Links for Leaders 10/6/17

The Ineffectiveness of a Team Without a Leader—Ron Edmondson

An organizational team without a leader is like an athletic team without a coach. Would you recommend that for your favorite sports team?

I love leading through teams, but in addition to making sure people know what’s expected of them, we have to make sure every team has a leader.

I try to never appoint or release a team to do work until we make sure a leader is chosen. They can choose their own leader, we can appoint one for them, or they may even have co-leadership, but there needs to be someone who has the assigned task of steering, motivating and leading the team to accomplish it’s mission.

3 Shifts to Making Disciples in Chaos—Joel Rainey

Many of our people spend up to three hours a day either driving, or on a train going into the city, so even an early morning breakfast meeting can be a challenge. In this environment, the use of a podcast, YouTube, and other electronic media helps them stay connected to us, and us to them. Most of our small groups are “sermon based,” so its hard to participate if you haven’t heard the message the previous Sunday. So its up to us to ensure that our people have access to those messages when the chaos of life requires them to be absent. While we pastors can’t literally be in more than one place at a time, available technology means that, virtually, we can truly “be everywhere.” So for the sake of our people, let’s be everywhere we can be!

5 Research-Based Strategies for Overcoming Procrastination—Chris Bailey

Chances are that at this very moment you’re procrastinating on something. Maybe you’re even reading this article to do so.

A while back, I took a year to experiment with every piece of personal productivity advice I could find. In becoming hyperaware of how I spent my time, I noticed something: I procrastinated a lot more often than I had originally thought. In one time log I kept, I found that over the course of one week, I spent six hours putting off tasks — and that’s just the procrastination that was apparent from my time log.

This got me thinking: why do we procrastinate, even though we know it’s against our best interests? How can we overcome it, preferably without hating ourselves or the techniques we use in the process?

How to Reduce Friction in Decision-Making—Kent Ingle

The choices you make will determine the life you live. That was drilled into me by every mentor I’ve ever had. I try to carry on the tradition by telling those whom I mentor today the same thing.

Sometimes making a choice seems more difficult and complex than it should be. Every time you try to decide, you have this gut feeling you’re not ready to decide or you’re not sure which one is the right decision. So, you decide to postpone making the decision until you have more time to think about it, more information, or better insight into what you hope to accomplish.

5 Things Every Good Leader Knows About Themselves—Carey Nieuwhof

The best leaders become students of themselves. This isn’t some strange form of narcissism or self-absorption.

Just the opposite. The best leaders ask themselves and others piercing questions. They’re relentlessly honest with themselves about their strengths and weaknesses.

Top leaders realize it’s easy to ignore the hard questions and even to lie to themselves.

They soberly embrace the truth that of all the lies we tell, the lies we tell ourselves are the most deadly.