Learning Leadership

What leaders truly need

This morning I was thinking back on my experience at the Catalyst West Leadership Conference.  Was it a great conference?  Yes.  Was it what I needed as a leader?  Not really.

The thing that has inspired me the most about teaching leadership is that as a young leader often I had the passion and desire to help people, but didn't have the knowledge and skills to pull it off. That's the main reason I write: for this blog and my book.

My experience from leadership is that I often don't need someone to motivate me, encourage me, or push me along.  I need someone who can teach me, coach me, and mentor me.

I have enough passion and vitality to want to impact the world and do great things.  Motivation is the least of my worries.  I need more application oriented teaching where I'm taught how to lead people more effectively.  I need someone who can come along side me, teach me what I need to know, and help me get where I want to be with the team that I lead there.

When it comes to giving leaders what they need, it's rarely encouragement (at times it might be).  What leaders need most is teaching.

It's often said that when the student is ready, the teacher appears.  And as a hungry leader ready to impact the world, I am ready, and so are you.

First Steps in Mentoring

"Successful people, people who are where you want to be, are willing to acknowledge what they don't know."
Andy Stanley, The Principle of the Path

Monday night I had coffee with a friend who asked me if I could mentor him on leadership. 

Usually my first response to someone who asks for my time is an automatic "no."  We are all too busy in life and lately my time has been stretched more than normal.  However, this request was from a good friend who was sincere in his desire to learn about leadership so I said yes.  We met for coffee and enjoyed an hour talking about leadership and how he can become a leader.

The first assignment I gave him was to read You Don't Need a Title to be a Leader by Mark Sanborn.  This is a great book for anyone who is interested in leadership, but does not have a formal position as a leader.

As we began talking, I quickly realized there would be three steps to the mentoring process my friend needed to work through.  The process became:

1. Identify his limiting beliefs - In our dialogue it was clear that there were several elements of his identity and the way he views himself that would prevent him from leading effectively.
2. Work to prove those beliefs to be incorrect - Some of the beliefs he has about himself are incorrect and need to be proved wrong. 
3. Identify and develop strengths - Focusing on strengths is important and will be vital to improving his belief in himself as a leader.

We took time to talk about reasons he believed he wasn't a leader, we worked on those beliefs, and we looked to identify his strengths so they could be built on and developed.  After an hour we barely scratched the surface of how my friend can improve his leadership, but we're both excited for the future of what's to come.

These three steps might not be the perfect mentoring process to follow, but it was one which was beneficial Monday night.  Maybe you can employ these steps in mentoring to help someone else.

Either way, I look forward to meeting with my friend again to continue helping him improve as a leader.

Win 2 FREE Tickets to Catalyst One Day

If you follow my writing much you've probably read my thoughts from attending the Catalyst West Conference.  It was an amazing conference and I was grateful for the opportunity to attend.

On Aug 26th Catalyst One Day will be in Seattle, WA featuring Andy Stanley and Craig Groeschel.

Here's what you'll learn from attending Catalyst One Day:

Hear Andy Stanley and Craig Groeschel uncover the secrets to creating and sustaining momentum.  Learn about creating systems, environments, and entire cultures that will set the right initiatives in motion and fuel progress.  Whether you need fresh insight for your staff, your church, your business, or yourself, this is an exceptional, can’t-miss opportunity.

The price to attend this One Day is $139, but you have a chance to win two FREE tickets here!

The Catalyst guys and I have teamed up to give away two free tickets to one of my readers.

Here's the criteria to enter:

1.  Leave a comment below with your Twitter name, Facebook page, and/or website

2. a) Retweet this message: FREE ticket from @ChristopherLS to @CatalystLeader's One-Day Conference in Seattle, Aug 16th. Details, http://bit.ly/a8OlOF

or

2. b) Post a link to this blog post on your Facebook page, MySpace, blog or personal website

This is a chance for someone to attend this great One Day event for free.  So please help spread the word and encourage people to attend.

Deadline is Monday, August 23rd at 2pm PST.

I'll choose a random commenter for the tickets.

The one request I have (which is optional; it's a request, not a requirement) is that you reimburse me to me for the cost of shipping the tickets.  Details on that will be sent to the winner.

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If you'd like to read more of what I learned from attending the Catalyst West Leadership Conference, you can go here.

A Day of Hope Book

If you've read my blog for a while you've probably learned about A Day of Hope.  It's a program I've volunteered with for the past five years where we feed families in need for Thanksgiving.

For almost a year I've been working on a book telling the story of A Day of Hope: how we got started, how we grew our program, and how others can do the same project in their community.

You, my loyal blog readers are among the first to see the cover and read about the book.

The book should be released on Amazon sometime around November 1st.  If you know of a local bookstore who might like to sell the book, please let me know and I will be glad to get them some copies.

Be Principles Based, Not Rules Based

While leading the discussion for a monthly leadership class I realized that as leaders we need to be principles based, not rules based.

What's this mean?

Principles based means I do things because of overarching principles that show we what to do no matter what situation I'm in.  If I'm committed to the principle of being a person of integrity, then that will keep me from embezzling money and doing any activity that would violate that integrity.

Rules based means I do things because of specific rules that show me what to do in each individual situation.  A rule is that I won't violate my integrity while at work, but that rule doesn't apply to my personal life where I might violate my commitment to family members.

Be principles based, not rules based. 

Building a Foundation for Business

You probably read Seth Godin's blog just like I do.

Today he has a great post on Foundation elements for modern businesses.

As a small business owner I found several of his points to be very informative and key for business leaders to know. 

#14 is my favorite: tell a story.  Stories get listened to and leaders need to tell more stories.

Enjoy Seth's post.

Coaching on Communication

Communication is a vital skill for a leader. 

It allows you to effectively teach, inspire, and share your vision with your followers.  Communicating effectively allows you to move faster when leading because you don't have to stop and answer questions to the people you are leading.

Communication is a skill that I've worked very hard on the past couple of years.  I'm in a local Toastmasters group and recently gave my first "Ice Breaker" speech to our club.

As my blog readers, I'm interested to hear your feedback on my talk.  My outline and talk content are below.

• Outline
• Talk Audio

Do you have any tips for my communication?  What do you believe I do well as a communicator and what can I improve?

Thanks in advance for your feedback on how I can improve my communication as a leader.  I believe what Steven Covey said is true:

"It takes humility to seek feedback.  It takes wisdom to understand it, analyze it and appropriately act on it."

So,
Your role is to give the feedback and I look forward to analyzing it and appropriately taking action on it.

Leaders Need to Laugh

When I think about laughter for this month's blog carnival, two thoughts come to mind:

Don't take yourself too seriously

and

It's best to laugh at yourself first because others will

One of the key qualities of a leader is to be able to laugh.  You need to be able to laugh and have fun with the people you lead.  If they are having fun and enjoying what they do, they are going to be more productive.

One of the great results from the speaking and writing of Tim Sanders is his study (learn more here) on what happiness, gratitude, and laughter has on people in the workplace.  When we laugh, it helps us breath, gets that good oxygen flowing to our brain, and allows us to think more clearly and perform better at work.

If you lead people, the people you lead are going to spend a lot of time with you.  And if you're not fun to be around, people will not want to be around you.

Help people to laugh, help people to have fun, and be goofy.

One of the principles that I share in my new book, A Day of Hope, is that I was always being goofy and trying to help volunteers enjoy their time.  This made the volunteering experience more enjoyable and more fun.  And it kept them to coming back to contribute more of their time and talent to our cause to help more people.

As a leader, embrace laughter both for yourself and for others.

Book Giveaway: The Promise Doctrine

This week I'm giving away a free autographed copy of The Promise Doctrine by Jason & Craig Womack.

As a self-published book The Promise Doctrine has sold over 1,000 copies!  Jason Womack is a friend of mine and he authors a great blog you can read appropriately titled, Your Best Just Got Better.

This is a great book to help leaders learn what promises mean and how they can do a better job of keeping the promises they make.  If you'd like to read my thoughts from when I read the book, you can view those in a blog post I wrote entitled, Learnings from The Promise Doctrine.

The book giveaway is now closed.

Here's what you need to do to win a free copy of The Promise Doctrine:

1. Tweet this: Win a free copy of The Promise Doctrine given away by @ChristopherLS. Details here, http://bit.ly/aamGAB

or

Post this link on Facebook - http://bit.ly/aamGAB

2. Leave a comment below so I can track who shared the link on Twitter and Facebook.

On Wednesday, August 4th at 5pm Pacific time I'll randomly choose a winner.