4 Types of Managers (and the Most Effective at Developing a Team)
Peter Drucker once stated that leaders are responsible for future leadership. In other words, one of the essential roles of a leader is to develop other leaders. Of course, not all leaders place a high value on investing in others, and even among those leaders who are committed to developing others, different approaches are utilized. […]
3 Essentials in Christian Leadership Development
When I was a freshman in college, I served a local church as a youth pastor. I was growing in my faith and eager to pour into teenagers. The church was Southside Baptist Church and the pastor was Jerry Key. It was a small church with about 100 people and a handful of kids in […]
2 Dumb Ways Leaders Deal With Their Weaknesses
Just as all leaders have areas of strength, all leaders also have areas of weakness. There is no such thing as an omni-competent leader. But what should a leader do with his or her weaknesses? Books have been written and speeches have been given encouraging leaders to focus on their strengths, to leverage what they […]
Leaders, We Must Face Our Shadows
Pete Scazzero recently joined us on the 5 Leadership Questions Podcast. Pete is the founder and pastor of New Life Fellowship Church in Queens, and he speaks and writes on the importance of leaders being healthy. He mentioned the daily need for a leader to “face your shadow.” The metaphor is compelling. When we were […]
What You Can Look Forward to on the Other Side of Being Overwhelmed
The cliché: “Don’t bite off more than you can chew” is unhelpful because it is good for a leader’s development to occasionally do so. The same is true with lifting weights. If you want your muscles to grow, you must lift heavier weight, and put your muscles under stress and pressure. If you lift the […]
When Workload on Your Team Increases, You Must Do This
Every single week the Office of President receives 65,000 paper letters, 500,000 emails, 5,000 faxes, and 15,000 phone calls (as told by Daniel Levitin in The Organized Mind). You can’t wing that type of workload. A system that sorts and prioritizes and ensures the right people are given responsibility and authority is essential. While that […]
3 Reasons a Humble Leader Is an Effective Leader
According to research, the most effective leaders are the most humble leaders. Research led by Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman discovered that leaders who underrate themselves are more effective than those who rate themselves high on self-assessments. These results are no surprise to Christians. One of the greatest leaders in our collective story is Moses, […]
3 Items That Should Be on Your “Stop Doing” List
The second law of thermodynamics revolves around entropy, the principle that things move to disorder and chaos over time. Left alone, things do not become more orderly or more effective. Your once well-ordered garage digresses to clutter. No matter how much you attempt to wish it into existence, your garage will not get more clean […]
2 Qualities in All Great Leaders
Great leaders are both intentional and intense. Great leaders bring focus and fury, precision and passion, wisdom and work ethic. With wisdom and discipline, they identify what matters most. And with passion, they continually pursue what matters most. Intentionality coupled with intensity makes a leader very credible and very effective. We see both intentionality and […]
6 Mistakes Leaders Make in Their First 90 Days
While there is nothing magical about the number, many have used the “first 90 days” to describe the important first days in a leader’s new role. In his helpful book The First 90 Days, Michael Watkins encourages leaders to adjust their leadership to the context and life cycle of the organization: start-up, realignment, sustaining success, […]