Leadership

Mac Lake serves as the Development Pastor at Seacoast Church, a church with 13 campuses. He writes a blog focused on leadership development.  Below is a good remind of topics we need to continually come back to as we develop the leaders around us. What are you trying to accomplish when doing leadership development at your church? You say, “build leaders of course!” While that’s true, I believe it’s time for us to reconsider and expand the focus of our leadership development efforts. Too often our training efforts are aimed solely at preparing someone to execute the mechanics of a volunteer ministry position. But what could happen if we trained people not simply for a position but to live a lifestyle of biblical leadership? What if the leadership development efforts of our churches equipped people to be better managers, supervisors, coaches, vice-presidents or business owners? Keep in mind, the people…

I recently started reading “Leading at a Higher Level” by Ken Blanchard and associates.  It’s about how to create high-performing organizations.  They outline the flow of leadership this way: self-leadership > one-on-one leadership > team leadership > organizational leadership. Here’s my quick run-down … Without self-leadership, the other levels of leadership will break down.  Self-leadership is the ability to “practice what you preach.”  At this level, leaders develop an internal compass that forms the backbone of decisions and actions.  While it’s possible to assume greater levels of responsibility without self-leadership, it’s not sustainable.  In positions that require a high level of trust, a leader who lacks an internal compass will not do the things that foster trust and respect. One-on-one leadership is the ability to effectively lead another person towards a specific end or goal.  This requires the ability to adapt your leadership style to the needs of the individual. …

This quote is from Andy Stanley’s podcast on leadership: “Leaders who refuse to listen will eventually be surrounded by people who have nothing important to say.”

Another Seth Godin gem: ********** The initiator “I’m just here to learn.” Learning is fine. Listening is good. Consensus is natural. But initiating is rare and valuable and essential. How often do you or your brand initiate rather than react? How often do you tweet instead of retweet? Invent rather than exploit?