I’ve been thinking a lot about leadership development lately. As a leader, I think about how I can grow, learn and improve myself as a leader often. This desire to grow is something that God has put on my heart for quite a few years. Leadership is something that must be constantly growing and changing. The best leaders are never content to stay where they are at, they know that there is much more to learn, there are other people that are doing things better that they can learn from and there is more that can be done to impact the world.
Leadership development is really about the desire to improve. The drive to serve the people around you better, to make a difference and change lives, to improve your organization or your family is what defines a leader. Without the realization that you need to constantly be growing as a leader you won’t change much as a leader, and your influence will not go up. You will soon be passed by and be ineffective. You will hit a lid and not be able to take your organization or your family to the next level.
If you want your business, organization, church, department, workplace, family, marriage or really any important relationship to improve, you need to work on yourself. When you make changes in yourself you can have more influence on the people around you. You must be careful about your motives in all of this as well. If you are wanting to grow as a leader to gain power, position, money, or recognition, then your influence will be short lived. People can see through that quickly and you can lose influence.
Every year I work on a personal growth plan for myself. I think about what areas I struggle in and how I can make improvements there. I look at my areas of strength and how I can get even better in those areas. I think about people I can learn from, books I can read, conferences I can go to or classes I can take.
Currently I am working with a team of people at NewPointe Community Church on a Leadership Experience, this experience will focus on competency based development, working to improve peoples competencies in 7 areas. We came up with these 7 after some extensive surveys and interviews. Our initial target group is people that are leading or have led small groups. These competencies are transferable in helping people improve at work and at home as a leader.
Our goal in this project is to equip men and women to lead better in all areas of their lives. People that go through his experience can increase their influence and help make a difference in their homes and communities. We will be launching a test group in early 2010 and hope to offer this to several groups of 12-15 people later next year. If you want to know more about this leadership development project please contact me at NewPointe Community Church.