Jason Webb

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Jason Webb of Milwaukee Explains Why Peer-to-Peer Teaching Is Essential for Building New Leaders

Originally published on entrepreneursbreak.com

Traditionally, leaders take a hierarchal approach when building new leaders. They assume that the leader with more experience or a higher title should always teach those at a lower level. But peer-to-peer learning can be a precious tool when building leaders, too. Here, Jason Webb, Milwaukee-based pastor, public speaker, and leader, pinpoints why peer-to-peer mentoring is a great tool to build your leadership team.

Peer-to-peer teaching improves employee engagement

Research shows that 85% of employees are not engaged at work. Low engagement then translates into a high turnover rate, which causes companies to lose time, money, and overall company’s morale.

It also shows that five of the top reasons that good employees quit their jobs are:

Lack of trust and autonomy

Not being appreciated or recognized

Lack of respect

Little opportunity for growth and development, no advancement opportunities

Feeling underutilized

At the core of each of these causes of turnover is a feeling of being undervalued. Everyone wants to think that their ideas and experiences are of value to their employer. Therefore, organizational peer-to-peer teaching can provide a valuable opportunity for employees to share what they have learned.

Providing employees the way to share their ideas and what they have learned through their work experience significantly enhances their motivation to continue learning and improving. Denying or neglecting these peer-to-peer teaching opportunities will demotivate and discourage employees.

Servant Leadership

In 1970, Robert K Greenleaf published an essay entitled “The Servant as Leader.” From this initial essay, the leadership philosophy of servant leadership was born. It has gained popularity over the decades since this first essay and is now a thriving business leadership movement.

This philosophy is different from traditional business leadership, where the leader’s primary focus is the success of their company or organization only. A Servant Leader delegates authority, puts the employees’ needs first, and helps people improve and perform at their best.

Invariably, an organization will reach unprecedented success levels when the entire team is vested in that success. Micromanaged or ignored staff members are less likely to contribute to their full potential.

Peer-to-peer teaching is second nature to a Servant Leader. Just as they want their employees to learn from each other, this enlighted leader wants to learn from them as well. Employees will sense this and give their all to do their best.

How to implement peer-to-peer teaching

There are many ways to involve people at every level of the organization in teaching the group. Some helpful suggestions include:

Incorporate a 10-minute education component in staff, sales, or group meetings. Allow each employee to take a turn making that meeting’s educational presentation.

If you use a company or organizational newsletter, let even the junior staff take turns sharing some aspect of what they do in each edition.

Use all team members in your quality control review procedures. A junior staffer may not find every error, but the value of their input may be surprising.

Take time to ask for opinions from employees that don’t usually have an opportunity to contribute to decision making.

About Jason Webb

Jason Webb is a gifted fundraiser and entrepreneur with a track record of leading multimillion-dollar campaigns in Milwaukee and worldwide. He has helped start, lead, and mobilize volunteers for domestic and international nonprofit organizations. Mr. Webb is a movement leader and a devoted advocate for racial reconciliation. He recently started working as Team Manager and Groups Director for Great Lakes Church.

[jasonwebbmilwaukee]

Milwaukee-based Pastor Jason Webb Encourages Church Leaders to Redefine Success in Their Ministries

Originally published on influencive.com

Not too long ago, I was at a big conference filled with thousands of Lead Pastors of churches of all sizes. While the conference had great speakers and good content, I left feeling defeated and discouraged. If I am honest, I left feeling hopeless.

The reason why I felt this way stemmed from the conversation after conversation I’ve had with other pastors there. They would ask me, “How are things going at your church?”

While that may seem like a nice or, at worst, a benign question to ask, pastors in my circles know that this question is code for, “Is your church getting bigger or smaller?”

That’s what it was all about. Numerical growth. Filling up the seats. It seemed like it was all anybody cared about. It was so pervasive at this conference that I overheard two pastors comparing their numeric growth over the last year. And, to top it all off, one of the pastors pulled out his computer to show the other pastor how his attendance chart was up and to the right.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I think God cares about numeric growth. I think God wants the church to reach as many people as possible.

I just don’t think that he cares about it the way we care about it.

And, I don’t say this because I never experienced it. In fact, just the opposite was true. In nearly every year of ministry, my growth charts have been up and to the right. In some years the churches I led saw 75%-100% growth.

I felt good about it. Until I didn’t. Until I realized that there was this constant pressure to grow bigger and faster than any other church. Until I realized that I no longer saw people as complex beings in need of connection, but rather as numbers, as someone to make my growth chart look better.

Soon, over time, I realized that I missed the point. I realized that I had been using the wrong scorecard for the success of the ministry.

Across the country, right now, pastors are beginning to realize the same. In a COVID-ridden world where numbers can no longer be measured like they once were, pastors have felt at a loss to know if they are being effective or not. Even churches who have rushed ahead to re-open their facilities so they can get the numbers back have been, at best, disappointed, with most churches seeing anywhere from 15-30% of their regular attendance.

It’s depressing.

It’s deflating.

But it’s also a great opportunity.

The reason it is a great opportunity is that it is forcing churches to evaluate what really matters.  No longer can we go off of the old scorecard commonly referred to as the “3 B’s” (butts, buildings, and budgets). Instead, we must develop a new scorecard.

Or maybe, an old scorecard. Maybe it is God’s way of forcing the church to measure the things he actually cares about. Things like how we are caring for those in need. Things like racial injustice. Things like family relationships. Things like true, spiritual growth in people. Things like emotional and mental health. Things that don’t chart up and to the right on a bar graph that you can show to someone else, but things that actually change individuals, families, and communities.

So, pastors, what scorecard are you using?  I think it’s time to change it!

About Jason Webb

Jason Webb is a Milwaukee-based pastor and public speaker. Currently, he is a Team Manager and Groups Director for Great Lakes Church in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Before this, Mr. Webb has established and led multiple churches and non-profit organizations, both domestically and internationally. Jason Webb is an experienced entrepreneur, movement leader, and an advocate for racial reconciliation.

[jasonwebbmilwaukee]

9 Minutes

The following is an article by Jason Webb - a Milwaukee-based public speaker and an advocate of racial reconciliation, dedicated to the death of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, in Minneapolis, MN. Originally published on theodysseyonline.com For 9 minutes we knelt. In silence. In protest. I did not think it would feel like it did. After all, what are 9 minutes? It's just a quick moment. On a normal day, 9 minutes is nothing. So as I knelt, I didn't think I would feel much. 9 minutes is nothing, I convinced myself. I would kneel for a moment and then head home and back to my normal life. A friend stood up in front of the crowd and challenged us to think about what we were doing there during the 9 minutes. He encouraged us to feel uncomfortable. I thought it was a bit extreme. It's just 9 minutes after all!The 9 minutes began. I got my phone out to make sure I documented it. To be honest, I was more concerned with getting just the right photo that would look good on Instagram then I was about taking in the moment. After a few different tries, I felt successful in my efforts to document it. But then I looked around and nobody else was worried about getting the right photo. They knelt, silently, reverently.So I put the phone away.Soon the 9 minutes felt like 9 hours. I kept waiting to be told the time was up and we could all go home. But it kept dragging on and on and on.As the seconds seemed to be stalled, I started to think about the reason we were there. I thought about George Floyd. The images of the video ran through my head. 9 minutes with a knee on his neck. 9 minutes. So short but so long.For 9 minutes he was pinned to the ground under the force of someone who was charged to protect him. For 9 minutes his breath, the very thing that everyone deserves to have, was slowly taken from him. For 9 minutes he was treated as less than human. For 9 minutes he struggled, wondering why these men of the law were killing him.For 9 minutes his life flashed before his eyes. For 9 minutes all his dreams and hopes for the future vanished. For 9 minutes he, a grown man, cried out for his mom. For 9 minutes, he became a victim of hate.For 9 minutes he went from discomfort to pain. For 9 minutes he begged for mercy, "I can't breathe," he cried. For 9 minutes they took from him the one thing that makes us all human: breath.For 9 minutes he was tortured. For 9 minutes he was lynched.In my 9 minutes kneeling in that park, I thought of his 9 minutes. I looked over to my 16-year-old son who is black. I thought of him. I thought of him being pinned down just because he was black. I thought of him, who is one of the kindest souls I know, being vilified because of his skin color. I thought of him struggling for his life for 9 minutes.9 minutes. So short. So long.9 minutes. So painful. So powerful.9 minutes that should never have happened. 9 minutes that happen too often. 9 minutes that we all now see.Yet 9 minutes that have woken up a world to injustice, to hate.9 minutes that call us all to action.

[jasonwebbmilwaukee]

Give Decisions Away: Jason Webb – Milwaukee-Based Pastor and Public Speaker Gives a Leadership Advice You Should Follow

Originally published on floridaindependent.com

For many years I thought to be a good leader meant always making the decisions. It meant being in front of everyone leading them to a place they could not get themselves. It meant that I was always the smartest one in the room.

I was wrong. That was not leadership. That was ego. While it can help start an organization, it does not sustain an organization. Ultimately it puts a giant chasm between the leader and the people he or she is trying to lead.

I learned this the hard way. After taking over a mega-church that reached 6,000 people each weekend, and had 125 regular staff (not to mention another 125 summer staff), I thought I had to lead stronger and bolder than ever before. I was young, and they hired me to be a risk-taker, to lead them to new places that they would not have been able to go without me! In other words, I was a bit full of myself!!

So you can imagine that a couple of years into the role that while we had made some big changes and accomplished some goals, I did not feel like my staff and key leaders were with me fully. I felt like a lone ranger who only a few were really following.

But I couldn’t figure out why. When I would sit with staff members they would seem excited about the direction and where we were headed. Then our staff did an anonymous 360 evaluation of our staff culture. It was a good thing and a terrible thing. They all said the vision and direction were the clearest it had ever been in the history of the church, but many of them also said they didn’t feel a part of it. They reported feeling that just a chosen few were the ones really leading the way. And they wanted to be a part of it.

On the one hand, I was hurt by this news. It reflected poorly on my leadership. Yet, on the other hand, I was excited. They wanted in, but I didn’t know how to let them in. Then one day I was having coffee with a member of the church who consults with organizations. I told him about my dilemma. He said something that forever changed the way I lead.

“Jason, the best leaders give decisions away.”

He continued, “You are a great leader. You have great instincts and generally can come up with a healthy way forward for the organization. The problem is that you are a lone ranger. The best leaders don’t just make decisions and then hope people catch up to them. The best leaders instead hire well and then trust the people they hire with as many decisions as possible. Your problem right now is that you are not showing that you trust your staff. You need to trust them enough to give them decision making power. Let them help decide the vision. Let them make major decisions for the church. And give power to people even far down the organization chart. Let them own it. Give decisions away.”

This was scary. If I gave decisions away would the church go in a direction I didn’t want or was unhealthy? But I knew he was right. So that moment began a radical transformation in how I implemented our vision and goals. We started something new where we would have focus groups of staff and volunteers from every level of the organization, and we would give them a real issue to wrestle with and come up with a solution that would greatly impact the direction of the church. They were given some parameters, and I was able to check in on how they were doing and help troubleshoot any issues, but I began by telling them, “I trust you. Help us make a good strategy for this area and we will run with it.”

We did. Some of the most creative and successful ideas came out of these focus groups. Ideas that I would never have come up with on my own. The best part of it all is that people now owned the vision at every level of the organization.

This is what leadership is: having the courage to give decisions away.

[jasonwebbmilwaukee]

Step Out of Shame: Milwaukee-based Pastor and Public Speaker Jason Webb Suggests How to Overcome a Feeling of Shame

Originally published on thriveglobal.com

We all struggle with negative feelings. Shame, regrets, worries, guilt, you name it. And very often, instead of facing these feelings, we choose to hide from them. But does it really help us in the end? In this article, Jason Webb, a pastor and a public speaker from Milwaukee, discusses shame and guilt – very common negative feelings among all of us – and suggests how to productively approach them.

I am convinced that if I were to ask you to describe yourself you would have two lists.

The first list is the good list, the list you love about yourself. You would write things like “parent” or “athletic” or “kind” or “successful” or “intellectual”. These are the things you are proud of and should be proud of.

But there is another list, a list that we don’t want anybody to know about but it still exists. We think about it all the time. It’s the things we hate about ourselves. On this list, we would write words like “broken relationships”, “failed dreams”, “worries”, “fears”, “addictions”, “struggles”, “poor self-image”. You know your list. I know my list.

It’s the list that fills you with regret. The list that you hate.

It’s your shame list.

What is shame? Shame at its core tells us that we are the things we hate.

This is the difference between guilt and shame. Guilt says “I did this” but shame says “I am this.”

Guilt is a good thing. Guilt reminds us when we get off track, it’s the Holy Spirit inside of us saying, “This isn’t the way to go, you don’t have to keep going down this road” But shame says, “This is the road you will always be on. There’s no changing now.”

“Shame,” Dr. Brene Brown writes, “is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging – something we’ve experienced, done, or failed to do makes us unworthy of connection….”

In other words, “If you knew this about me, you couldn’t love me.”

Shame forces us into hiding

Since we don’t think we can be loved because of these things, we hide. We do everything we can to make sure that other people can’t see the things we hate about ourselves.

This has been going on since the Garden of Eden. When God created Adam and Eve, he created them without shame. “They were naked and unashamed,” Genesis 3 says, in other words, they were emotionally, spiritually, relationally, and physically naked with each other.

It was a complete vulnerability. They lived by the motto, “What you see is what you get.”

But then they mess up and look at what happens next. “But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?” He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.” (Gen. 3:9)

At that moment shame entered the world. Adam and Eve no longer thought they could be loved for who they fully were.

So they hid. They pretended that what had happened really didn’t happen.

We do the same. And we think we are fooling everybody, even God.

So how do we hide?

We overcompensate. If we think we are extra bad in one area, we try to be extra good in another.  It’s as if we are saying to God, “Don’t look at that, look at this instead. See I’m good over here…”

We compare ourselves to others. In other words, we say to God, “I know this isn’t that good, but at least I’m not as bad as her.  Comparatively speaking I’m better.”

This is what Adam did. God confronts Adam with his sin, and look at what he does, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?” The man said, “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.” (Gen. 3:11-12)

In other words, “God I know I’m bad, but she’s really bad. I’m better than her.”

My guess is that you have done the same thing. We always look for someone we are just a little bit better than so that we don’t feel as bad about our stuff.

We show just enough.  We convince ourselves that we are being completely authentic if we share at least a little of our struggles.

So we let people into our struggles just a little bit, but we only go partway, to reveal it all would be too hard.

Shame loses its power when it is exposed

But it doesn’t have to be this way. You don’t have to hide in your shame.

Dr. Dan Green is right when he says, “Shame loses its power when it’s exposed.”

In other words, we think we need to hide the shameful parts, but when we hide them they only grow. But when we expose them, and invulnerably say “God, I need your help, this is what I am dealing with…” shame starts to fade away and healing can begin.

This is why James says, “Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.” (James 5:16)

Healing only comes through honesty.

Shame can only lose its power when it’s exposed.

Where are you hiding thinking that nobody, including God, sees you? He wants to heal you, but he’s not going to force you. He is inviting you out.

So will you step out of hiding?

About Jason Webb

Jason Webb is a Milwaukee-based pastor, public speaker, movement leader, strategic thinker, and a results-driven executive with a proven track record in fundraising. He has helped start multiple churches and non-profit organizations, ran their multimillion-dollar campaigns, and oversaw a complex $12.5 million budget at his last organization. Mr. Webb is also a philanthropist, passionate about helping those in need on a global level.

[jasonwebbmilwaukee]

Jason Webb Milwaukee

Webb is a Milwaukee-bassed public speaker, entrepreneur, movement leader, and advocate of racial reconciliation. His track record includes establishing organizations and churches, handling mergers and acquisitions, overseeing budgets and people, and consistently meeting and exceeding organizational goals. Over the last 18 years, Mr. Webb has helped start, lead, volunteer at, and mobilize volunteers for multiple domestic and international non-profit organizations in the US, Kenya, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Peru, and other countries throughout the world. He is a gifted fundraiser who has led multimillion-dollar campaigns and oversaw complex budgets, to include a $12.5 million budget at his last organization. Some of his engagements include work with Elmbrook Church, Brooklife Church, Nairobi Chapel, New Thing, James Place, and many other nonprofit organizations locally and globally. In these organizations, he has held top management and leadership positions. Jason Webb’s expertise includes communication, leadership development, recruiting, public speaking, fundraising and budget management, strategic planning, networking, merger and acquisition, and business expansion. Mr. Webb has a Bachelor of Science from Northwestern University and a Master of Divinity from Trinity International University, where he graduated summa cum laude. When he is not working, Mr. Webb spends time with his four children, reading at the coffee shop, playing golf, or cheering for the Green Bay Packers.

Elsewhere on the net:

Jason Webb Milwaukee

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jason-webb-5493a4126

https://www.christianpost.com/news/rejecting-refugees-is-like-closing-the-door-on-jesus-megachurch-pastor-warns.html

http://www.brooklife.org/about/story/

https://www.whitepages.com/name/Jason-Webb/WI

https://www.wuwm.com/post/milwaukee-area-black-and-white-pastors-seek-heal-racial-division-after-recent-shootings#stream/0ame/Jason-Webb/WI

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elmbrook_Church

https://www.sermonsearch.com/contributors/198961/jason-webb/2/#sermons

https://www.wbay.com/content/news/Fallen-Milwaukee-officer-remembered-as-dedicated-public-servant-485753541.html

https://rocketreach.co/jason-webb-email_47236195

https://fox11online.com/news/state/police-others-line-up-early-for-milwaukee-officers-funeral

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/jun/16/the-latest-fallen-milwaukee-officer-remembered-for/

http://www.newthing.org/event/category/chicago-catalyst-community

https://www.theodysseyonline.com/jason-webb-milwaukee

https://medium.com/@LizzyRivera/jason-webb-milwaukee-based-pastor-and-advocate-of-racial-reconciliation-discusses-race-and-the-d0489b5c091b

https://patch.com/colorado/denver/jason-webb-pastor-milwaukee-discusses-race-church

https://www.feedster.com/lifestyle/creating-a-vision-that-works-jason-webb-milwaukee-based-pastor-and-public-speaker-shares-all-you-need-to-know-to-create-a-strong-vision-for-your-organization/

https://ideamensch.com/jason-webb/