S7E15: Businesses that Impact People for the Glory of God

Does your organization have strong and deep leadership talent? How are you investing in the people who will carry out the mission that God has given you?  Mike Sharrow, President, and CEO of The C12 Group, talks about investing in leaders who are committed to following Jesus in their businesses. Mike has had a fruitful career in a variety of settings, including leadership in health care, consulting, and nonprofits before focusing on growing a local C12 practice in Texas, and then taking on the leadership of The C12 Group. The principles of leadership development and Christian values apply whether you are leading in a Christian ministry or a marketplace business. In both contexts, leaders are called to steward the people we lead to fulfill the vision God has given us.   

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In this episode:

• C12 is trying to help to create a flourishing model for leaders by helping them integrate who they are, what they do, and how they do it (03:39)
• C12 helps people build great businesses (03:47)
• What do you look for when you are deciding whether a leader is ready for the investment to grow to the next level of leadership? (05:00)
• I learned from a social worker: 'we will work as hard as a resident wants to work for their transformation but never harder.' (05:55)
• Is the leader hungry? Do they have the humility to learn and want to do something uncomfortable? (06:29)
• As you think about the different leaders you have invested in recently, as C12 Chairs, is there someone who stands out – as exceptional at developing people? What are some qualities that make that person so special and give them a big impact on how they influence other leaders? (08:11)
• "His effectiveness has nothing to do with this self-worth." (09:36)
• Sometimes when we are investing in leaders, we face a tension between having to be patient to see results in personal development and deciding that we need to steward our investment and discern that someone is actually not as capable as we thought. How do you decide when to release a leader to move on to something different? (11:11)
• You have invested in BCWI 360 Leadership Reviews for yourself and for leaders on your team. Are there some specific ways that you have seen these 360 reviews help you and others continue to grow in your leadership abilities? (15:29)
• You don't know what you don't know and that's what is holding you back (15:55)
• Accountability is an important part of growth as a leader. People don’t often change without accountability. At BCWI we are starting to offer Stakeholder-based Coaching to our ministry partners, where a leader will work with a coach and then interact with their own panel to get regular feedback. What has been your experience with accountability and feedback as part of your work to grow and develop leaders?  (20:17)
• The actual secret sauce is that we have accountability mechanisms. (20:56)
• What we've found is that the higher the leadership role, the lower the accountability (20:59)
• Too often Christians don't call out the accountability gap early enough (22:37)
• Mike, you’ve talked about a point in your life where you realized that you were operating within a sacred/secular divide. How did you move past that to an integrated way of following Jesus? (24:32)
• I was letting my vocation determine my identity. Instead of my identity transforming my vocation (24:57)
• How to live an integrated life (25:44)
• Business as a ministry and how it works (27: 07)
• "Every business that's led by a believer is a ministry platform. It's a platform for demonstrating the rule and reign of Jesus Christ in and through your business." (27:40)
• "The gospel should motivate how and why of everything you do in every dimension of business." (30:10)
• "Business as a ministry is believing that every business is meant to honor God and actually impact people for the glory of God." (30:39)
• As you look back, can you describe the person who had the biggest impact on your own growth as a leader? How did they shape you, what was unique and over-and-above about their influence? (31:57)

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