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Main Idea: The courage of a leader lies in their ability to take risks. The courage of a follower lies in their ability to choose when to follow and when to disobey. An act of loyalty when everyone else seeks mutiny may be that expression of courage in the same way that walking out may be the act of courage when everyone else is choosing loyalty. There is no leader who will never need to be checked. Your obedience can be helpful and your obedience can be destructive. – Destructive obedience is characterized by: 1. Blindly accepting the authority’s definition of the situation. Responsible followers can become victims if they must take on the role of whistleblower. 2. Allowing a shift in responsibility to take place from follower to leader. There are no innocent bystanders, only silent colluders. There are no innocent bystanders, only silent colluders. You need to know how to fire your boss. Closing Questions: 1. Am I willing to check my leader in a healthy way? 2. Am I maintaining personal agency and independent thinking while following well? 3. Have I evaluated whether or not I should stay in terms of “can I still add value” or “Am I able to keep following well”?

Main Idea: The fundamentals of following are good in and of themselves, but they are also the fundamentals of leadership because great leadership will learn how to create great followers. Follower must know how to give support to their leaders. Followers must know how and when to give feedback to the leader. Followers must know how and when to give feedback to the leader. – Followers must tell leaders how they feel, and how intensely they feel about the issues concerning them. The follower must never put himself in competition with the leader. Closing Questions: 1. Am I giving frequent feedback to my leader at an appropriate time? 2. Am I aware of how my leader feels about my level of contribution? 3. Am I doing anything that it is not in the best interest of the organization?

Main Idea: One of the most important contributions you can make to the mission of your organization, and one of the most overlooked aspects of healthy organizations, is knowing how to follow well. While you will have opportunities to lead, you will always need to know how to follow. One of the reasons we have dismissed “followership” is because we don’t understand that there are different types of followers. Following well must be defined in terms of level of contribution, not blind disobedience. Blind following is not good followership. Closing Questions: 1. How good does a leader have to be for you to get on board? 2. How poor can a leader be and you’re still able to make a positive impact? 3. How quickly can you identify when you become a negative influence instead of making a positive impact?

The antidote to “capping out” is being a glutton for punishment. You need to be a glutton for punishment (delight in it) in one area in particular: Feedback. The feedback you need to go to the next level will come from your critics, not your fans; because while your fans will see your strengths, your critics see your blind spots. Your desire to be good must exceed your desire to feel good. Be secure enough in your identity and ability that feedback won’t wreck you. You don’t have to drastically change who you are to shore up your blind spots. Being aware of your criticism doesn’t mean you surround yourself with your critics.

If you listen to one speaker you’ll sound like that speaker, but if you listen to 1,000 speakers; you’ll sound like yourself. In Leadership we don’t always have the access to thousands of leaders to help us model our leadership off of. For most of us, we don’t learn about ourselves from those we lead under. We simply attempt to emulate their strengths and avoid their weaknesses which rarely results in effective leadership. They can lead how they were called to lead better than you can lead how they were called to lead. The Styles of Leadership: – Democratic: Team-Building – Authoritarian: Heavy Hand – Coaching: Developer – Transactional: Win-Win Scenario – Transformational: People developer on steroids – Laissez-Fare: Permission 1: How did you lead before you knew how to lead. 2. What Leadership Skills/Activities are you drawn to?

When you make one thing better you typically make something else worse. Thomas Sowell, “There are no solutions, only tradeoffs.” Helpful Steps 1. In every decision identify what you’re gaining and what you’re giving up. 2. Identify your priority and not just your pain point. 3. Choose to take the mission further and not just to make your life easier.

Most of the pain is in the in-between. The pain is in the purgatory. When my identity is in doing hard things, hard things become an opportunity and not an obstacle. Telling myself that hard things are the norm has made doing what is most difficult actually enjoyable.

Leadership development is a process that consists of 4 key elements: 1. What do you need a leader to do? 2. Who do you need a leader to be? 3. How do you identify a Leader? 4. How do you help them grow into what they are called to become? 5 things we use to identify leaders 1. Relational Proximity 2. Calling out Gifting 3. Engage in Vision-Focused Conversations 4. Rally 5. Debrief

Leadership development is a process that consists of 4 key elements: 1. What do you need a leader to do? 2. Who do you need a leader to be? 3. How do you identify a Leader? 4. How do you help them grow into what they are called to become? Leadership is not an identity, it is an action. When someone is consistently competent in that action we ascribe to them the identity. When you know what you need a leader to do, it clarifies who they need to be.

While leadership is consistent influence leveraged towards a vision, development is an event. Three Requirements for Development: 1. You have to know where you’re good & bad, and where those on your team are good & bad 2. You have to have a vision for the details. 3. You have to want them to be better more than you want to feel good.

The top reason to step out of leadership is you don’t see a way for the future to be better than the past. – Leaders who don’t see a better future will create a worse future. – Leaders don’t have to optimists, but they must be optimistic about the future. – If you don’t see a way for the future to be better you’ll always attempt to bring us back to a present that doesn’t exist. How to have a better view of the future. – Assess your organizations strengths & opportunities – Write our what is lost if you no longer exists. – Discover who is thriving.

Thought 1 – There are different types of mentors: Professional (Skill/Career), Personal (Life/Integrity). – Do you want to be a mentee or an apprentice? Thought 2 – Some of your best professional mentors will come outside your field. – Your best personal mentors will always have a decade on you. Thought 3 – Don’t ever ask anyone to be your mentor, ask them if you can take them to lunch. Thought 4 – Mentors are shortcuts. – Books are great mentors.

– Targets should not become the focus instead of progress, improvement. – Bucket List: Things you want to accomplish before you die. Resolution: Things you want to accomplish before the end of the year. – Curious List: All the things I want to know something about.

Tool 1: Don’t do less, do different. – If your work is mental, to re-charge you must do something physical. If your work is physical, to re-charge you must do something mental. Tool 2: Distance Your Work – If we need to disconnect, which we do, we must make it harder to work. Tool 3: Find an activity you get lost in – Mindless easy activities do not release your burden. It takes energy to engage in what will lighten your load.

As we expand our grasp of emotions we have a better way of understanding, and dealing with in healthy way, what we’re feeling. Burnt-Out: Syndrome conceptualize as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed that is characterized by: energy depletion, increased mental distance, or feelings of cynicism related to one’s job. When we are lazy in the diagnosis we are usually wrong in the treatment. The key question: What’s really the issue and not just the buzzword that everyone is using right now? Recommendation: Atlas of the Heart by Brene Brown

You are better at seeing close up or far away. You need to be aware of how far into the distance you can see. Your vision and focus should work like a lens. The Rhythm: – Get involved in the details to increase your up close vision. – Lead at altitude to increase your distance vision.

Step 1: Create Alignment – Clear Teaching on ministry philosophy – Elevated Guests, Baptism, Serving (Create Cultural Symbols) – Defined discipleship process – Clarified our church values. Step 2: Get Input Email to the whole staff & Board – What is working great? – Are there any fires that need put out? – 3 month, 1-year, 10-year expectations? The Listening Experience: – 4 groups, 70 people, staff as guides. – Closed Business: Businesses close all the time, and so do Churches. Some Churches even stay open while being functionally closed because they’re no longer accomplishing their mission. If we were to close, why would that be? – Field: Imagine we were starting all over again: what would we do? What would we do different? – Outside a High School Football Game: If we were going to reach all these people what would we do? How would we reach all these people? – Another Ministry: What would we do if we had unlimited resources? What would we do if we had no resources? Step 3: Vision Group Prep: – Outlined the process – Prepared a report from the listening experience focusing on: Issues that need addressed, the heart of our Church, and opportunities. Starter Questions – What was one of your most meaningful experiences in Church? – What were some of your thoughts on the “heart of highland park” report? – What should we not pursue, what should we be sure that we don’t accomplish if we didn’t have a vision? Titled: “Not This” – What could we accomplish in 20 years? Titled: “This” Groups of 3-4 – What 2-3 projects or focus points do you believe we should focus on over the next decade? – Why? What is the result/outcome of these projects. Solo Project: What do you think we must accomplish in 2-3 sentences? Large Group – What are we seeking to do? – Why are we seeking to do it? – How will we measure it?

Principle 1: Create as much input as you possibly can. Principle 2: Set the vision with the largest group you can. Principle 3: Set the Standard for the Vision Principle 4: Work in this pattern: Problem, Focus, Metric, Inspiration

You can kill yourself before you start by doing one of two things: – Doing too much work on your own. – Doing too little on your own. Doing too much means no one else can own the vision. Doing too little wastes time & risks the true vision. A Healthy Dynamic – You should be clear on what the vision is not. – You should be clear on your process: How will you arrive at the vision.

The process you use is how you get someone to lean in instead of rolling their eyes at “vision”. Proverbs 29:18, “Where there is no revelation, the people cast off restraint.” Reason 1: Vision enables us to see, do & become more. Habakkuk 2:2, “Write the vision, make it plain, so that he may run who reads it.” Reason 2: Vision grants individuals agency. Reason 3: The output of the vision process is unity. Unity is not the prerequisite, it’s the output of the work on & towards the vision.