Ken

I've been in and around executive-level leadership for nearly thirty years. This includes my own experience as a senior leader as well as having the privilege of knowing college presidents, founders of technology start-ups, and CEO's of companies traded on the NYSE. Many of the best leaders I've ever known are far from famous. They include school teachers, volunteer board members, and retired nurses. But as I've reflected on what made each of them effective leaders, I've noticed they all share a few common characteristics. For simplicity, I'm referring to them as the 4C's of effective senior leadership. These aren't strategies. They are characteristics -- common values and actions that first shape the person, then their leadership. What do these effective senior leaders have in common? They are ... Credible. We might buy a used car from a shifty salesman (and need to shower afterwards), but we wouldn't follow them…

How close are you to your next good idea? As a person who has spent the last thirty years generating content for sermons, classes, articles, and speeches, I've had times when the ideas flowed abundantly and times when they seemed to dry up altogether. Regardless if they were abundant or scarce, the need for good ideas never went away. In fact, I often needed more than one good idea on a weekly basis. For the first five years of my career, I was prepping two talks and two classes for forty-eight or forty-nine weeks out of the year. As a young communicator, I felt like I had to crank out all these good ideas entirely on my own. This was partly due to misguided expectations compounded by an underlying pride. The pursuit of originality can quickly become an idol - and a foolish one at that. As one matures, one…