Month: April 2011

The Chick-Fil-A Leadercast is coming up on May 6th (next Friday.) I was fortunate enough to attend this event last year and it absolutely blew my mind. That said, I wanted to tell you all about it. First, a description…

Our vision for Chick-fil-A Leadercast is to be the can’t-miss leadership development event that is both affordable and accessible to all leaders throughout North America and around the world.

We have seen many other leadership events, and although they often provide many valuable leadership principles, few conferences engage all of your senses and provide a truly experiential and applicable day of leadership training. We are committed to producing not only an event that is relevant and practical, but also one that energizes and inspires every single person that invests a day in Chick-fil-A Leadercast…

I can’t recommend the event enough. Here are 3 reasons why…

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Yesterday, I wrote about humility. Today I want to see what a humble leader really looks like.

When we talk in terms of sheer historical impact, there’s little argument that Jesus Christ was the most explosive leader of all time. There are over 2 billion professing Christians in the world today. Wether you know Him as the Son of God or just a good teacher, you can’t argue with the empirical results.

Follow along with these historically reliable accounts of His life and you’ll see the ideal of what a humble leader should look like.

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I popped into a Twitter chat about leadership and humility last night. One of the questions posed was this:

“Is humility technique or character?”

One of the folks in the chat loosely defined humility as a “tool” to be “used.” In essence, humility is a crescent wrench in the leader’s proverbial toolbox. I don’t like this idea. I don’t like it one bit. Starting with the definition of the word, here’s why.

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As leaders, we get to fill the role of counselor in a lot of people’s lives. For good or bad, we have the honor and responsibility of providing these people with advice.

This is by no means an all-inclusive methodology, but its the process I use. I would love to hear all about how you approach these situations in the comments below.

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Have you ever found yourself sitting at a table, staring at two cups of coffee and someone looking for your advice? Welcome to my life. If you get serious about developing your leadership skills, this will become common for you too.

In this situation, I’ve found people to fall into one of three general categories.

• The first is absolutely puzzled by the request and literally has nothing for you.
• The second is humbled by the request and genuinely wishes to provide the best wisdom that they can muster.
• The third is ready to give their unsolicited opinion before anyone even sits down at the table. Everyone loves this guy. He’s got all the answers.

Today, I’m going to talk about the third person’s potential thought process. If you identify with any of these steps, then please do come back tomorrow. Your friends will be immensely grateful.

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You want to develop better leadership skills, but there’s so much that goes into building that skill set. Guys like me don’t help by overloading your plate with new ideas every day.

You’ve got to work on things like…

• Identifying and harnessing passion.
• Developing your internal leadership traits.
• Learning to effectively cast vision.
• Overcoming fear and resistance.
• Learning how to focus on what really matters.

It can all be so overwhelming.

Today I want to give you a break by asking you to focus on just one aspect. Here’s a simple process for picking that one thing to work on.

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I remember the worst experience I ever had with a leader. He was a perpetual grump; a man of absolutely no joy. He grumbled around the shop and openly ridiculed the folks under his charge. Even when we succeeded, he had nothing positive to bring to the table.

joy – a feeling of great pleasure and happiness

The best leaders I’ve worked under have always possessed a certain element of joy. Each was a delight to be around and a pleasure to serve under. Their positive spirit and joyful energy was contagious. They would receive the most respect and naturally inspire the best attitude.

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“I believe” is a difficult and scary way to start a sentence.

It means that you’re about to say something extremely important. You’re about to reveal something deep; a long held belief, a faith, a passion, a point of view. Whatever it is, you’re stepping out onto a limb. You’re getting ready to take a stand.

Belief is decisive.

It implies so much more than a passing affinity or an inclination. To use the phrase “I believe” is to loudly declare that you’ve picked a side; you’ve made a decision. After all, you wouldn’t believe in something unless you’d made up your mind about it.

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I have a knack for saying or writing things that resonate with some and infuriate others. I’ll make some big bold claim about a topic (like leadership or Christianity) that I’m passionate about. Someone won’t agree and will be offended. They’ll let me know about it.

It’s always uncomfortable. Always.

What Are You Passionate About?

I know that there’s something in there. Maybe you’ve got a new idea that’s been lighting your fire. Perhaps you’re starting a new non-profit to tackle an issue like homelessness. We’ve all got things that truly ignite our internal passion.

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Forgive the departure. We’ll be back to our normally scheduled programming next week…

So often, we tell ourselves we want to do something special. We have big conversations about where we’d like to go or what we’d like to accomplish.

Far too often, those ideas never go any further than words. We encounter some kind of resistance and we move on to something else. My best advice:

Just show up.

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