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.

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

(In reverse order)

1)Who are you leading?

2)Are you leading?

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

John Maxwell in the 360 Degree Leader encourages leaders to know when to push and when to back off from their leader.  In times of change (the times of the leader) the rules no doubt still apply (Do I know something my boss doesn't, but needs to?  Is time running out?  Are my responsibilities at risk?  Can I help my boss win?  With the cards down, mostly the answer to these questions will be: "yes".  So as they say in Cotton Patch Gospel: "Let's get moving".  People are counting on you to lead.  There is no time like right now.  Do you have your cause?  Do you have ways to make genuine connections to the people who care about your cause?  Lean in. Create motion.  Are you offering a religious experience, and then waiting for people to come and get it, and then counting up the numbers and gauging the enthusiasm?  Or do you use interactions with the people whom you would like to come to generate curiosity, to create, to surprise, to delight, to catch off guard and to dialogue?  Seth Godin in Tribes says that leadership is a choice: a choice to not do nothing.  Don't do nothing: Lead.  How many people is a good number for your next event?  Probably fewer than you think if they are the right people.

4)As always, don't be a jerk.

4) As always, don't be a Jerk

(In reverse order)

1) Who are you leading?

2)Are you leading?

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.

Let's just say for the sake of discussion that there are no difficult people, only people who have survived difficult situations (and are responding poorly).  Let's also just say they are leading you (or supposed to be) or they are on your leadership team with you (or supposed to be) or they are in the group you are leading (or supposed to be).  Let's even say you may be one of them.  Don't panic.  Admitting that you are a survivor of difficult situations and you are responding poorly is the first step to recovery!   Maybe being a invalidator or a taker awayer is your form of control.  Maybe you feel like you can't really do anything because the invalidators and the taker awayers seem to have more power than you do, so what can you do?   You can lead.  Identify your cause.  Start getting people who care about that cause connected.  To you and to one another.  Don't let the survivors of difficult situations who are responding poorly dictate who you are and how, or even if, you will lead.  Dwight Cooper, the CEO of PPR, a nurse staffing company, developed this strategy to avoid being a jerk:  "Employees are not allowed to mindlessly complain to their co-workers.  If they have a complaint, they can take it to a manager or someone who can do something about the problem, BUT they must also offer one or two possible solutions."  This allows a culture of leadership to emerge and eliminate energy vampires, jerks, invalidators, take awayers, survivors of difficult situations who are responding poorly.  As a LID, lean into positive energy.

Click here For A Positive Business Manifesto by Jon Gordon  the ideas expressed here also work for ministry and Leading in Discipleship.

Urgency

Change looming?  Dark clouds on the horizon?

Check out John Kotter's post,  An Astonishing Lack of Urgency on HBS Conversation Starter; 

Discipleship is all about change.  Sometimes it's elective.  Sometimes it's not.  If you are facing uncertainty, you have to lead (and since you are a LID, it'll be in Discipleship).

If you are proactively leading in discipleship, don't as Kotter says assume the change is going to happen "over there"- in the group you are recruiting to be a leadership team, or the targeted audience, or the supposed stake holders, or anyone else if you, as the sappy song says about peace, aren't ready for the change to begin with you.

What do you want to change or what is changing?  Don't expect it to happen, as Kotter says, "over there".  In fact be urgent about changing.

To paraphrase Mr. Kotter's What Can You Do if you want to raise the lid List:

1) Who are you leading?

2) Are you leading?

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

lids

In his book The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership,  John Maxwell identifies the lid as the limit of our leadership abilities.  Hard work, efficient management, and knowledge can only bring us so far.  If the lid of one's leadership is low, then the potential for success is also low.  The key, then, is not just to work hard on achieving success but to work hard on raising one's level of leadership.

It's not just about how well you are doing.  It's also about how well those around you are doing.

According to Maxwell, "He who thinks he leads, but has no followers, is only taking a walk." 

If you are tasked with, want to be, count on, or live and die by Leading in Discipleship and you get the feeling from time to time that you're just taking a walk:
a. join the club
b. let's talk

Joining a cause

I recently joined a cause: Building a community that desires to learn about and to intentionally follow the way of Jesus and to invite others into this relationship.  Why did I do that?  Why does anybody join a cause?  Well, I'm too lazy to start one.  Most of the good ones have been taken already, anyway.  So I was interested in joining one.  I wanted to join one that aligned with my values, my schedule; that gave me a chance to make my experiences relevant, that gave meaning to my traditions, that made scripture real, and that was reasonable.  I want a faith that I can believe in.  I want to be a Leader in Discipleship.  Want to join me?