Let your team grade you.

Nine things.

That's it. Those are the standards I would encourage you to hold yourself to, and anyone on your leadership team, and to allow your team to tell you how you're doing.

It doesn't mean being perfect. It means having a desire to bear fruit.

They can be your core values.

If you're a Christian business owner trying to figure out your core values, and you don't want to use the same ones everybody else uses, like integrity, use these. They come straight from the Bible.

I've done so many different mission, vision and values exercises, where you go through this whole process of what you want your core values to be. When we were changing everything at our company, I just thought: as a believer, the demonstration in our business should be the fruits of the Spirit. Those are our actual core values as a business.

Ditch the performance review.

If you have a job, you've been through a performance review, and most likely you hated it. So we ditched the check-in on your numbers, because that happens all year. It doesn't need to happen once or twice a year in an annual review. We swapped it out for measuring the fruits of the Spirit.

Here's how we do it. We have each person give us a reflection. This isn't a review. How have you demonstrated those things? And how has your leader demonstrated those things? We ask them one at a time.

This isn't how we determine raises. It's how we reflect with each other and hold each other accountable to something more than just excellence.

When I have the team look at what I've done as a leader throughout the year, that's what I want them to look at. How have I been when it comes to love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control?

Test yourself first.

It's fruits of the Spirit, not fruits of the man or the woman. So if you're bearing fruit and it's the opposite, it's time for a heart check. Let's go through them.

• Love.Are you loving, or are you hating? What are you known for?
• Joy.Do you have joy, or are you discontent about everything?
• Peace.Are you peaceful, or are you anxious and nervous?
• Patience.Are you patient, or are you in a hurry?
• Kindness.Are you kind, or are you kind of mean?
• Goodness.Are you good, or are you corrupt?
• Faithfulness.Are you faithful, or are you unfaithful?
• Gentleness.Are you gentle, or are you harsh with the people around you?
• Self-control.Do you have self-control?

I don't know if that's convicting to you, but it's convicting to me.

Don't white-knuckle it.

The response usually is, "I need to try harder." But the key is that it's fruits of the Spirit. So how do we bear more fruit? We abide in Him. More time in His word, more time in prayer, having a relationship with Him.

As somebody who was an atheist until I was 18, the language of having a relationship with Jesus felt weird. But it's real. You don't hear fruit trees grunting. They're just bearing fruit, because that's what they do. They stay connected.

That doesn't mean you get rich, necessarily. It means you prosper. So pick up your Bible and spend time with it.

The rest comes after.

If I'm demonstrating these, I'm leading well. All the other things, like revenue and profitability and great marketing, come if you're demonstrating these.

If you're gentle in the way you respond to people. If you're faithful. If you have self-control, so you're not hasty, you're actually planning and you're diligent. If you have love. These are the things that make a difference in people's lives at a much more meaningful level than just financially.

And when you as a leader have a hurried, anxious nature about you, it affects everyone around you. You can still be urgent while being obedient. Hurry is not a fruit of the Spirit. Peace is.

Run your first reflection.

• Name the nine as your values.Write Galatians 5:22-23 where your team will see it.
• Keep the numbers out of it.Track numbers all year. This conversation is about the fruit.
• Ask about the leader.How has your leader demonstrated each one? One at a time.
• Ask about them.How have you demonstrated each one?
• Go first.Let your team tell you how you're doing before you tell anyone else.

Here's where I sell you something.

I coach a small number of business owners and CEOs who want to lead like this and still run a company that performs. If that's you, start here.

Work with Adam ↗

The book, Biblical Business, is how I apply Biblical wisdom to running a company. And if you want your team's goals and weekly updates in one place, I built Unbreakable OS for that. You can do everything above without either.

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