If you lead other people, one of your best tools for developing their leadership skills is a directed conversation. These are conversations that are designed to deal with an issue or teach a skill or principle. Here are two tips for making these effective conversations: Clarify your intent. Let them know what you're trying to accomplish. We often assume people know our intentions (because we know our intentions), but that's not always the case. Just ask anyone who does marriage counseling! Clarify what's at stake. Once you've shared with them your intentions, tell them why it's important. Why do they need to have this conversation with you? What difference will it make? Could it make? I've found that people respond much better when they have a sense of where you're coming from and why.
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The Top 10 Leadership Principles of Jesus: 1. Leadership is servanthood 2. Let your purpose prioritize your life. 3. You must live the life before you can lead others. 4. Walk slowly through the crowd. 5. Replenish yourself. 6. Great leaders call for great commitment. 7. Show security and strength when handling tough times. 8. Lead on a higher level. 9. Choose your key people. 10. There is no success without a successor. Source: John Maxwell
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Tenzing Norgay was one of the best known sherpas of all-time, made famous for his climb of Everest with Edmund Hillary. In his autobiography he tells the story of climbing a different mountain with George Frey, an experienced climber. The story reminds us how important it is to have a climbing partner. At first the going was easy enough, following a long snow slope into which we could kick good steps, and not so steep that we needed a rope between us. But after a while the angle grew a bit sharper, and the snow harder, and I stopped and put on my steel-spiked crampons, so as to have a steadier footing. “Aren’t you going to put yours on?” I called up to Frey, who was in the lead. “No, I don’t need them,” he answered. And we continued climbing. Once again there is the question of whether I should…
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The following is a great post by Craig Groeschel from lifechurch.tv. It's about the who and what of leadership. ****************** Instead of always knowing “what” is happening with a project, what we really need to know is “who” is covering the project. If we have the right “who,” we shouldn’t have to worry about the “what.” If we have the wrong “who,” then we need to know the “what.” If you always need to know the “what,” you have one of two problems: You are not an empowering leader. You have the wrong “who.” Either way, the problem needs to be fixed.
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One of the tests of a great leader is not so much the quality of her work but the quality of people she surrounds herself with. Put another way, you can measure the competency of a leader by the competency of those they gather around them. To create a scalable culture -- one that is easily reproduced and expanded -- requires competent leaders. Many organizations, churches included, will hit a ceiling based upon the competency level of one leader. To continue to grow and expand requires a growing and expanding layer of competent leadership. This requires hiring the best people possible and releasing them to do their jobs. It also requires developing the in-house talent that already exists in latent form within the organization. May your greatest competency as a leader be the ability to spot and develop the competency of others!
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