2) Are you leading

1) Who are you leading?

2) Are you leading?

If the answer to question 2 is no then the question to answer 1 is no one. People are waiting for you to lead them.  An interesting question to consider:  Is your church, Bible study, ministry team, small group, or Sunday school class a lay led church, Bible study, ministry team, small group, or Sunday school class a  or a staff led church, Bible study, ministry team, small group, or Sunday school class?  Hopefully the answer to both is "yes".  The more important question is: Is your church, Bible study, ministry team, small group, or Sunday school class a staff managed church, Bible study, ministry team, small group, or Sunday school?  If you find yourself trying to get people to do what you want them to do rather than trying to connect people to each other, yourself, and your cause, then you might be managing people instead of leading people.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer said if you fall in love with your idea of community, you will kill community wherever you go.  If you fall in love with the people around you, you will create community wherever you are.  

Leadership starts with falling in love with those around you.  According to Seth Godin in Tribes, some of the essential elements to look for within your leadership include: challenge to the status quo, creation of a culture around your goal and involving others (even those not under you on the org chart) in that culture, curiosity, charisma borne of a descision to lead (and not the other way around), communication of your cause, commitment to the cause (skin in the game), connections of followers to each other.  How can you tell if you are leading?  Ask one person you are responsible for leading, one person you are responsible for leading with and one person who is responsible for leading you to rate you on a scale of 1 (low) to 10 (high) on:  1.  People Skills 2.  Planning and strategic thinking 3.  Vision  4.  Results.  Have a cup of coffee with them and assess why they rated you as they did.  Leadership can be learned.  Let's get moving.

Happy Thanksgiving.  

3)Become a leader with urgency.  Lean in or back off, but urgency says: err on the side of leaning in. 

4)As always,  don't be a jerk.