Developing Kingdom Leaders – Tom Yeakley

Taking the Mystery out of Leadership

Archive for the tag “Leadership”

21 Sep 2015

Leadership Jazz – 3

Max DePree has the following to say about leading from beliefs, values, and vision in his excellent work titled, “Leadership Jazz.”

“From a leader’s perspective, the most serious betrayal has to do with thwarting human potential, with quenching the spirit, with failing to deal equitably with each other as human beings.

“Beliefs and values are the footings on which we build answers to the questions, “Who matters?” and “What matters?”  The promises we make as leaders must resonate with our beliefs and values.

“It behooves us, then, to find our voices.  Leaders must speak to followers; we must let them know where and how we stand on the important issues.

“Vision is the basis for the best kind of leadership.  A vision exists somewhere when teams succeed.  Instinctively, most of us follow a leader who has real vision and who can transform that vision into a meaningful and hopeful strategy.

“Another fragile facet of a leader’s character is what I call an eagerness for the fray. The best leaders I know are always anxious to get to the job at hand, to do what they are there to do.

“Real preparation consists of hard work and wandering in the desert, of much feedback, much forgiveness, and of the yeast of failure.

“Moving up in the hierarchy does not confer competence.

“The only appropriate response to a promotion is ‘Good grief, have I got a lot to learn now!’

“Success tends to breed arrogance, complacency, and isolation.  Success can close a mind faster than prejudice.”

A leader’s communication, both verbal and written, will focus those around them on various issues.  Pick and choose your communication topics to ensure that your influence is focused on those issues that are most strategic and important for the mission at this time.

What are you communicating about?  What are your followers focusing on as a result of your communications?

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14 Sep 2015
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Leadership Jazz – 2

Max DePree in his great leadership book, “Leadership Jazz” has some excellent thoughts regarding a leader’s promises.

“Though I’m still learning things about being a leader, I can tell you at least two requirements of such a position:  The need to give one’s witness as a leader—to make your promises to the people who allow you to lead; and the necessity of carrying out your promises.

“Followers can’t afford leaders who make casual promises.  Someone is likely to take them seriously.

“For no leader has the luxury of making a promise in a vacuum.

“A leader who backs away from her promises under duress irreparably damages the organization and plants the seeds of suspicion among her followers.

“The best leaders promise only what’s worth defending.

“It’s important to understand that leadership is a posture of indebtedness.  The process of leading is the process of fulfilling commitments made both to persons and to the organization.

“Knowing what not to do is fully as important as knowing what to do.

“Remember to think of followers as volunteers.  Remember, too, that the goals of the organization are best met when the goals of people in the organization are met at the same time.

“Here are several questions that leaders should expect to hear.  The answers to these questions, you see, are some of the promises leaders will make.

  • What may I expect from you?
  • Can I achieve my own goals by following you?
  • Will I reach my potential by working with you?
  • Can I entrust my future to you?
  • Have you bothered to prepare yourself for leadership?
  • Are you ready to be ruthlessly honest?
  • Do you have the self-confidence and trust to let me do my job?
  • What do you believe?”

If you are a verbal processor you can unintentionally make promises that you never intended.  As a leader your words carry extra weight and your thoughts expressed are assumed to be decisions.  You did not intend your words as final, just talking and thinking aloud, but others remember and will quote you in the future.  Beware of communicating what to you are just thoughts in a process but others hear as final decisions.

Are you a faithful leader?  Are you faithful to your word?  Can you be counted on to do what you say you will do?

Posted in #2 BE - Who a Leader Is, #3 DO - What a Leader Does and tagged , , , , , , ,
07 Sep 2015

Leadership Jazz

Max DePree has a second leadership classic titled, “Leadership Jazz.”  Here are some of his thoughts on the subject of faithfulness in the section, “Finding Your Voice.”

“Let me suggest five criteria as a way to start thinking about faithfulness.

  • Accountability for others, especially those on the edges of life and not yet experienced in the ways of the world, is one of the great directions leaders receive from the prophet Amos.  Amos tells us that leaders should encourage and sustain those on the bottom rung first and then turn to those on the top.
  • Integrity in all things precedes all else.
  • The servanthood of leadership needs to be felt, understood, believed, and practiced if we’re to be faithful.
  • There is a great misconception in organizations:  That a manager must be either in control or not in control.  The legitimate alternative is the practice of equity.
  • Leaders have to be vulnerable, have to offer others the opportunity to do their best.  Leaders become vulnerable by sharing with others the marvelous gift of being personally accountable.

“One becomes a leader, I believe, through doing the work of a leader.  It’s often difficult and painful and sometimes even unrewarding, and it’s work.”

Are you becoming a faithful leader?

Posted in #1 KNOW- How a Leader Thinks, #3 DO - What a Leader Does and tagged , , , , , , , , ,
31 Aug 2015

Taking Time Away

I’m seeking to model leading from an overflow of my own walk with the Lord.  In doing so I’m taking time away from the routines of leadership in order to refresh my soul and body.

What fills your tank?  When was the last time you had an intentional break from your routine responsibilities?  Are you leading from an overflow or is your tank near empty?

Don’t think you need a break?  Ask your spouse?  🙂

 

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24 Aug 2015

Balance and Margin

As leaders we must be living and leading from an overflow with plenty ‘in the tank’ from which to influence others.  This means that we take regular times away for refreshment and refilling the ‘tank.’

Even Jesus reminded the Twelve to, “Come away by yourselves to a secluded place and rest a while.” [For there were many people coming and going, and they did not even have time to eat.]” (Mark 6:31).

I’m taking a break for restoration and refreshment.

How about you?

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17 Aug 2015

Leadership is an Art – 3

Here’s a final thought from Max DePree’s classic leadership book, “Leadership is an Art.”

“In addition to all of the ratios and goals and parameters and bottom lines, it is fundamental that leaders endorse a concept of persons. This begins with an understanding of the diversity of people’s gifts and talents and skills.

“Understanding and accepting diversity enables us to see that each of us is needed. It also enables us to begin to think about being abandoned to the strengths of others, of admitting that we cannot know or do everything.

“When we think about leaders and the variety of gifts people bring to corporations and institutions, we see that the art of leadership lies in polishing and liberating and enabling those gifts.”

One of our primary leadership functions is the development of those we lead.  This development must be intentional, seeking to maximize a person’s contribution to the mission.  This development must be individualized, with forethought given to opportunities and personal needs.

Are you developing those you are leading or just hoping that with the passing of time and more experience that they will be developed as better leaders?  It has been said, “Experience is not the best teacher, but it is evaluated experience that truly develops leaders.”  Give feedback to those you lead and they will be better leaders.

 

Posted in #1 KNOW- How a Leader Thinks and tagged , , , , , , , , , , ,
10 Aug 2015

Leadership is an Art – 2

A friend reminded me of the following, “Tom, there comes a time in everyone’s life when you become the one who gets to tell the history.”  With aging comes responsibility to pass to the next generation the stories that represent the values of the community.

Here are some additional thoughts on communication from Max DePree is his great leadership book, “Leadership is an Art.”

“Every family, every college, every corporation, every institution needs tribal storytellers.  The penalty for failing to listen is to lose one’s history, one’s historical context, one’s binding values.  …without the continuity brought by custom, any group of people will begin to forget who they are.

“We intend to make a contribution to society.  We wish to make that contribution through the products and services we offer, and through the manner in which we offer them.  In an era of high technology we wish to be a “high-touch” company that makes the environmental connection between persons and technology in the markets we choose to serve.  We intend to be socially responsible and responsive…

“Good communication is not simply sending and receiving.  Nor is good communication simply a mechanical exchange of data.  No matter how good the communication, if no one listens all is lost.  The best communication forces you to listen.

“The right to know is basic.  Moreover, it is better to err on the side of sharing too much information than risk leaving someone in the dark.  Information is power, but it is pointless power if hoarded.  Power must be shared for an organization or a relationship to work.

“Plato said that a society cultivates whatever is honored there.  Let us make no mistake about what we honor.

“An increasingly large part that communication plays in expanding cultures is to pass along values to new members and reaffirm those values to old hands.”

How’s your storytelling?  How’s your communication skill?  Are you intentional about the stories you tell that will reinforce key principles and values that you wish to pass to the next generation?  Are you self-aware when talking to others you are influencing about the principles and values you are communicating?

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03 Aug 2015

Leadership is an Art

Max DePree in his classic work titled, “Leadership is an Art” had the following thoughts regarding a basic definition of leadership.

“The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality.  The last is to say thank you.  In between the two, the leader must become a servant and a debtor.  That sums up the progress of an artful leader.

“Leaders don’t inflict pain, they bear pain.

“The measure of leadership is not the quality of the head, but the tone of the body.  The signs of outstanding leadership appear primarily among the followers.  Are the followers reaching their potential?

“Leaders are also responsible for future leadership.  They need to identify, develop, and nurture future leaders.

“Leaders owe people space, space in the sense of freedom.  Freedom in the sense of enabling our gifts to be exercised.  We need to give each other the space to grow, to be ourselves, to exercise our diversity.

“Another way to think about what leaders owe is to ask this question:  What is it, without which this institution would not be what it is?  Leaders are obligated to provide and maintain momentum.  Leadership comes with a lot of debts to the future.

“Leaders are responsible for effectiveness.  Much has been written about effectiveness—some of the best of it by Peter Drucker.  He has such a great ability to simplify concepts.  One of the things he tells us is that efficiency is doing the thing right, but effectiveness is doing the right thing.

“To be a leader means, especially, having the opportunity to make a meaningful difference in the lives of those who permit leaders to lead.”

Leadership is an art to be developed over time.  It is attention to  development of ourselves, seeking to be the best leader we can be.  And the amazing thing is that the Lord allows us to ‘practice’ on His people.  This should serve as a good reminder that we are not that important in the total equation.

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27 Jul 2015

Great Leadership Books

‘Of making many books there is not end…’ (Ecclesiastes 12:12).   Just enter any bookstore and look at the litany of leadership books filling the shelves.  I’m often asked to help leaders sort through the many and find the few best books on the subject of leadership.  Here’s my suggested list of foundational leadership books for someone who wants to get a good start on this challenging subject.  It’s a good start for building a leadership library.

Leadership Bibliography

Books to be read for a foundational understanding of leadership

 The Bible  –  read and study this Book first as your basis for understanding the principles of spiritual leadership;  this will be the grid through which you evaluate all other teaching on the subject of leadership

Leadership Concepts

   1.      Spiritual Leadership / Sanders

  2.      Leadership is an Art  /  DePree

  3.      Leadership Jazz  /  DePree

  4.      Leaders:  Strategies for Taking Charge  /  Benni & Nanus

  5.      Principle Centered Leadership  /  Covey

  6.      The Leadership Challenge  /  Kouzes and Posner

7.      The Making of a Leader /  Clinton

Leadership Practice

  1.      The Effective Executive / Drucker

  2.      Developing the Leader Within You  /  Maxwell

  3.      Developing the Leaders Around You  /  Maxwell

  4.      The Training of the Twelve  /  Bruce

  5.     Leading from the Sandbox   /  Addington

  6.     Leading Change  /  Kotter

7.     Biographies of great leaders  –  Dawson Trotman, Hudson Taylor, George Mueller, J.O Fraser, Adoniram Judson, Amy Carmichael, etc.

Posted in #1 KNOW- How a Leader Thinks and tagged , , , , , , , , ,
20 Jul 2015

The Amazing C.T. Studd

There are no guarantees we will live a pain-free life. God does not apologize for asking much of His followers. It is His right. He owns us. He bought us with His own blood. “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body” (1 Cor. 6:19-20).

But God also promises us that whatever cost we are asked to pay in denying self and following Him He will repay multiple times over. “I tell you the truth,” Jesus replied, “no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age (homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields–and with them, persecutions) and in the age to come, eternal life” (Mark 10:29-30). Therefore, whatever has been sacrificed for Christ, when compared with what has been gained in return, will not seem to be too great a cost to pay.

C.T. Studd came from a wealthy English family and was a 21 year-old student at Cambridge University when he trusted Christ as his personal Savior. Studd was an outstanding athlete, with a possible career in professional sports, in addition to being a good student. After his conversion, he dedicated his life and wealth to Christ.

He and six other Cambridge students offered themselves to Hudson Taylor’s China Inland Mission in 1885. Nine years later he returned to England with a wife, but broken in health. After recuperating, he gave away his home to the mission and traveled throughout America for two years recruiting young men and women to give themselves to missions. In 1900 the family moved to India for six years when once again they had to return to England. In 1910 he left his family in England to pioneer a new mission into the heart of Africa. This ministry eventually became Worldwide Evangelization Crusade (WEC) which continues to this day.

Studd personally had a ministry on four continents and through those he touched, the entire world. But this adventure began with a decision to deny fame and fortune in this world in order that he might follow Christ.

Jim Elliott, martyred by Latin American Indians as a young man. said this, “He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep, in order to gain what he cannot lose.”

Posted in #2 BE - Who a Leader Is and tagged , , , , , , , , , , ,

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