Here are some thoughts from Erwin on leadership from Mosaic’s Leadership Advance:
The Starfish & The Spider is a book that refers to a “Leaderless Organization” which is actually unhealthy. Consensus leadership is an oxymoron since the person with the loudest “No” ends up being the leader.
We need leaders! God calls people to become leaders, and He keeps us accountable for becoming the person He has gifted us to be. The Scriptures are filled with leaders! God is looking for people whose hearts are fully given to Him with the character that they could be trusted with the lives of other people. For God, leadership emerges out of servanthood.
Simon and Schuster’s qualifications for their authors:
1. Authentic. The author’s story is authentic to who they are.
2. Kindness. “We only publish people we like.”
3. Can the author carry the weight of the stories they write.
1. People are looking to us to see if we authentically represent the story of Jesus. Am I living the story I’m inviting others to live out? The most important thing for us to do is to be personally fully alive. That is more important than trying to grow your ministry. If we are fully alive, the growth will come.
2. Middle management includes the meanest people. They have the power but haven’t earned it. The founders tend to be the most kind.
Keys to reaching others include being likeable and accessible.
If not likeable, you aren’t the gift to others you think you are.
If not accessible, the world is missing out on you!
3. Too often we are too lazy to take the time to translate the story in a way that makes sense to others. Ex. Jesus did this by using common metaphors (i.e., “fishers of men”).
People don’t prepare for success. They have a plan for failure. Some people fall under the weight of success. If you aren’t preparing someone to take your place, you aren’t planning for success. You are expecting failure.
What ways have you grown as a leader? How can we help others become more effective leaders?
I learned how to digest failure. The statement, “You will learn more from your failures than you will ever learn from your successes” is profoundly true. But you still have to swallow the realization that what you tried didn’t work the way you planned.
To become more successful as leaders you must embrace three things: 1) Be transparent, 2) Be truthful in all things, 3) Trust people to carry out what you have delegated for them to do. People that follow you – deep inside desire to witness a “leader” that will do what he/she also ask of others. Jesus fished in “their” water, their world first. HE gained a simple respect from those HE invited. Then, as scripture tells us, they followed Him into His world. Built into this calling, (Luke 5) Jesus as leader had “humility and a love” for the ones HE would lead. Do we? Or, do we just lead without regard for the inner passion that resides in all people to do great things?