actually wrote, “Ezra walks by me far too fast when he passes my office and never stops to say hello.” And, you know, immediately we start going, “Well, who said that?” even though it's an anonymous survey.

Al: Yeah.

Ezra: But the point wasn't who said it?—and actually, to this day, I have no idea who did say it—but the point was, Al, I'm going, “Look at all I'm doing for the organization. Isn't it great?” But this one person, their only experience with me was that I walked too fast through the halls on my way to the next meeting. And so actually, I said to myself, “I can be annoyed at that feedback, or I can ask myself, how difficult would it be to just slow down?” And so actually now when I come into our headquarters, I'll make a point, “Hi. Good morning. How you doing?” And it's five seconds, but it makes all the difference. And, you know, on my next 360, I didn't get that feedback. So, simple things in many cases.

Al: Yeah, that’s right. I have a friend, who was a great leader, and he got similar feedback. He'd put a series of quarters in his pockets, and his job—the way he designed this—he’d walk around the office, and when he made one of those connections with somebody, he'd move one quarter from his right pocket to his left pocket. And by the end of the day, he needed to have all those quarters in his left pocket, just as a way of doing that. Yeah, that’s great. Yeah.

As a result of many of these things we've talked about, your staff is highly motivated. We know that from their survey results, and they're willing to put in extra effort to make sure that Jewish Voice achieves your goals. So, how do you sustain this high level of engagement and motivation with your staff? Are there some particular practices that come to mind, particularly that your mid-level managers and supervisors can engage in, to equip and encourage their teams?

Ezra: Sure. The first thing, again, you know, it seems like thematic to this podcast, Al, is the idea of overcommunication. And I shared when we last spoke together that in 2019, I suppose it was, spring of 2019, we went through what we called an alignment process, where we actually said goodbye to a third of our staff. And it wasn't that people didn't like the functions of their job or that they hated Jewish Voice; it was that, for them, it was just a good faith-based job here in the valley in Phoenix, Arizona, and they were sort of coasting. But when we said, “Hey, we'll actually incentivize you going and doing something else if you're not really on board with the mission,” 30% of the people left, and the vast majority of those left voluntarily. Nobody had to ask them to leave. They said, “You know what? I will go do something else.”

And so since then, we've really communicated, and we encourage our directors or our department heads, mid-level managers, you can say, to do this as well. We're setting a standard that says Jewish Voice has a specific missional mandate and all of the organizations we represent. For those listening, we have specific things that God has called and equipped us as organizations to do.

And my encouragement to all those listening would be, don't be shy about asking people to get on board at a heart level, at a gut level, with what it is that your organization exists to do. And sometimes we can shy away from that and say, “Well, you know, we are in the faith-based nonprofit sector, so we're not paying as much as, you know, they could make in the secular world. And, you know, we know we don't maybe have the best benefits.” So we sort of shy away from asking too much.

But here's what we learned at Jewish Voice: people who are courageous enough to set the salary aside and set sometimes the career aspiration aside and get involved with our nonprofits, our faith-based organizations, want to be asked for more, not, you know, blood from the turnip here, that we're taking people for all they're worth. We have to provide pastoral care for our staff, too, because everybody in our ministries is in ministry, even if they're in an administrative-support role. But actually, people got on board, or at least they should have, because they see something in your organization that they say, “I'm willing to whatever degree to give myself to that.” And so communicating that on a regular basis, “Hey, here's what we exist to do, here's how your role feeds into that, and here's what we need from you, because it's going to take more than just autopilot to get the job done,” is actually motivating to our staff, not exasperating. People want to know that they're part of something that counts. If they didn't care about that, they'd be someplace else. And it could be that when you kind of set that bar, there will be a couple people who say, “You know what? This is more than I bargained for.” That’s okay. That’s actually okay. That would be a necessary transition.

Al: That's fascinating, Ezra, you know, yeah, to say, “Here's what we need,” and to don't be shy. Don't be shy to encourage people to be on board at a heart level. Yeah. That's not just a head level. We talk about, we've discovered recent research that says that everybody that's not fully engaged actually is a drag financially to an organization at the rate of $16,000 a year per person. So let's have people fully engaged, and don't be shy to ask them to really be fully engaged at a heart level, which again, we would describe as an emotional level for the organization.

Well, this has been a challenging year, you've highlighted already, in many ways for Jewish Voice. Your president and CEO, Jonathan Bernis, had a significant health challenge. We're thrilled to hear that he's on his way back. And it pushed you and your leadership team to really step up in this season. So as you reflect on this, how has this current season shaped your own capacity as a leader? How did God prepare you even for this season as it came about, as you reflect on it?

Ezra: Jonathan has been very faithful to a consistent leadership-succession timeline that's been a number of years in the making. And so he actually—you know, I'm naming a lot of books and organizations here in this podcast, but that's okay—he read the book called The One Thing—I forget who wrote it—but The One Thing a number of years ago. And he said, “My one thing is to establish a cohesive leadership team to run the day-to-day operations and ministry of Jewish Voice so that I don't have to.” Not that he was going to disappear, but he recognized that eventually CEOs have to operate at a higher altitude than to be in the operational weeds, or you've created a ceiling for your organization's growth. So Jonathan did that seven years ago. And he also has been working very closely with me in a leadership-succession plan such that when he was suddenly unconscious with this nonalcoholic liver disease and in need of a transplant, it was shocking, of course. It was unwanted and unexpected. At the same time, Jonathan's thorough preparation and the Lord's providence had prepared me and our executive-leadership team to step in and step up and to carry out Jonathan's values within our own decision-making frameworks and keep things moving forward—more than moving forward, actually, as the survey indicated—thriving and flourishing, with the Lord opening tremendous ministry doors even in Jonathan's temporary medical absence. So if your idea is we'll wait till somebody can't lead anymore or we’ll wait till some emergency happens and then we'll figure out who's in charge, God will have mercy, but you're going to be in a bad way. So my encouragement to those listening is if the leader were suddenly not able to lead, how would you lead as a leadership team? It's probably worth a couple hours of honest discussion some day in one of your leadership meetings. And if the answer is, we have no idea, that may be your one thing.

Al: I love it. The one thing. Yeah. And I resonate with this tremendously, to have a cohesive leadership team. And as I was thinking, I'll just say for our listeners, we serve organizations that have very strong leaders, and sometimes they don't focus a lot on having a cohesive leadership team. And, you know, of course, you're following Lencioni’s lead here as well, which is really excellent for all organizations to follow, and that is to have a cohesive leadership team. Yeah. That's great.

So, in a flourishing culture, it's certainly tempting, perhaps, to rest on your success. “Oh gosh, we're doing great. We don't need to take the temperature of our culture”. It's kind of like people that feel like they're in great shape, they don't have to get an annual physical. But as you look ahead, what are some areas that you and your senior team will continue to focus on to experience a flourishing culture? What are some of the current strategies that keep your employees highly engaged and fulfilling the mission of Jewish Voice for the future?

Ezra: Great question. And we're, as I said, in the midst of a leadership transition or a succession plan that's working itself out in the next couple of years. So one of the things that we're focused on is as the leader who really is the founder of so much of what Jewish Voice is and has become, who served here so faithfully for over a quarter century, transitions out, what's our sustainable leadership structure? I'm aware that I can't do everything. At least, I can't do it well. So I'm focused at our director level and our executive level of surrounding myself with a team of people who, in each area that our ministry’s involved in, missional and operational, can do each thing better than I can and who are empowered to make decisions and proactively communicate. So that's something we're focused on is what does life look like after Jonathan Bernis? Not that he's leaving tomorrow, but as I said, we've been very intentional about a long runway here. So when this current CEO is no longer the CEO, how do we operate? That’s one thing we’re focused on.

The other is—and I heard this on a podcast—I think it was Malcolm Gladwell—about a year ago, and it really stuck with me. He said nonprofits exist because our clients, who are our donors, hired us to solve a problem that they think needs solving in the world. And he said, over time, though, the problem is you can stop focusing on solving the problem you exist to solve and start focusing primarily on sustaining your own existence. So that's something, again, at 57 years in, with a track record of ministerial faithfulness, a track record of the Lord providing in every season faithfully—we never take that for granted, but He's faithfully provided for the ministerial needs of Jewish Voice financially—the temptation can become to just slide into kind of an institutional environment, right? We are what we are, and we do what we do, and we're resisting that actively, even though what we do is bearing fruit. We're asking the Lord, “What's the next thing? Do You need to disrupt us? Is there some missional methodology we don't see coming yet that if we say yes to You, You'll open a bunch of ministry doors that haven't been opened before to communities that haven't been reached?” So I think that's a major focus for us is resisting the temptation to sit back and enjoy your success, because we don't want to become a legacy institution. We want to remain a cutting-edge, missional, and paracongregational ministry.

Al: So, build a team, focus on the mission, not on just sitting back to enjoy the success, and to really be actively asking, “Okay, God, what's the next thing?” Yeah. This has just been great. Yeah.

Ezra, we've learned so much from our conversation today. I love all we've talked about, kind of the difficult situation. And we'll continue to pray for our world and peace and Israel. And the way that you've focused as an organization on sustainable strategy and how you've described the importance of clarity and to overcommunicate and how that has really improve the health of your organization's culture, the engagement of your staff, and even created, as a result, inspirational leadership. Your focus on being open and honest, even through a couple of really shattering, earth-shattering events, you know, for your organization, is a great example for all of us. To have employees at the end say, “We felt invited in, and we feel even more united because of these difficult situations.” And how we talked about 360 Leadership, Leadership 360s to help leaders kind of discover blind spots and to know how other people experience their leadership. That's very insightful. Thanks so much.

So yeah, Ezra, this has just been a great conversation. Is there anything you'd like to add that we've talked about now that we've gotten to this point? Leave us with a thought.

Ezra: Sure. I'm thinking of seven years ago when we first set out to establish the executive-leadership team and to really focus on changing our culture. What I’d leave our listeners with is this: that a commitment to cultural change and improvement is not a short-game, instant-microwave-success endeavor. It likely will take years, and you'll enjoy incremental improvements, not always exponential, but over time, the dividends that that investment pays will grow and grow and grow. So for those who maybe haven't taken BCWI’s survey and are thinking about it; or those who took it and who are horrified with the results and said, “How could we have so many areas with, you know, so much unhealth,” decide today, commit today to improve those things and two, three, five years down the road, almost inevitably, just based on that consistent commitment, you'll see the results, and it'll improve, it’ll make everything that you exist to do as an organization easier to do, because you won't have the cultural roadblocks in the way.

Al: Amen. Thanks, Ezra.

Well, thanks so much for your contribution today. And most of all, I appreciate your commitment to sharing the life-changing message of Jesus Messiah with the Jewish people around the world. So thanks for taking your time out today and speaking into the lives of so many listeners. It’s fantastic.

Ezra: My pleasure.

Al: Thanks so much for listening to my conversation with Ezra Benjamin. And I hope that you enjoyed it as much as I did.

You can find ways to connect with him and links to everything we’ve talked about in the show notes and transcript on workplaces.org/podcast.

And if you have any suggestions for me about our podcast or any questions on flourishing workplace cultures, please email me at al@workplaces.org.

And leaders, if you want to improve your leadership and expand your organization's impact for good and see greater faithfulness in our broader culture, help us to achieve our goal to see more flourishing Christian-led workplaces. To help, share this podcast with another leader or launch a project in your organization to discover and improve the health of your workplace culture. And if you're interested in learning more, go to workplaces.org to request a sample report.

Outro: The Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast is sponsored by Best Christian Workplaces. If you need support building a flourishing workplace culture, please visit workplaces.org for more information.

We'll see you again next week for more valuable content to help you develop strong leaders and build a flourishing workplace culture.

Al: And next week, you'll want to join me for my conversation with Robert Bortins of Classical Conversations as we talk about how his organization is impacting homeschooling across the world.