The Five Enemies of Unity-Dave Ramsey

Here is a summary of my notes from Dave Ramsey speaking at “The Forum: When God calls you to Lead” as part of Southern University’s Leadership Forum. If you were unable to watch you can pick up DVD or CD here: The Forum

1. Poor Communication shows itself in many ways, when right hand does not know what left hand is doing strife will eventually set in.

• Hold very intentional meetings with a clear purpose and outcome to keep everyone on the same page and prevent confusion and strife.

2. Gossip is degrading & will eventually destroy your organization.

• The successful leader develops & maintains a culture where negatives are handed up & positives are handed down. (Dave will fire you for participating in gossip at his company)
• The definition of gossip is when a negative is discussed with anyone who can’t help solve the problem.

3. Unresolved disagreements will occur when the leader is not aware of them or when the leader avoids dealing/confronting them.

• A little confrontation heals the wound allowing those involved to move on in spirit of unity.
• As a leader when you become aware of hurt feelings &/or disagreements act quickly & decisively.
• Avoidance of these issues will eventually lead to disunity in your team.
• Weak leadership around this issue divides the teams attention and loyalties destroying any hope of sustaining a unified team.

4. The lacked of as shared purpose/vision is caused by a leader not restating the goal, vision & mission early & often.

• Team members must know goals, mission and vision of organization in order to unify behind it effectively.
• Without vision people perish.
• Unclear vision=disunity
• Organizations can’t share and unify behind something they don’t know or understand.
• Communicate early and often your goals, mission and vision in order to build unity into your team.

5. Sanctioned Incompetence: This is when a leader either fails to recognize or ignores incompetence in one or more of his team members and fails to deal with it resulting in a divided demoralized team.

• Sanctioned incompetence demoralizes an organization.
• Team members will eventually become demotivated when someone else on the team can’t or won’t do their job and a leader will not take action.
• In these cases the leader loses respect of his team members and this begins to undermine his effectiveness.

Key Take Aways:

• For the sake of unity of the entire organization the leader must go to battle early and often with any of these enemies of unity.
• When unity is valued in a culture the entire team will also act to keep these enemies from the gate of the organization.
• When people are led well they unify, pull together making organization much stronger and much more effective.
• If you help enough people you don’t have to worry about money.

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