9 Leadership Summit ’13 Take-aways

Courage correlates to every component of leadership. (Bill Hybels)

At the heart of leadership is courage.  Courage to vision.  Courage to move people to a place unknown.  Courage to listen to the callings God puts in our lives.   We don’t pursue these things because we often simply lack the courage to act on them.

Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier. (Gen. Colin Powell)

If there is anything that strikes me about Gen. Powell, it is his steady presence.  He addressed this saying that he had the philosophy of “never get too down, never get too up.”  He was always optimistic, but never went too far with it.  With that said, he mentioned how important an outlook of optimism is.  By the way, Gen. Powell was hilarious.  Some really great dead pan comedy—good stuff.

People leave jobs because they feel: anonymous, irrelevant, or they have no means to measure their success. (Patrick Lencioni)

There are three main reasons people leave jobs.  They are: Anonymity …they felt unknown. They were just a commodity.  Irrelevance…If they think your job is pointless.  Immeasurement… Not being able to tell if they are doing a good job.

How can I make the people around me smarter? (Liz Wiseman)

All people are either multipliers or diminishers.  Multipliers find ways to engage the people around them and allow other people’s intelligence to shine.  Diminishers (sometimes accidentally) greatly underutilize the people around them and diminish those people’s intelligence.  Find ways to more intentionally multiply the intelligence of the people around you.

Ongoing operations are always at odds with innovation, but innovation is necessary. (Vijay Govindarajan)

Innovation is more than ideas.  Innovation is creativity plus execution.  It’s commercializing creativity.  The only way this can happen is find ways to break the natural resistance to innovation that happens in an ongoing operation.  Ongoing operations often fuel innovation and are necessary, but we must find ways to move into ways to create the future.  So, we bet on the future, find a hypothesis, test it (cheaply), build a separate team to help drive this innovation, and lead through it.

No one has all the answers.  What a leader does is model the courage to ask the questions.  (Dr. Brene Brown)

Brene Brown spoke about courage and vulnerability with, well, courage and vulnerability.  I walked away realizing like never before how crucial it was to be vulnerable with others when in leadership.  Shame is the opposite of this and causes us to hide.  Powerful stuff.

 Harvest is plentiful but the workers are few.  (Oscar Muriu)

Oscar doesn’t just say this, but lives like it’s true.  He has spent the better part of his ministry life investing in young leaders.  As a result, he has a church that is flourishing with young leaders.  His advice: never do ministry alone!  Every time you do ministry alone, you lose an opportunity to invest in upcoming leaders.

Leaders who stop their inevitable downward spiral think, feel, and act differently than those who continue down the spiral.  (Dr. Henry Cloud)

Start with the belief that you can do what God is calling you to do through Christ who strengthens you.  Watch out for the spiral.  It begins when we take things personally, we believe they are pervasive, and when eventually we believe they are permanent.  Make a list of what you can control and what you can’t.  Do the things you can and put the rest in God’s hands.

Why is the church still here?  Because Jesus promised it would be. (Andy Stanley)

A classic Andy Stanley presentation.  He has a knack for taking the things we all often think about, but presenting them in a compelling way.  He did a great job of reminding us of the miracle that the existence of the church is.