Tag: Purpose

Learning Leaders

How would you describe the adventure, purpose, nature, challenge, essence, opportunity, secret, spice, and beauty of life?

William Arthur Ward sums it up this way: “The adventure of life is to learn. The purpose of life is to grow. The nature of life is to change. The challenge of life is to overcome. The essence of life is to care. The opportunity of life is to serve. The secret of life is to dare. The spice of life is to befriend. The beauty of life is to give.”

Learning, growing, changing, overcoming, caring, serving, daring, befriending and giving are the key elements to the activity of great leaders.

A Leader’s Purpose

“Leaders are not, as we are often led to think, people who go along with huge crowds following them. Leaders are people who go their own way without caring, or even looking to see, whether anyone is following them. ‘Leadership qualities’ are not the qualities that enable people to attract followers, but those that enable them to do without them. They include, at the very least, courage, endurance, patience, humor, flexibility, resourcefulness, stubbornness, a keen sense of reality, and the ability to keep a cool and clear head, even when things are going badly. True leaders, in short, do not make people into followers, but into other leaders.” John Holt

Prayer

Nothing is more foundational. We must pray for guidance and ask God to help us equip next generation leaders.

Read the accounts in the Old Testament where Joshua and Israel marched into Canaan. Every time they did not seek prior counsel with God, consequences were incurred.

If we feel we can rely on the past, some form of “wingin’ it,” or a laissez faire approach in our efforts, we are already defeated.

Think seriously about the nature of the situation and start praying now about how we can take the next step to achieve our God-given purpose.

Practice Makes Perfect

Regardless of the application, the idea is to do something over and over again, until perfect.

Olympic athletes are trained from a young age. Drills, routines, and exercises are perfected through hours of practice every day. Their life is dedicated to one purpose: perform perfectly without yielding to pressure.

Doing, action, application, and preparation are all terms associated with practice. This is no longer about theory, but method. Details are worked out for implementation.

Developing the ability to lead is a work in progress.

We need to be focused, dedicated, diligent, and steadfast to the one purpose we are called to do, and lead others in that cause.

Supportive Leadership

Support groups are generally associated with recovery: addictions, eating disorders, grief in the loss of a loved one, or from divorce.

A couple of questions should be considered for our leadership.

Who makes up the support group for leaders? Put together a core group of others who will share and contribute to the group’s design.

What benefit will they provide? They serve as a reminder that others have and do experience the same challenges, and they provide accountability.

Who makes up the group, the purpose of the group’s design, and what we apply to our own leadership is the determining factor to its success.

Vision and Mission

In an effort to develop a vision and mission statement, we often get the ideas reversed, and rightfully so, since they are interrelated.

The mission of an organization, specifically the church, describes “what to do.” The foundation is built on the purpose of our existence and the mission directs every decision for all related activities.

The vision describes what we desire to see as a result of the mission. The vision takes into consideration the image of the future that connects the long-term desires with achievable goals.

We must communicate both the vision and mission if we hope to achieve any level of success.

What Are You Looking For?

People generally find what they look for, or so we are told.

We find truth in this thought because when we look for the worst, we tend to find the worst. When we look for the best, we tend to find the best.

Occasionally, even though we look for the worst, or best, we find the unexpected. We find the opposite.

This is especially true when leading people.

Consider the outcome if leaders led with intentionality and a purpose driven by the desire to look for only the best in people, and create the highest expectations.

We might just be surprised at the incredible results.

Consistency

Leaders need to be consistent in every area of life.

When there is a purpose that drives our life, we then align our words and actions with that purpose.

From this point, we develop greater consistency because there is a purpose behind our thoughts, which become our words, which influence our actions.

In our homes, neighborhood, on our jobs, or anywhere we go, people recognize consistency.

Consider the definition: “An attribute of a logical system that is so constituted that none of the propositions deducible from the axioms contradict one another.”

I thought you might like to ponder that thought for a while 🙂

A Leader or Leadership?

What is the difference in leadership and being a leader?

Certain authors who write about leadership indicate 2-3% of people in the world are leaders. Another segment of authorship claims everyone has influence. Thus, we are all leaders to a degree. The exercise of our influence may determine the type of leader we are or are not.

Leadership, however, seems to indicate the use of power to direct a group of individuals toward an objective, purpose, vision, or certain goals associated with these areas.

If we make this distinction, then the number of those who possess the authority to direct is fewer. Additionally, few desire this authority.

Duality of Purpose

The concept of leadership involves two key components: 1) We follow someone else, and 2) We carry a responsibility to influence those who follow.

Without understanding what it means to follow someone else, we lack the humility needed to influence those who follow.

True success is not determined by the number of people who follow us, but by the one we choose to follow.

There are leaders who led masses to destruction because they followed a self-glorifying purpose.

Of course, there are those who led a few, but led them to victory because they followed God.

Knowing the duality of our purpose aids the direction of our choice.