Category Archives: Leadership

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Developing An Environment Of Growth, Part 2

One of the ways that leaders grow is by maintaining an environment of growth. Without building such an environment in your life, you could be setting yourself up to fail. Or, at the very least, setting yourself up to experience difficulty in leadership.

Watering Can

photo credit: macca via photopin cc

In my last post, we looked at three indicators of a growth-oriented environment.

Today I want to look at three more.

Epictetus is credited as saying “It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.” This is true. Without an environment designed to foster growth, you will not grow.

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Developing An Environment Of Growth

A crucial element in leadership is continual growth.

This is true in all areas of leadership, but I find it to be especially true in ministry.

Green Grass

photo credit: Jason A. Samfield via photopin cc

Growth is critical if you want to stay on top of your game and be effective for the long term. I’ve seen too many leaders sacrifice personal and spiritual growth. It doesn’t take long for their leadership to crumble, for their effectiveness to wane, and even for their integrity to be compromised.

In order to grow, you have create the right environment. Hank Aaron understood this when he said, “My motto was always to keep swinging. Whether I was in a slump or feeling badly or having trouble off the field, the only thing to do was keep swinging.” He created an environment where he could continue to grow, no matter what. And we must do the same.

In order to maintain your leadership abilities, you need to make sure that you are in an environment that is designed for growth. There are a lot of aspects of your leadership environment that you may have no control over. But there are several elements that you can control.

So how do you determine if you are in an growth environment? Here are a few tell-tale indicators that will show you. And if you don’t see these, many of them you can seek out or even create.

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What To Do When It Rains

Sometimes it rains.

That’s a pretty profound statement, I know. But it’s true. Sometimes it rains.

And when it rains, plans have to change.

Water Drop - Green

But just because plans have to change doesn’t mean that you aren’t making progress.

It just has to take a different form.

We just got hit by Tropical Storm Debby. It’s been raining for most of the past week. In just over three days, some areas here in central Florida received over 20 inches of rain. Yeah, I said 20 inches.

With that amount of rain, plans have to be adjusted.

The same is true in leadership. Sometimes things happen that require you to rethink where you are headed, or at least how you’re going to get there.

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The Importance Of Passion

One of the essential ingredients of effective leadership is passion.

In ancient literature, pathos meant to submit, to undergo an experience, to be completely affected or overcome. In more recent times, the meaning of the word has transformed to mean something more emotional, with reason being the opposite.

Passion

But I think there is an element to passion that we miss. Passion implies emotions, it’s true. But not to the exclusion of reason. On the contrary, true passion must include a reasoned approach to an emotional desire.

People who have not been in Narnia sometimes think that a thing cannot be good and terrible at the same time.

– C. S. Lewis, The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe

There is a stark reality to passion: it can be dangerous. In fact, true passion must be dangerous. When we are truly passionate about something, it consumes us, it becomes a major part of our lives, it’s all we can think about. That is both good and bad.

It’s good because people will buy into that which we are excited about. It’s bad because passion can quickly become obsession and rule us. And most things worth our passion fall on both sides of that line.

Just as C. S. Lewis stated about Narnia, so we understand about those things truly worth our passions.

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Casting Vision: What’s The Payoff?

Successfully casting a vision for your organization is a crucial part of leadership.

You have to know how vision works in the life of the leader, and you have to know how to communicate it to the people around you.

But what’s the point? What’s the payoff?

Trophy

I believe there are at least four resulting benefits when a vision is cast successfully.

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Four Essential Steps To Communicating A Vision

Vision is crucial in leadership.

There’s no easy way to say this: without vision, there can be no leadership.

If you are a leader, having a vision is essential. You need to understand how vision works in the life of a leader.

And then you need to know how to communicate it.

Man With Megaphone

There are four essential steps to communicating your vision to the people around you.

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How Vision Works In The Life Of A Leader

I’ve come to realize over the years that one of the most powerful aspects of leadership is vision.

The power of vision makes or breaks leadership; or more accurately, the power of vision makes leadership, and the lack of vision breaks it.

For a leader, vision is fuel.

Man With Telescope

Over the next few days, I plan to post a three part mini-series on vision and how it works in the life of the leader.

This post is the first, How Vision Works In The Life Of The Leader.

Following this will be two more posts: Four Essential Steps To Communicating A Vision, and Casting Vision:  What’s The Payoff?

Like I said, vision is fuel for leaders. It provides the catalyst that a leader needs to begin building momentum in the direction of a fulfilled mission.

The most basic definition of a vision is a perceived picture of the future.

Anyone can do that.

What sets a leader apart is developing a perceived picture of the future that produces passion.

There are three parts to developing this type of vision.