Developing Leaders

If you are arriving at a place where there is a healthy leadership team in place and you are surrounded by competent team members who understand that they are leaders and are in development - great - have an awesome honeymoon.

If not, not so great and post-pone honeymoon for extended period of time.

I love it when I entered a new place of ministry and found no leadership team, no experienced team members, no structure that supports the development of leaders yet am asked to perform miracles beyond imagination.  To this date that has never happened - I have always developed a team first.  In the long run - for those who can wait - success is always the fruit.

Why, because my first real leadership position was in a church.  I think there were at least 40 different groups raging in all kinds of activities - young to old, sports to marriage, evangelism to prayer.  Guess what - they all wanted me to be part of their group - guess what I said - yes.  Guess who saw the need for change, growth, development - people listen to this - for forty groups!!!  That's right, I never went home until midnight, six days a week, never saw my wife - and then the leadership team had the gull to say I wasn't working hard enough....

From then on, I developed first and moved on and developed again and moved on and developed again.  Much more fun.

One of the first things I do is check out the gifting, then equip based on that.  That includes Myers Briggs stuff, love language, leadership strengths/weaknesses, spiritual maturity etc.

Remember through the entire scenario that it is God who chooses all leaders.  Though we may have the tendency to become impatient with them because of their lack of training, ability and effort, remember to treat them with dignity and respect, trying to be submissive to them where possible just as you expect them to be submissive to your leadership.

God often will surprise us.  The most profound thought may come from the lips of someone we had considered totally inept.  If God is indeed the author of leadership and the chooser of leaders, then He is able to perform His work through the most unlikely candidates. If we doubt that, we who are part of active leadership should take a careful and penetrating look in the mirror.

Communication Tools

As good as a good book is and as necessary as they are as a tool for leaders, they are still primitive.

Somehow, we think that the "company" owes us a supply of tools necessary to do our job.  I know that auto mechanics, construction workers etc. have to buy their own equipment and sometimes even truckers need to own their own rigs to get employment.

So we complain that we do not have the necessary tools to do our job if we do not get that Blackberry, or that Tablet or that MacPro. 

I have seen the difference between two of my staff, hired at the same time.  One went out of her way to acquire the necessary tools to make her successful.  Another would not budge to buy, learn or engage past what the company provided.  Guess who was far more successful in communicating to her "clients."

What can we do with the tools at our disposal that will make us better leaders.  I actually think there are more tools and more variety of use than we could possibly make use of during our lifetime.  So we end up either using what we are comfortable with the most - and for some of us that means not using the new equipment at all - or for most of us, we should be choosing the product that yields the most results in making us the leader we want to be.

First thing we notice is the audio doesn't work.  Talking heads do not work.  Audio provides the opportunity to daydream and not engage.  However, there has to be instruction and there has to be fun, and there has to learning.  So we get creative by mixing that all up - sometimes there is a talking head, sometimes its a person and sometimes a clip, game or other perception we engage to provide a well-rounded experience for those we are communicating with.  Look at some of the blogs that are currently being assembled - I have a serious of photos revolving on the side, a flickering smiley face reminding me to "look here" later, a blog that has content that is static, but has links to fun stuff to do which help provide more for later - for instance, do a Myers Briggs personality type test - you learn how that works for your and how you now need to work with others - then a video of what you look like in a situation and then a summary of results of people who also took the test - just like you just did - you had fun! http://www.survivalblog.com/2011/04/knowing_your_personality_stren.html


That is why education can now leave the classroom setting.  I am currently engaged in a Master's program for Leadership from an institution in California - amazing and fun.  I have so much material that I can now begin to train others with the material which I have learned from - which again enhances my learning experience and builds me into a better educator.

With our webcams we can much more easily and readily video tape a presentation and then be able to review that presentation to analyze strengths and weakness in style, content and presentation. We can email it to our mentors to get an idea of their thoughts, we can email it to those we are mentoring for their learning pleasure.
http://www.psipsychologytutor.org/6199/how-is-counselling-from-a-tutormentor-useful-to-the-student/

Power Point is now the communication tool or request when I go and speak.  Everyone asks me to bring my points on a "stick" so that the audience has a visual opportunity to participate.  I still not comfortable with insert music, video etc. and taking my short screen and enlarging like you would if you were to change from letter to legal size paper.  Since this seen as a reflection of who you are, I find that I spend more time with this then giving it to my assistant to pull together.  Again, as I engage with the material, I am learning, adding, changing, modifying and growing with it.


What would be your favourite tool that enables you to be the leader you are?