Category Archives: Leadership

W’re a Top 50 Leadership Blog.

Posted on by
10

Great news, friends, we have been recognised as a top 50 leadership blog by Evan Carmichael, particularly in the area of communicating leadership.

Well done to everyone who continually adds and breathes life into this blog through their engagement, whether it be comments, emails, tweet, skypes, phone calls or face to face catchups.

This is our achievement together!

Scott

P.S. Take a moment to also find some other exceptional leadership blogs on the list, and in particular you mist visit Mike Myatt’s N2Growth which wasn’t on the list but is my favourite leadership blog.

The 4 Values of Leaders

Posted on by
4

I’ve been writing more and more about leadership as of late, as I in our conversation about participation, media, communication and community, leadership is the vital element that makes it work. If we want to guide rather than govern, that requires strong leadership. Hence this Sunday I want to share another video from John Maxwell on the 4 values of leaders:

John’s 4 points on what the 4 values of a leader are:

  1. Add value to people. The cardinal sin of poor (and evil) leaders is they don’t.
  2. Make yourself more valuable. You can’t give what you don’t have.
  3. Know and relate to what others value. The only way we connect is caring enough to listen.
  4. Do what God values. This is where value first comes from.

Your Leading Thoughts

  • Do you share these values? Or do you have a different set?
  • How are you valuing these values?

The Best Way I Build Team Is…

Posted on by
24

Team work makes the dream work. To achieve anything bigger than yourself requires more people than yourself, and that means building team.

For the longest time I’ve struggled to build team. I’ve done it many times, but it seems that sustaining it and building it over a period of of time has been my challenge that I feel I’m beginning to overcome.

What I need to hear from you – and I believe we need from each other, as team work is talked about enough – is the best way that you build team. So:

Your Leading Thoughts

  • The way I build team is…

What is your biggest weakness?

Posted on by
15

The Empty BoxI have a group of leaders that I mentor. Some are older than me, some are the same age, and some are younger. But as a Pastor in my church, it is I who is the leader of this group of leaders that I’m raising.

We asked some questions last week, along the lines of “How do I lead myself well? How do I not lead myself well?”, and I of course came prepared already with my answers which was a very good excercise and made me think that I’d like to get to know you all better by asking a tough question today: what is your weakness?

My Weakness

I’m a strong person with a strong sense of direction and structure and the ability to obsessively become expert in an area very quickly. The weakness, however, is that I am not consistent. I can lead others well, but I tend to go through stages where I’m great, and stages where I’m not, and this is detrimental not only to myself, but to the teams I lead across the areas of my life.

I’m strategising ways to minimise this – accountability with mentors and friends, finding simpler ways to organise myself, having more thinking time and not being as busy, etc.

But perhaps the biggest way I’m minimizing it is through the conversations I’m having with all of you. The wisdom I gain from here is exceptionally insightful. I mean comments like this one from Robin Dickinson are like years of mentoring in one boast.

Your Leading Thoughts

  • What is your weakness?
  • How can we help you minimize it?

Photo courtesy of bitzcelt

Video: Leadership is Influence

Posted on by
2

I’ve been reading John Maxwell books since I was 16 – so that means for 10 years I’ve been a student of his – and this is probably the most important lesson that I’ve learnt from him: Leadership is influence. Watch the video below to hear John explain why:

In this, John quotes his favourite leadership parable – “if someone believes they are a leader but no one is following them, then they are simply taking a walk.”

I know that many people will want to disagree with this. It’s uncomfortable to boil the essence of leadership down to influence because it says that if we aren’t good leaders then we aren’t influential – but then that is essentially the point – if I lead people, it’s because I influence them. This isn’t arrogance, it is understanding that because of who I am, or the position I hold, or what I’ve done, I have earned and wield influence.

For many years I had people’s respect, but I didn’t necessarily influence them. I had to take a long hard look at myself and realise that whilst people did look up to me, they didn’t look to me for leadership. I think this is probably a common trait – we know that people respect us, but leading them is a different thing.

Your Leading Thoughts

  • How have you come to find this is true in your life? What are some of your wins and failures to help us learn lessons from your life?
  • If you disagree – then why? What are your experiences (not just logic) that say different?

Your Most Valuable Leadership Quality Is…?

Posted on by
25

I spend a lot of time with different groups of people that I am either leading or also mentoring in leadership. As you know, I like participation and know that I need them to speak in order to learn, and I have a number of ways of doing that that simultaneously helps me get deeper insight into people and therefore be able to lead them or help them more effectively.

One of those ways that I learnt from Andrew Davies is asking people what their most valuable leadership quality is or another way to ask is what leadership quality they value the most. The response always tells you so much about people, and also gets people thinking in a reflective way about themselves. It also helps youThere’s a number you could pick:

  • Good communication skills
  • Hard worker
  • Good with people
  • Visionary
  • Determined
  • Flexible
  • Patient
  • Prayerful

The Friends here would like to know what yours is. But it’s only fair that I first tell you mine. To start, the most valuable quality that I desire in others in initiative. I find that if someone can think forward, take ownership, and then work with me not just for me, then I truly have got a leader. Leadership isn’t just about leading ‘down’, it’s a 360° circle where we lead ‘up’ and ‘across’ too.

Your Leading Thoughts

  • What is your most valuable leadership quality? or
  • What leadership quality to you value most in others?

Photo of myself and John Harvey at Like Minds by Benjamin Ellis

Too Busy Helping People To Help People

Posted on by
14

Regular friends here know I’ve been less than regular in posting here over the last few months. The reason why is that I’ve actually had a personal break through of sorts around an issue I discussed with Robin Dickinson last week. In a comment on one of his though provoking posts (as they always are), I wrote:

I love Robin’s approach here because as of late I’ve been switching my focus. Even though everything I do is about helping people, I found I was ‘too busy for people because I’m too busy helping people’, when ‘helping’ is admin and emails rather than face to face connection and encouragement.

Isn’t this just everyone’s story – we’re too busy helping people to help people.

I am a pastor at my church, I run Like Minds, I engage with you all here, and I do a bit of speaking, all of which are about helping people. In fact, I have pretty much wound down my consultation because I want to spend more time helping people.

But here’s the kicker – I so often found that in all my work trying to help people (admin for our sunday service, preparing the Like Minds conference, thinking about what to speak about), I actually had no time left to actually sit face to face and help people! It’s the dilemma that I was putting paper before people.

This must be some form of torture, to spend all your hours trying to move a bottom line that you never actually touch or confront.

So, I’ve been spending a good amount of time directly with people as of late, and it’s been so much more fruitful. I’m putting people first, paper second.

Now, the trick is to get some balance and engage with you all here more – I’ve missed you over the last 10 days.

Your Leading Thoughts

  • Have you come up against the same wall in your life? (I expect you have)
  • How have your overcome it – OR – what help do you need from us to help you overcome it?

Add To The Core, Don’t Delete it

Posted on by
20

One of the things that my pastor, Michael, taught me was that you “add truth to your truth”, in other words, when you find something to be true you don’t throw away what your previously knew to be true.

Perhaps the best example is in church life. If you’ve had a certain understanding of a passage in the Bible, but then someone presents a new way to understand, that doesn’t mean you delete what you previously knew. You just add this new truth to the existing truth. In the same way that if you have a computer programme, it has it’s core, you keep adding more modules to it whilst the core remains intact.

I think this is relevant because in our fast changing world (especially online), it’s easy to want to change our core and adopt the newest and most fashionable truth. For instance, whenever I watch a TED talk, I immediately want to do what that speaker does because they make it seem so incredible – already I’m ready to delete the core. But I’ve learnt instead that new experiences must instead be added to – not swapped in place of – previous experiences.

Your Leading Thoughts

  • I’m sure you’ve been a culprit of this before like I have. Why are we keen to throw away truth when we find new truth?
  • How have you learnt, practically, to add to the core?

Photo credit

Leaders: Is It In The Detail?

Posted on by
48

Recently I’ve been really frustrated by people around me who keep missing the details. On one hand I have to temper this with the fact that I am very much a details person. I can spot if something is a pixel out.

But on the other hand, after just completing yet another autobiography of a successful person in their field, a common trait I find among all whose biographies I read is that they were detailed – obsessive – in their field.

So my question is, desperately, is leadership in the detail?

On one hand, I would say that it isn’t. A leader is required to be a generalist, to oversee rather than to the specialist work. But on the other hand, in whatever area they are, I don’t know any leader who doesn’t know the ins and the outs. Read any autobiography you choose – you’ll find a detailed person.

Your Leading Thoughts

  • Is leadership in the detail? If so, how do we go about engendering that? (IOW, help!)