Nancy Ortberg - Unleashing the Power of Rubber Bands: Lessons in Non-Linear Leadership

Stretch without breakingevery good leader lives in that tension, and makes sure followers do too. Nancy Ortbergs combination of practical experience and communication skills makes her a leader worth listening to. This book is not just movingit will help you move your team to a higher level.

Bill Hybels senior pastor, Willow Creek Community Church; chairman of the board, Willow Creek Association

If you are looking for a book that will guide you in polishing your leadership instincts and skills, you have found it. Nancy Ortberg has given us an exciting and authentic look at right leadership.

Max DePree chairman emeritus of Herman Miller, Inc.; author of Leadership Jazz

Good leaders get results. Great leaders get results and develop people. Nancy Ortberg is a great leader. She gets it! She knows what it takes to get something done while doing something great in people. Unleashing the Power of Rubber Bands is an authentic, practical, and compelling look at what it takes to do that with excellence. If you lead people, ignore this book at your own risk... or theirs.

Jim Mellado president, Willow Creek Association

This book is a must-read for anyone who wants to become a better leader!

Ken Blanchard coauthor of The One Minute Manager

Rarely do I read a book on leadership that leaves me feeling more free and lighthearted than when I started reading. With her non-linear approach (dont go looking for ten steps to anything), delightful humor, and refreshing honesty, Nancy Ortberg writes the same way she lives her life. This is a leadership book for people wired like me, who wonder if we can ever fit a profile of the typical leader. Thank you, Nancy, for this highly practical, engaging, and totally fun book.

Nancy Beach teaching pastor, Willow Creek Community Church; author of Gifted to Lead: The Art of Leading as a Woman in the Church

A refreshing and delightful departure from the top-down, out-of-touch drivel of management books. Rubber bands are in and T-shirts are outread the book to find out why.

Guy Kawasaki cofounder of alltop.com, author of The Art of the Start

Nancy gives each of us hope that maybe God can use our lives and our leadership, no matter how messy it might look, to make a real difference in this world.

Greg Hawkins executive pastor, Willow Creek Community Church; author of REVEAL: Where Are You?

TYNDALE HOUSE PUBLISHERS, INC.

Carol Stream, Illinois

unleashing the

POWER

of rubber bands

lessons in non-linear leadership

NANCY

ORTBERG

Visit Tyndales exciting Web site at www.tyndale.com

TYNDALE and Tyndales quill logo are registered trademarks of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.

Unleashing the Power of Rubber Bands: Lessons in Non-Linear Leadership

Copyright 2008 by Nancy Ortberg. All rights reserved.

Cover photo copyright by Image Source/Getty Images. All rights reserved.

Author photo copyright 2007 by Jeanne dePolo. All rights reserved.

Designed by Jennifer Ghionzoli

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION . NIV . Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Ortberg, Nancy.

Unleashing the power of rubber bands : lessons in non-linear leadership / Nancy Ortberg.

p. cm.

ISBN-13: 978-1-4143-2164-6 (hc)

ISBN-10: 1-4143-2164-3 (hc)

1. LeadershipReligious aspectsChristianity. I. Title.

BV4597.53.L43O78 2008

253dc22 2008009924

Printed in the United States of America

14 13 12 11 10 09 08 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To Jamie Barr,

who told me, when I was nineteen

years old, that I was a leader...

and then made sure I lived up to all that meant

Contents

The world is full of advice, much of it wonderful, about how to be a better person or parent or leader. Sifting through it all and deciding what warrants your time and energy is a nontrivial challenge. Nancy Ortberg makes that challenge easier here because of her unique insights, effortless storytelling ability, and genuine humility and self-deprecation.

Nancy is a person who walks through life with both eyes wide open, taking in everything available to her and searching for meaning and connection. In Unleashing the Power of Rubber Bands, she provides her readers with thoughtful advice and disarmingly selfless perspective on everything from personal development and empathy to innovation and teamwork. And she does it with a deep sense of the fundamental place God has in it all.

Like Nancy herself, this book will be hard for readers to peg, as it rolls around and touches upon so many topics that are seemingly diverse but inextricably linked. And because it is as inspiring as it is practical, you may find it difficult to decide whether to take it to work, keep it on your nightstand, or tuck it away into a suitcase. Whatever you do, keep it handy for those times when you find yourself with a few spare minutes that just might transform your life.

Patrick Lencioni

Author of The Five Dysfunctions of a Team

President, The Table Group

Very early in my career I learned that my understanding of people would rival my job competencies in determining my leadership success. There have been a number of places where I have been fortunate enough to have been given roles in which to learn that.

For ten years I worked as a registered nurse, in such varied fields as medical-surgical, the emergency department, and home health. I was, for approximately nine years, on staff at Willow Creek Community Church, in roles of teaching pastor and leader of a strengths-based ministry as well as the post-modern expression of the church, called Axis.

Finally, the last few years I have been a consulting partner of Patrick Lencioni with my own leadership consulting firm, Teamworx2, and partners David, Kent, Rick, and Linda.

The common thread in these varied fields has been leadership... and this book is a consolidation of what I have learned, through success and failure, as well as what I deeply believe to be true of great leadership.

One of my kids always used to read the last chapter in a book first (and probably still does). Thats what I would recommend you do with this book: Read Understatement of the Year, and that should help you decide if what is in the other chapters is what you are looking for.

I love great leadership. I love it when Im able to observe it, love it when Im the recipient of it, love it when Im able to do it. Great leadership takes my breath away, and I have seen it in some of the most surprising places.

It is often spotlighted in large corporations, but I have seen it in a rural McDonalds, a library, a veterinary office, and a small church. Ive seen it in a waitress, a salesclerk, and a bus driver. Ive seen it in an accounting group, a public high school, and a nursing home. Ive even seen it at the DMV, but only once.

Great leadership is occurring in the hands of quiet and unnoticed people who are creating environments where people can bring the best of what they do to what they do best. But you will never see these inspiring leaders on the cover of a magazine or in the six oclock news.

We greatly underestimate where great leadership is to be found and what we can learn from it. If we only expect to find it in the hands of those select few in positions of obvious power, we are poorer for having overlooked the beauty and strength thats to be found in unexpected places.

Most leaders want to lead in strong and admirable ways, even if what they lead is never the biggest or the best. And most leaders who do it well find ways to develop strong leadership at every level in the organization. They know how to unleash the power that is already in the organization and how to fan the flame of that power in productive and transformational ways.