On Leading Well

Category: Leadership

  • Owning The Gap

    The number one trait people desire in those who lead them is honesty. Honesty means telling it like it is, embracing reality, and stripping off the Emperor’s new clothes. People already know most of our weaknesses. They live with our gaps everyday. People don’t expect us to be perfect. They do expect us to acknowledge the obvious. The question they are asking is: Will my leader own the gap between what what he or she says and does?

    One hallmark of servant leaders is their ability to grow in public – to own the gap.

    The apostle Paul, among the greatest of servant leaders, knew what it meant to grow in public. He frequently wrote of his own blunders. He told aspiring church pastors that yearning to oversee people is a noble task. After listing several fundamental criteria for leadership, including a well-balanced blend of character qualities and competencies, he closed with an invitation to grow.

    “Practice these things,” Paul said, “devote yourself to them, so that all may see your progress.”

    Lesson for us: Learn to own the gap.

    Quotes from 1 Timothy 3:1 & 4:15

  • A Blog Is Like a Pet…

    …you’ve got to keep feeding it.

    Our beloved pet mutt, Oreo, succumbed to a rapid 6-week decline on New Years Eve. I’m discovering how much I miss the lifestyle that pets help create. We live in an apartment complex, so caring for Oreo would require us to be outside and around neighbors 3-4 times a day. One simple daily activity facilitated friendships, conversations, and 10 minutes of refreshed perspective.

    Maybe her absence is one reason, after years of wanting to join the tide of self-expression, that I finally decided to start this blog. In the shrinking communication universe it gets me outside and refreshes my perspective.

  • Ray’s One Page Leadership Training

    About a year after I’d been leading a local campus team I finally received some formal team leader training. Roughly 20 of us gathered in Austin, Texas, for a week of lectures, discussions, and workshops. Each participant’s experience in leading ranged somewhere from 3 weeks to 3 years.

    I’m sure I received a notebook filled with very important materials. I can also assume that the facilitators and trainers invested hours preparing their messages. I confess I remember only two specific things from that week.

    One was Ray Anderson. Ray was a legend in our organization. Ray had built one of the largest and healthiest student-led movements in the States. As he shared from his life experiences, his successes, and his failures, I remember thinking: “Hey, if God can use this guy to do big things, maybe he can use me, too.”

    The second thing I remember was Ray’s list. During the first morning of the training, Ray asked each of us to take out a blank piece of paper. “Fold it in half, top to bottom,” he said. “Write these things at the top of each column:”

    What Good Leaders Do _____________What Poor Leaders Do

    “Now, we’ve all been led before. Each of us has had people lead us well, and we’ve had people lead us poorly. Take a few minutes and write five actions in each column that you’ve observed in those who led you.”

    After some group discussion, Ray simply asked us to do three things.

    1. Keep adding to the list.
    2. Emulate actions in left column.
    3. Avoid behaviors in the right column.

    That lesson was nearly twenty years ago and I’ve never forgotten it.

    Message to us: With every act we train the next generation how to live and lead.

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