Category Archives: Leadership

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Great Communicators Connect

Communication is key in almost every area of our lives. It happens in our marriages and family life. It happens in our careers. It happens even in our hobbies and fun activities.

In order to be a great communicator, you need to connect well with your listeners. Otherwise, miscommunication occurs, leading to confusion, misunderstandings and frustration.

Electric Plug

For some, however, communication is more than just an everyday necessity. It is a way of life, a career, a job, or a ministry. For these people, communicating well is essential. Being a great communicator is foundational to everything else they do.

But being a great communicator is just like anything else; you must practice in order to be as effective as possible. Otherwise, you’ll stay in the same rut for a long time.

The best communicators connect well with their listeners. And the best communicators evaluate themselves regularly to make sure that they continue to connect well with their listeners.

Here are four questions that great communicators must ask to maintain their connectivity skills.

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6 Characteristics Of A Good Communicator

One of the key elements of ministry is being a good communicator. Obviously that is true of the one in the pulpit, preaching on a weekly basis. But it is also true for a lot of other roles in the church as well.

A few days ago, I shared three common characteristics of a bad communicator. Today I want to look at six of the good qualities.

Microphone

Since stepping out of youth ministry into a preaching role, I’ve found myself digesting everything I can find on preaching and communicating. While I will be the first to tell you that I still have a long way to go to become the communicator that I want to be, I have found that preaching every week is pretty incredible, and I enjoy it immensely.

In my reading of books, blogs, and articles on the topic of preaching or public speaking, I’ve identified several characteristics of a good communicator. I’m sure there are many more, but these six seemed to jump out at me.

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3 Characteristics Of A Bad Communicator

My role has recently changed. For more than twenty years, I focused my energy in ministry on working with teens. Over the past few years, I sensed that my time in youth ministry was coming to an end, at least in the way I’d know it for more than two decades.

Microphone

Earlier this year, I left my role as a youth minister and stepped into the lead role… permanently. And one of my primary responsibilities is preaching on a weekly basis. Previously, this happened a few times a year. Now, it’s a part of my weekly routine.

With that responsibility in mind, I’ve been reading as much on the art of preaching and communicating that I can get my hands on. And over the course of the past few months, I’ve discovered a few good characteristics and bad characteristics of communicators.

In this post, I want to look at the makings of a bad communicator, with an examination of the positive aspects in another.

I’ve identified three major characteristics of a bad communicator. As I listed these out, I actually had a longer list, but every one of them fit into one of these three categories.

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How To Develop A Daily Routine

Over the past few weeks, I’ve posted several articles on the importance of a daily routine. Since there are several different pieces in this series, I thought I’d gather them all in one place for ease of access.

While there may be more added to this series in the future, this post will serve as a landing page for the series.

How To Develop A Daily Routine

Here are the posts in this series, in order of appearance:

This series is by no means complete. I will continue to add ideas and articles to this topic, and link them here as they are written. If there is something you’d like to see covered, feel free to leave a suggestion in the comments!

What would you like to see added to this series? You can leave your thoughts in the comments section below.

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9 Habits You Need To Build Into Your Daily Routine

This is part of the series How To Develop A Daily Routine. Check out more from the series!

One of the most helpful things you can do to increase your daily effectiveness is build a solid daily routine. The sky is the limit for what you can build into your routine. But there are a few things you definitely need to include.

Hammer

In order to be the most effective, simple tasks should be done so easily that you don’t need to think about them. That’s where your routine comes in. But there are a few tasks that you need to make sure happen each day. Otherwise, you can waste precious time and energy focusing on something that should take very little effort.

Here are nine habits that you should build into your routine to help your life run as smoothly as possible.

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4 Strategies For Making A Daily Routine Stick

This is part of the series How To Develop A Daily Routine. Check out more from the series!

Creating a daily routine can be a incredibly helpful part of your life. But once you have a plan, sticking to that plan may be tougher than you think.

All of us have our tragic stories of beginning something new, and failing to maintain it, whether that is a diet, an exercise routine, a reading plan or anything else.

Glasses On Calendar

In order for your new routine to become, well, routine, you need to have a strategy for sticking to the plan for the long haul. Because it will be tough. Forming new habits takes some time, but you’ll be more likely to see long-term success the longer you stick to the routine.

With that in mind, here are a few things you should consider that can help you stick to your daily routine.

Be specific

This is one of the most important aspects of sticking to a daily routine. When our plans are too vague, they tend to slip through the cracks, we forget about them, or we lose interest.

For example, let’s say that you want to add more time for reading into your daily routine. That’s a great goal, but you won’t be as likely to see success unless you get more specific. What are you going to read? Are you reading for entertainment, or do you want to learn more about a particular subject? How long do you want to read each day? Thirty minutes? An hour? What are you going to do to avoid distractions during that time? Where do you plan to read? In your living room? At the library?

These are all things to consider when making your plans. Being more specific will help your chances of success skyrocket.

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Reaching Your Goals Using A Daily Routine

This is part of the series How To Develop A Daily Routine. Check out more from the series!

One of the best benefits of having a daily routine is the way it helps you achieve your goals. Setting and reaching goals can be difficult without a plan or a strategy. Building that effort into your daily routine can help immensely.

Books

I’ve discovered that people have a hard time setting goals. I know I did. People do one of three things when striving to set goal.

They rush in without a plan

Having no plan can kill your goals more quickly than anything else. If you want to go somewhere you’ve never been, you need a route to get there, a map, a strategy. The same is true for your goals. Without a strategy, you have no way of getting from where you are to where you want to be. Take the gym for example. Too many people buy a gym membership and then burn out and stop using it in a matter of weeks. Why? Because they jumped in without a plan.

Without a plan, your goals have little chance of succeeding.

They get stuck in the planning phase

I know a lot of people who want to plan out their goals in detail. They research. They read books. They talk to others. They buy what they need. They lay out a plan. But they never actually do anything.