All posts tagged Leadership Summit

When Leaders Fail :: Adam Hamilton

by Tim Schraeder on 08/05/2010 in Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit 2010 with 14 Comments

Adam Hamilton is senior pastor of the United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in Leawood, Kansas. One of the fastest growing, most influential mainline churches in America, the adult membership has increased from four to 13,000 since 1990. Leaning on personal leadership experience, Hamilton provides perceptive insights into how and why leaders fall—and how to help preempt such failures within a team before they occur. The author of several books, including Leading Beyond the Walls, 24 Hours That Changed the World, and Making Love Last a Lifetime, he was identified as one of the top “Ten People to Watch in America’s Spiritual Landscape” by PBS’s Religion and Ethics Newsweekly.

  • This may be the most important talk you will hear.
  • It may save your life and your ministry.
  • A week doesn’t go by that a leader doesn’t experience a moral failure.
  • None of us is immune.
  • Even the possibility of a moral failure will take a leader down.
  • There are serious issues at stake when we talk about a leader falling in the Church.
  • The issues are the soul, health and future of those who have fallen and the church involved.
  • We are responsible for those who have fallen and concerned about the trust that has been broken in our congregations.
  • In Adam’s own church, two pastors were involved in an extramarital affair.
  • There were four ways their church could respond: They could say nothing and hope no one found out; they could be evasive they could use the ‘Scarlet Letter’ approach, calling out the sin and distancing themselves from the offender; or approach with transparency, honesty, and compassion.
  • The Church is called to reach out to those who are broken.
  • We need to reach out to our failing leaders as we do to broken people outside of the church.
  • There are two levels of integrity: the integrity of the leader to those they are responsible for and the integrity of the Church to be the Church.
  • Many people expect the Church to act like Pharisees and stone those who are sinners.
  • We all struggle with sin and temptation.
  • There is sin and consequences but there is also grace.

Why Leaders are Susceptible to Falling

  • Church of the Resurrection has a Staff Covenant. The expectations and policies are clear to the staff.
  • If something looks like a date or smells like a date we are going to call it a date.
  • You can develop all the policies in the world but you won’t prevent something from happening.
  • Twice a year, they bring the staff together to talk about misconduct.
  • We are all wired with three fundamental drives: reproduction, intimacy, sin.
  • Those drives can lead us towards self-desctruction.
  • As leaders we are constantly giving of ourselves… we get empty, lonely, and vulnerable.
  • Our vulnerability can lead us places we don’t want to go.
  • “Prone to wander Lord I feel it, prone to leave the God I love…”

How Does This Happen?

  • We work with other people doing things that are going to change the world.
  • Moment of the Maybe – when you find yourself wrestling with something and you begin to wonder… that’s where sin is justified.
  • When we’re pondering the “maybe,” our reasoning diminishes.
  • We never ask, “How does this end?”
  • We don’t consider the consequences.
  • Words have power… they are a short distance between our feelings and acting on them.
  • Never share your feelings with another person that is not your spouse.
  • The maybe can turn into a yes.
  • Don’t let the Devil ride because he’s going to want to drive.
  • There is so much pain and trust that’s broken… it’s hard to figure out where to begin again.
  • There are Second Chances, but try everything to stick Plan A.

5 R’s of Resisting Temptation

1- Remember Who You Are

  • You are a child of God.
  • You are a leader in the Church.
  • You are someone’s husband or wife, daughter or son
  • You are a child of the king.

2- Recognize the Consquwences of tour actions

  • Ask yourself if you will feel better after you do something.
  • Will I feel proud or ashamed?
  • More free or more enslaved?
  • What will happen to the Church, people who trusted?
  • Imagine the worst possible outcome of your actions.
  • How does this end happy?

3-  Rededicate Yourself To God

  • Stop, Drop, and PRAY
  • Ask God to help you with your feelings.
  • It’s like taking a cold shower.
  • We tend to stop praying when we’re playing with the maybe.

4 – Reveal Your Struggle to a Trusted Friend

  • James 5:16
  • The power of temptation is its secrecy.

5- Remove Yourself from the Situation

  • Sometimes we have to take radical means to avoid sin.
  • It’s better to enter the Kingdom of God missing a hand or an eye than to have both hands and both eyes and be outside of the Kingdom.
  • We might have to erect high boundaries.
  • We might need to leave.

The aim of the Christian life is sanctification. - 1 Thess. 4:3-5 and 7

  • We are called to honor God with our bodies. We are called to model for others what it means to be a follower of Christ.

All of us are tempted as human beings.

  • There are consequences when we fall.
  • The final world of the church must always be a word of grace, not judgement.
  • We serve a Lord who was a friend of sinners.
  • He said, “the Son of Man came to seek and save that which was lost.”
  • His final prayer was “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.”

God is the God of a Second Chance. The Gospel is for sinners. Jesus offers you His life so that we might have grace.

The Mentor Leader :: Tony Dungy

by Tim Schraeder on 08/05/2010 in Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit 2010 with 34 Comments

One of the most admired and beloved figures in professional sports, Tony Dungy’s name is synonymous with character and integrity. A former professional football player, he coached the Indianapolis Colts for seven years, becoming the first African American coach to win the Super Bowl. Since his retirement, he has written two best-selling books, Quiet Strength andUncommon, and is an analyst for NBC’s Football Night in America. Involved in the work of many not-for-profit organizations, he also takes an active role in mentoring younger athletes. Craig Groeschel, pastor of LifeChurch.tv, will talk to him about his new book, The Mentor Leader, and how to positively influence others through personal coaching.

Craig Groeschel: Your leadership style is very different and one word that defines your style is mentoring.

  • When he was young, his dad told him that his job as a teacher was to help people get As.
  • His coach later told him that his job was to help his player play better.
  • He saw his role as helping.
  • Leadership is all about helping those that you lead.

Typically, the coach is the authoritative figure who uses fear as a motivator.

  • He tried to develop relationships and help his players understand that he was there for them.
  • He was initially criticized for being too soft.
  • He believed that if the players would believe he was really there for them that a bond would form that would lead to them succeeding and their team leading.

What about when that style isn’t working?

  • Stubbornness is a virtue if you are right.
  • Persist, stick with what you believe.

You can work yourself into the ground, how do you live with life balance?

  • Football and winning aren’t everything. Family life and spiritual life is everything.
  • I didn’t want to burn my assistants to the ground.
  • He tried to schedule time for them to have sufficient family time.
  • If people are doing well at home they will do better at work.

What would you do as a mentor to help people understand life balance?

  • I’d show you what I’m doing.
  • Be efficient.
  • Don’t waste time.
  • Don’t mistake hours for productivity.
  • We can be more efficient if we work hard in the time we allot.

What do you do if you’re looking for a mentor?

  • We have to be available for people to mentor.
  • When God has blessed us we have to share it.
  • When you are looking, look for people you admire.
  • Mentoring can happen at a distance.
  • A 30-second conversation from a mentor can change your life.

Who were people you’ve learned from?

  • He watched Tom Landry from afar.
  • Mentors don’t always have to be icons.
  • They can be people around you that are just slightly ahead of where you are in your life.
  • You can mentor someone from any level.

The word mentoring intimates people. It sounds formal. What does mentoring look like practically?

  • It’s incumbent on the person who is mentoring… discovering what people need, their stories, etc.
  • The person being mentoring has to be forward to express what they need.
  • The mentor shouldn’t be the one always asking questions.
  • Mentoring is a process of building trust.
  • Informal is much more powerful than formal.

What was one of the most life-changing moments of your life?

  • He was going to quit his football team his senior year of high school.
  • His coach encouraged him to stick with it.
  • Why would you ever let anyone stop you from doing something you enjoy?
  • Don’t allow others perception of who you are determine who you will be.

No matter where you are in life, one word can be life-changing.

  • The biggest thrill you get in mentoring is seeing people developing and growing.
  • His biggest thrill wasn’t winning the SuperBowl, it was seeing his players becoming better people.

If you want to mentor or invest in someone, what type of person should you look to invest in?

  • We have to be intentional to reach out to the young people in our communities.
  • They are young people everywhere looking for mentors.

Do you see yourself going back into coaching?

  • He sees himself working more with young people and investing in their lives.

Out of everybody who has been a mentor/role model, who was most important?

  • His parents and many others, but Jesus Christ was the most important.
  • He’s been the best mentor and leader I’ve had.

Who is Christ to you? What has He done?

  • What would it profit a man to gain the world and lose his soul?
  • Christ came to give us a relationship with God and show us a way to live.
  • Nothing can take away from my relationship with Christ.

Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit :: Bill Hybels

by Tim Schraeder on 08/05/2010 in Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit 2010 with 59 Comments

Bill Hybels is the founding and senior pastor of Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Illinois, and the chairman of the board for Willow Creek Association. He convened The Global Leadership Summit in 1995, following a God-given prompting to help raise and develop the spiritual gift of leadership for the local church. Both visionary and passionate about seeing every local church reach its full God-given potential, he speaks around the world on strategic issues related to leadership, evangelism, and church growth. An exceptional communicator, he is a best-selling author of more than 20 books, including the upcoming release, The Power of a Whisper: Hearing God and Having the Guts to Respond.

  • Leaders can oftentimes find themselves in a leadership slump.
  • Leaders move people from here to there.
  • Leaders must be able to move people from a current reality (here) to a preferred future (there).
  • Some people are oftentimes going to be satisfied with “here.”
  • People oftentimes like it “here”… they don’t like the idea of going “there.”
  • There’s familiarity and safety “here.”
  • What do you do when people say they are staying “here”?
  • Crank up the heat and show them what life will look like over “there.”
  • The first play is not to make “there” sound wonderful, but to make “here” sound awful.
  • You have to convince people why staying “here” is a bad idea.
  • Before Martin Luther King Jr gave his “I Have a Dream” speech he gave hundreds of speeches that could have been considered “We Can’t Stay Here” speeches.
  • People were ready for the “there” speech because they had heard the “here” speech many times before.
  • Your God-given job is not to preside over something, our job is to figure out what God wants to get done, what role you play in it and move something or someone from here to there.
  • Our job is convince people that we cannot and will not stay here.
  • Staying here breaks the heart of God.
  • Your God-given job is not to preserve something from its gradual demise.
  • By God’s grace, with His power and for His glory, we are moving people there.

Team Building

  • It takes fantastic people to move a church or an organization from here to there.
  • You can’t do it alone.
  • One of the greatest joys of leadership is assembling and knitting together teams of fantastic people.
  • Teams are the catalyst of moving people from here to there.

The 3 “C’s” of Team Building… with a new “C”

  • When building teams we typically look for CHARACTER, COMPETENCY and CHEMISTRY.
  • We need to add a new “C”: CULTURE.
  • We need to ask what kind of person flourishes in our unique culture?
  • We’ve started asking, “What do we value? What works for us and what doesn’t?”
  • A fundamental goal of leadership is to attract, develop and retain a team of fantastic people that will flourish in your unique culture.
  • We want to make a disproportionate investment in your talents and abilities.
  • Telling people that they’re valuable to your organization is life-changing.

Challenge

  • We have a holy challenge of assembling, developing and inspiring a team of fantastic people without whom we could never get from here to there.
  • Do you see this as a leadership fundamental?
  • Do you view the assembling of fantastic people a privilege?
  • Have you defined your culture?
  • Are there sensitive conversations you need to have?

Mile Markers and Celebrations

  • How do you encourage people to stay on the journey?
  • Where on the journey are people most vulnerable on the journey from “here” to “there”?
  • The whole vision gets imperiled in the middle of the journey.
  • It’s not the first three or four miles that are a challenge in running a marathon, or the last few [because the end is in sight], it’s the miles in-between that it’s difficult.
  • Circumstances can hinder momentum.
  • People forget how bad it was “here” and how wonderful it will be when they get “there.”
  • Refill people’s vision buckets regularly.
  • Vision leaks.
  • Celebrate every mile-marker you possibly can on the way to the destination.
  • Create mile-markersarbitrarily if you need to.
  • What keeps people on the journey is some sense of hope that they are going to get there someday.
  • Turn set-backs into celebrations.
  • Any headway in the right direction is progress.
  • There is a 40% differential between in the productivity of an inspired teammate, church member, office worker, etc … and one who is uninspired.
  • Jesus monitored the inspiration level in His followers and breathe life into them when he saw that it was waning
  • He knew that inspiration matters.
  • When is the last time you threw a party to celebrate not just the destination, but the mile markers along the way of getting there?

Whispers from God

  • You can never get from “here” to “there” in a straight line.
  • You never amass fantastic people or make much progress on the journey without hearing from God en route.
  • The primary way God speaks to us is through the Bible.
  • Be a regular relentless reader of the word of God
  • God speaks to us directly by His Spirit.
  • John 10:17 … “my sheep will hear my voice…”
  • We may never hear an audible voice but He puts thoughts in our minds that are not our thoughts.
  • Follow those urges and those promptings.
  • Do you believe that God still speaks today?
  • We can’t live out a script that other people have for our lives.
  • God’s whisper is enough.
  • God tries to speak to us every single day.
  • We need to lower the ambient noise in our lives to receive and hear what God is speaking to us.
  • We will never have to do this alone… God with us all the time, everywhere.
  • Will you do everything your power to hear God’s voice and heed it?
  • We would see incredible changes in leadership all around the world if we’d be willing to listen to the whispers of God.
  • The smartest moves we make in leadership don’t come from our own wisdom but from wisdom that is not our own.
  • There’s no telling what God might do if you listen to God’s whispers and heed them.

Some Whispers You May Be Hearing

  • Don’t Quit,
  • Step Up
  • Apologize
  • Make the Tough Decision
  • Get Help
  • Stop Running from God,
  • Slow Down
  • Show your Heart
  • Let others Lead
  • Feed your Soul
  • Bless the Team
  • Make the Ask
  • Do something more Impactful
  • Come Clean
  • Embody the Vision
  • Celebrate the Victories
  • Speak the Truth
  • Pay the Price
  • Count Your Blessings
  • End the Secret
  • Check your Motives
  • Set the Pace
  • Give God your Best
  • Get Physically Fit
  • Serve Your Spouse
  • Pray

Whispers from God help us get from here to there the right way with the right motives.

Interview with Tony Blair

by Tim Schraeder on 08/07/2009 in Leadership Summit 2009, Notes with No comments

One of Great Britain’s most internationally recognized statesmen, Tony Blair served as Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland from 1997 to 2007. During his tenure he helped transform Britain’s public services in education and health care and is widely credited for his contribution towards assisting the Northern Ireland Peace Process. He continues to be active in public life today, working as a key leader in the international community’s efforts to secure peace in the Middle East. He also advocates on issues of personal interest, including Africa and climate change. In 2008, he launched the Tony Blair Faith Foundation, which promotes understanding between the major faiths and increases understanding of the role of faith in the modern world.

On His Early Days as a Leader

  • Sometimes people look at people in a position of leadership and think they have confidence, etc.
  • “I’ve never been like that.”
  • “I felt very normal in an abnormal situation.”
  • “I felt compelled at a certain point to step out.”
  • Conventional wisdom can be the comfortable thing to do.
  • The comfortable thing to do can be the wrong thing to do.
  • You have step-backs and failures when you step out against the norm.
  • Most people liked to be liked.

Decision-Making

  • The thing about leadership is that you have make a decision inside of yourself that there will be things you will stand on and be faced with the fact that other people might not like it.
  • Part of leadership is having an inner core, an irreducable core, the thing that cannot be chipped away at.
  • You cannot yield on what is at your core.
  • You have to do what you know is right, even if it’s not popular.
  • Your job is to stand by what you think.
  • Be prepared to walk away.
  • The times I found most difficult to lead were when I thought I was compromising on what I thought was right.
  • Most people in leadership know when they are taking a position because they actually believe it.
  • You’ve got to listen to and absorb criticism.
  • If the facts change, I change my mind.
  • You have to have a clear view.

Doubt

  • Doubt is expressed as a deep reflection of what you are doing and if it’s right.
  • You need to think through your decisions.
  • Doubt can be right, it causes you to think.
  • You’ve got to put aside fear that comes in the moment of decision.
  • You have to be able and willing to take the responsibility of decision making.
  • It’s never easy… but in the end, your ultimate duty is to decide… somebody has to.
  • If you’re not stepping up and deciding, someone is.
  • Even if people strongly criticize you, they respect your role of decision making.

Faith

  • If you are of religious faith, it’s the most important thing in your life.
  • It’s not that you make decisions in a “religious way.”
  • But it does give strength and support.
  • Faith and its role in the world is an enormously potent force for good or bad.
  • Faith plays progressive and constructive role in the 21st century.
  • There’s a lot people of faith can accomplish together.

Negotiating

  • I’m a great believer between the differene between tactics and strategy.
  • There’s strategy in the goal you are trying to reach.
  • To get there, it requires a lot of compromise and tactical issues along the way.
  • You’ve got be be prepared to have  a lot of give and take.
  • Things are difficult and tough to get through, but things should always be measured against your goal.

Leading Through Crisis

  • Do we react by pointing a finger or make a statement of our unity?
  • Made the judgement that a statement of unity was most important.
  • In the moment of crisis… get the facts, get the managerial details, get a message that meets the emotions of your people.

Pain + Disappointment

  • By counting your blessings you can endure pain and disappointment.
  • Remember it’s a privilege to do your job.
  • We’re blessed and lucky to be doing what we are doing.
  • Every day you should wake up and feel motivated.
  • Whatever pain and disappointment you accumulate, it cannot compare to the blessings you have.
  • What are you REALLY complaining about?

To Church Leaders

  • Leadership is a blessing.
  • It’s a gift that you’ve been given and a gift you can use to help others.
  • No matter how difficult, challenging or painful, it’s your duty to do it.
  • The way the world around you works, whatever it is, without a leader, things don’t get done.
  • The joy of getting something done makes all the pain worthwhile.
  • It’s a blessing and a gift from God you should use.

Hybels’ Comments

  • There are things you have to be unyielding on and you have to be ready to walk away if that’s compromised.
  • What is that irreducible core in you?
  • We are torn in leadership… people pulling us in different directions.
  • Are you willing to stay true to what you believe?
  • 1 Corinthians 15:58: be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing your work is never in vain, if it’s in the Lord.
  • Leadership is a blessing.
  • It feels heavy at times.
  • We get to paint pictures for people to aspire to.
  • We get to lift up causes and people that matter for eternity.
  • Keep in balance.
  • There’s pain, blessing and opportunity in all of it.
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