Top 10 Lessons from 2011 - Part 2

Picking up where I left off here...

6. - Leadership is Personal: There is no "one right way" to lead for everyone, but everyone is a leader. I love to read leadership books, blogs, twitter feeds, and listen to leadership podcasts, and I learn a lot from gifted leaders who share their wisdom in those arenas. I believe there are leadership principles and leadership concepts that can be learned and applied in almost every leadership situation, but I've come to discover that leaders come in all shapes, sizes, configurations and situations. There is no one kind of leadership personality, no one cookie cutter look and feel of a leader. Leaders can be introverts and extroverts, they can be organized or flexible, they can be up front people or behind the scenes people. Leadership is influence, as John Maxwell says, and influence can come from anyone, anywhere. Therefore, don't count yourself out if you're not a leader like someone else. You don't have to be like me to be a leader, and I don't have to be like John Maxwell to be a leader. Different people lead (with good leadership principles) in different ways. There are introverts that I know who are amazing leaders, and some that look at extroverted leaders and say, "I can't lead, I'm not like that." Don't let that lie have one more second of your thinking - you can and should be influencing someone in your life for the betterment of your organization and your world. Don't let someone else's picture of leadership keep you from being a positive influence and leading where you are.

5. - Leaders talk. Good leaders discuss. Great leaders listen. One thing all leaders, whether by position or giftedness or necessity, have to do is talk. All leaders share vision, teach principles, set goal, talk about the past, present or future. All leaders talk. Good leaders talk and listen; they discuss and get input along the way. If you're going to be a good leader, you have to involve other people with other perspectives, and you have to give them time to engage you in conversation in order to rise above and become effective. But the greatest leaders I know are really listeners. They know how to listen, learn, understand and grow in any setting. The truly great ones (and there are only a few truly great leaders) can both hear and listen, gather both what is being said and what it meant by it in deeper context. I realize in my position of leadership, if I do all the talking, I can maybe get us somewhere, but it's limited. If I engage in discussion, give and take with others, we can go much further than I can lead by just talking. But if I truly lead by listening (to God, to leaders, to teammates, to the congregation and to the community around me), there's a chance to make a much larger impact. I'm at my best when I'm a listening leader.

4. - Fire bullets, then cannonballs. (Jim Collins font) - Collins wrote one of my favorite books, Good To Great, and I've been listening to him ever since. His newest book, Great By Choice is amazing! I finished it in December, and I've been blown away by the wisdom contained in his research. This tidbit is particularly awesome - if you have a limited amount of gunpowder, you want to fire bullets (which take only a little gunpowder) first to see where they land before you fire a cannon ball (which takes a lot of gunpowder). The bullets let you know if you've hit the target so you can line up the cannonball and know you're going to hit what you aim at. To miss with a cannonball is to use up lots of resources (time, talent and treasure) and not get any return, but to test with smaller amounts of resources (bullets), you can find what you need to spend larger amounts on (cannonballs) in a more controlled, effective way. We've been doing that at LifePoint Church with a number of ideas. Most of our outreach the past year has been done on a smaller scale using our small group ministry to see what ideas will stick. Those ideas can be refined and retooled into larger, full scale ministries when we know that we've hit something. It's a strategy that moves us forward while still allowing us to use good stewardship, and when something fails, we don't have to panic. But if something succeeds, we can put more powder behind it the next time. Even in a big church or organization, it's okay to start small.

More to come...