Leadership Nuggets

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Here are some things I’ve learned about leading people:

  • When people feel like you listen to them they work harder and perform better
  • It’s important to admit when you made a mistake or handled something wrong – be open about it and say it outloud
  • It’s good to change your mind if there is a better idea proposed
  • Ask for feedback and give people permission to be critical of you, the strategies and the ideas
  • Only ask for input from your team if your willing to change what your asking about, if you have already made up your mind it demotivates people to give input and then you just do what you want anyway.
  • Explain the why of your decisions and your strategies
  • It’s OK to have a bad day – if your always happy and positive you don’t comes across as genuine and real.
  • You have to be flexible; with your strategies, your work schedule, your timelines, your budget
  • People follow leaders that are humble yet persistent
  • If you think you know it all you’re not a leader your a dictator
  • Most people want to grow and get better – believe the best about the people you lead
  • Never stop developing yourself, read, learn from others, take risks and learn from failure
  • Write down your goals and share them with your team ask the people you lead to do the same
  • Keep reminding the people you lead what the main targets are and celebrate the wins
  • Be real and vulnerable with your team
  • Empower people and let them do their job
  • Stay connected to your team, meet with them on a regular basis to listen, coach, encourage and re-direct if needed
  • Communicate a lot – when you get information think about who needs to know this and tell them right away
  • Be direct and honest
  • Don’t lead everyone the same way, each person is unique and you need to know what motivates them and what encourages them and what deflates them
  • Love the people you lead – you don’t have to be best friends but you do need to care about them
  • Give feedback as quickly as possible don’t wait for the annual review to talk about things to improve
  • Take personal responsibility and don’t blame others
  • Hire people with good character, people skills and a desire to grow
  • Fire people that can’t get along with people and think they know it all
  • Make decisions and don’t be wishy washy – once you have the input you need make the call
  • Always be thinking about what obstacles might be ahead and how to avoid them
  • Share information quickly and often
  • Be yourself, don’t pretend
  • Pray a lot

My Life Focus

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At some point in everyone’s life they ask themselves the question “Why am I here?  What’s the purpose for my life?”  Those are great questions and we should all wrestle with those to discover the answers.  As I’ve worked through those very questions I keep coming back to these three things:  Faith – Character – Leadership

My Life Focus: Sincere Faith, Humble Character & Servant Leadership

The first area of focus or purpose in my life is my faith.  We all have faith in something.  I have chosen to put my faith in Jesus Christ.  He is the most important relationship that I have in my life.  Because of my faith, my perspective on life, the world around me and the people around me is much different.  I believe that everyone is more spiritual that physical.  Our spirit is who we really are and it lives in a temporary body.  I also believe that our spirit will live forever, so even after our body stops working our spirit goes on.  We will live forever somewhere, either in the presence of God or separated from him.  That is why I put my faith in Jesus Christ, because he paid my debt, forgave all my sins and stands in my place before God.  Because I have a relationship with Christ I know where I am going to spend forever.

The second area of focus for my life is humble character.  To me character is about the qualities that a person is known for.  When someone says your name what are the things that come to their mind?  These qualities can be both good and bad.  When you think about what people will talk about at your funeral, that is a good indication of what kind of character you have.  For me, I want those things to reflect these qualities: Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness, and Self-control.  Our character is always under construction because no one is perfect.  In my life I make mistakes, fail, sin, have bad thoughts and do or say things I regret.  I sometimes have a bad attitude or respond to stressful situations in inappropriate ways.  What I try to do though is learn from those setbacks and bad moments.  Developing our character takes work, pain and struggle but it is totally worth it in the long run.

The last area of focus in my life is servant leadership.  Leadership has been a hot topic for a long time, yet servant leadership is not nearly as popular.  Most leaders would agree with the idea of serving the people around them, yet most people prefer to be served instead of serve others.  As a leader my main focus needs to be on setting the people around me up to win.  Creating space for them to learn and grow by allowing them to do what they are good at and coaching them on what they are not good at.  Servant leadership is about doing what is best for the organization, family or church rather than what is best for me.  Again this is easy to say and hard to do because we all have selfishness in us.  Our tendency is to look out for ourselves, make sure our needs and wants are met before we think about meeting the needs and wants of other people.  Changing that mindset takes work, focus and failure.  The question I try to ask myself is what would the people around me say if they were asked is Chad a servant leader?

My hope is that these three things will inspire you to pursue your life purpose and focus.  Never stop growing.

Lead On