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.

The members of your team are due respect

Jesus makes plain that He does not share His authority with anyone.  On the basis of that authority He gave His followers certain commands.

Just because you are a leader, does not mean you have unlimited authority to dictate to your team.  In reality, since your team is the final possessor of authority, you only have as much authority as is delegated by your team.

Since we are all considered priests, saints and ministers of the gospel, as the Bible makes clear, leaders need to understand that they are given to their team for only one purpose: to enhance the ministry of these "ministers."

Christians do not know who they really are.  When they are finally convinced of the fact that they are priests and ministers, they will begin to act the part.

If a leader is wise, they will recognize and respect the wisdom that rests in the members of their team as it acts together, and will demonstrate their respect by taking the decisions of the team to be wise counsel.  These leaders should continually treat their team members with the respect due to them as priests and ministers because God, not them, has designated them as such.

Someone put this video montage together showing a bit of a sport analogy on this topic, including the back ground music and lyrics which suggest some of the things I have mentioned here.  I am not necessarily one of those who believe that sport analogies are best comparatives to leadership issues but this was pretty interesting.


http://youtu.be/RkzWGoCd8rU

What does a leaders spouse look like?

Is this an odd question?

I can tell you that many individuals who had amazing leadership qualities and giftedness, were not called upon to step up into position of leadership because of their wives.

In my case, I had one incident where I was removed from leadership as a result of something my wife had said.

There is a legend of Mrs. Cranmer, wife of the first Archbishop of Canterbury. Henry the Eighth had succeeded in breaking the iron rule of Rome, and the Church of England, at last, was an entity in itself. the Archbishop set a brave precedent in marrying.  However, the populace was not yet ready such scandalous behaviour.  As a result, Mrs. Cranmer spent most of her married life in hiding.  It is said that when the Archbishop desired that his wife travel with him, she was forced to journey in a wooden box with ventilation holes in it.

Wish I had another story of a women in leadership and what she had to do when her husband travelled with her - but alas, I could not find one.

Here are some points that I think the supporting spouse, whether they themselves are leaders or not, should be aware of. ---

• be dignified
• do not gossip
• if the children are present, be the responsible parent at the event
• if hospitality is required, be the manager, promotional and operational to ensure success and if yourself influential, balance between obtaining favour for your spouse and ensuring that your better half is getting the due attention they acquire.
• remember our ultimate call is to - serve
• model what a Christian marriage looks like and what a Christian family looks like
• you are a team - have each others back
• understand each others gifts and use them whenever possible to ensure the success of each other
• you are no leader at all if you cannot lead your family and in particular, I am suggesting your children - make this a point of priority and do not grudge your time with them for each moment of personal, intimate time is a building block to a leader of the future.

Principal LeadershipTools

Have you ever complained to your dentist about the high cost of dentistry.  I have, only because I no longer have benefits.  When you do, be prepared to walk through the entire office where they will outline in detail the cost of each piece of equipment and the potential replacement time and cost as well.

Leaders require tools too, but unlike dentistry, there is no where to recoup the costs.

I remember buying gift cards to bookstores for my friends as they took on leadership roles in their lives.  Never seen so much excitement.  I just recently left the employ of a university and was absolutely amazed that the leadership team pitched in and gave me a gift card for the university bookstore.  Amazed because I thought that was a bit out of style - but am I ever glad they didn't think so.

My library is amazing - I still have books from when I was a child, books that were on my dad's shelf, books from the homes of those who found themselves downsizing in the later years of their life, books from university, my kids books from university, and books from Christian organizations. The temptation that seizes me when I walk into a bookstore today is incredible - this man of steel - and recovering bookaholic, should come across a book on sale - even in the library - becomes a fool in love.

Nowadays, I keep less and give more away.  Not sure if that is making a statement to the lack of theological depth in most books, or the absolute lack of contemporary exposure in others, but I am finding more less attractive.  So I change my strategy and take out the truths I need give the books away to help others in their journey.

With the desire for a great book to read, I am finding that my university librarian is an amazing fount of information and expertise - find one and use them.  The university bookstore I mentioned above always had a book ready for me to buy - find a great bookstore manager.  Talk to leaders that you admire, ask them what they are reading and would that be a book they would recommend or another and why - go find a leader you want to follow.

The greatest leadership book of all time is the Bible.  Since most of us are amateurs, we need a good contemporary translation and access to quite a few more and at least some access to the original language so that we are able to parlay our modern day parables without going to far astray.  If you do not know where to go from here - find someone who has a very open mind themselves and will help you to a study Bible and a few more specific commentaries that deal primarily with leadership issues.

 History is a great source of material.  My favourite happens to be books on war.  I like strategy and can relate very quickly to war plans, and have found myself engaging a few of them, philosophically of course, and succeeding.

Leadership theology are quite in-depth studies on what leadership looks like covering as many facets of leadership that you can imagine - providing breadth, but digging deep to find truths that are secure enough to build upon its foundation as you begin your own journey into building a case for what leadership really is.

Biographies cover a story of a leader's life that you would never see as clearly as when reading a book.  The movie does not cut it.

Pull together a group of "leaders" for a time of training, mentoring, encouraging, building, holding each other accountable in area like ethics etc.  It will make a difference.

Practice your leadership skills on kids.  Could be your own, join your church Sunday School program or mid-week activities, scouts or guides etc.  If you can't teach kids, chances are you are boring the brains out of the adults who are too kind to tell you so.

Look to missions as amazing models of leadership activity.  I just finished a book on the Jesuits.  Again, movies (just finished watching Behind the Iron Mask), wouldn't have helped me understand them well, but this book was an amazing articulation of what they did right - those things were incredible and I want to do incredible things - Jesuits lead the way.

Administration, the anvil of every ENFP (Myers Briggs) and yet I need to know how to organize my life, accomplish my tasks, organize my team, enlist and motivate others to carry out the work of our purpose.

Music, as simple as a phone call to a friend, actually a Skype call, and I heard music in the background.  My soul absolute sucked it up - and that was over Skype.  I hit myself silly, and as soon as I could, I put on my music.  Don't let the urgency of the day stop us from refuelling our soul for a leadership soul gives away constantly.

What are other leaders doing?  Sometimes it matters, sometimes not - but why re-invent the wheel we can take a roughly hewn one and replace it with wood , replace that with iron, replace that with steel and then cover it with rubber?  Just because someone came up with the idea to create a wheel out of animal bones and wrote a book about it - don't jump on bandwagons that do not have a proven track record over a considerable time period for you my find that they get brittle quickly and do not have any staying power.