We all love people with energy. We like people who seem to do a lot of things very well because they seem to have boundless reserves of energy. We all would love to be people that have this energy but can we all have it?
I think the answer is yes and it is all about changing our attitude and doing less not doing more.
Attitude
How do you see your life? Are you grateful for all the opportunities in your life God has given you? Many of you have the opportunity to be at least one of the following: parent, spouse, teacher, leader, lawyer, pastor, musician, nurse, student, friend, activist, blogger, preacher, etc. You get to go for walks with those you love, work in an air conditioned environment, watch movies, read books, play sports, learn, cook great meals, go out to eat meals, etc.
Do you thank God for all of the things you get to do? Because of your place in the west you are privalleged more almost all the world so is your day filled with thankfulness?
Attitude is so important, if we have an attitude of thanks for the great things God has put in our lives we will enjoy life more and when we enjoy things they give us energy!
How is your thankfulness?
Do less not more
One of the problems we have in our fast paced culture is that we feel we need to do more and more and more. But the result is we do things that we hate and that drive us down or we do things we love doing but we take too much on and then we are despondent when we know we are doing a sub par job on most of the things we are doing.
The thing is we need to do less but do what we do better. We also need to choose the things we do better.
What are your main responsibilities? Do they get the lion’s share of your time?
How many things do you do each week that energize you?
How many things do you do each week that drain you emotionally?
How many things do you do that you could get other people to do?
If a leader lacks energy, he or she will not inspire people.
If a leader is not inspirational are they really a leader?
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Leadership: Passion
You can see what a person is passionate about.
Take some ministers to the footy and they will scream their lungs out. Put them in the pulpit and get them to preach about the cross and it sounds like they are reading from a shopping list.
You can see what a person is passionate about
We are in a time where people are more concerned with how you say it rather than what you say. This decline in our culture is unfortunate at best and downright dangerous at worst. But it says to the leader that they need to figure out how they will communicate what they need to communicate. In short the communicator needs to be visibly passionate.
This especially goes for preaching. If you want to preach and be engaging be visibly passionate.
Tips on communicating passion:
1) Make sure what you are communicating hits your heart. If you want to be communicating with passion are you passionate about what you are communicating? My worst sermons have been when I have not taken time for the message to freshly inspire, correct or rebuke me. I find that if the text has done work on me I will communicate the text far better than if I hadn’t.
2) Choose your words carefully It always cracks me up when I hear some ministers talk about their wives. Because their description of their wives are the worst advertisement for marriage ever!
This is a direct quote from a minister about his wife. (I have changed her name though) “This is my wife, her name is Wanda and we have been married for 15 years now and she has been really helpful as a ministry partner. The way she organizes our family is really commendable.”
This quote communicates no passion at all because of the words he chose. Words like helpful and commendable aren’t even okay when you are talking about a book let alone your wife! Also, notice how there are no words which display affection. The words love, like, beautiful, etc. are replaced with helpful and commendable which are just boring and tepid. (By the way if anyone calls something I do “helpful” I really find it hard to know where I am going to hide their body!)
If we want to communicate passion we need to choose our words carefully.
3) Speak with passion. Use your voice to show you are angry/sad/scared/happy/etc. If you speak in a monotone it will make people switch off.
4) Prepare, prepare , prepare. I have found that when I am really confident with what I am communicating I am more passionate. However, when I am not confident passion is the first thing to go. So to be passionate I need to prepare whatever I am communicating well. In fact the more I prepare the better I communicate with Passion.
So what things this week do you need to communicate with Passion? How will you prepare yourself and your message to passionately communicate?
Take some ministers to the footy and they will scream their lungs out. Put them in the pulpit and get them to preach about the cross and it sounds like they are reading from a shopping list.
You can see what a person is passionate about
We are in a time where people are more concerned with how you say it rather than what you say. This decline in our culture is unfortunate at best and downright dangerous at worst. But it says to the leader that they need to figure out how they will communicate what they need to communicate. In short the communicator needs to be visibly passionate.
This especially goes for preaching. If you want to preach and be engaging be visibly passionate.
Tips on communicating passion:
1) Make sure what you are communicating hits your heart. If you want to be communicating with passion are you passionate about what you are communicating? My worst sermons have been when I have not taken time for the message to freshly inspire, correct or rebuke me. I find that if the text has done work on me I will communicate the text far better than if I hadn’t.
2) Choose your words carefully It always cracks me up when I hear some ministers talk about their wives. Because their description of their wives are the worst advertisement for marriage ever!
This is a direct quote from a minister about his wife. (I have changed her name though) “This is my wife, her name is Wanda and we have been married for 15 years now and she has been really helpful as a ministry partner. The way she organizes our family is really commendable.”
This quote communicates no passion at all because of the words he chose. Words like helpful and commendable aren’t even okay when you are talking about a book let alone your wife! Also, notice how there are no words which display affection. The words love, like, beautiful, etc. are replaced with helpful and commendable which are just boring and tepid. (By the way if anyone calls something I do “helpful” I really find it hard to know where I am going to hide their body!)
If we want to communicate passion we need to choose our words carefully.
3) Speak with passion. Use your voice to show you are angry/sad/scared/happy/etc. If you speak in a monotone it will make people switch off.
4) Prepare, prepare , prepare. I have found that when I am really confident with what I am communicating I am more passionate. However, when I am not confident passion is the first thing to go. So to be passionate I need to prepare whatever I am communicating well. In fact the more I prepare the better I communicate with Passion.
So what things this week do you need to communicate with Passion? How will you prepare yourself and your message to passionately communicate?
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Leadership: Candor
“That was very helpful”
“You are being inappropriate!”
What the hell do these sentences mean?
Nothing
One of the biggest issues Christians face is a lack of candor, I define candor as:
Clearly communicating what needs to be said when you need to say it.
I think we lack candor because we want to be nice and we do not want to hurt the other persons feelings.
This is gutless.
And not loving.
Loving people means saying the hard things, whereas being nice means you will make them feel good.
If you want to love people be candid.
Candor is not just used when you need to say the hard thing, it is also used in giving specific feedback.
We could say “that sermon was very helpful/lovely/etc.” and thereby not really say anything about the sermon. Or you could say “What I really dug about the sermon is that you made me clearly see X by showing me Y. I also loved your illustration about the dog it worked because of A. Also, what your application did was highlight this area of weakness in my life by applying what was aid in verse 6 this way.” See how this communicates far more but requires far more thought from us.
In short, candor informs better, it communicates more, it allows people to have their say and it if you start using it people will be candid with you which will help you make better calls.
How candid are you?
“You are being inappropriate!”
What the hell do these sentences mean?
Nothing
One of the biggest issues Christians face is a lack of candor, I define candor as:
Clearly communicating what needs to be said when you need to say it.
I think we lack candor because we want to be nice and we do not want to hurt the other persons feelings.
This is gutless.
And not loving.
Loving people means saying the hard things, whereas being nice means you will make them feel good.
If you want to love people be candid.
Candor is not just used when you need to say the hard thing, it is also used in giving specific feedback.
We could say “that sermon was very helpful/lovely/etc.” and thereby not really say anything about the sermon. Or you could say “What I really dug about the sermon is that you made me clearly see X by showing me Y. I also loved your illustration about the dog it worked because of A. Also, what your application did was highlight this area of weakness in my life by applying what was aid in verse 6 this way.” See how this communicates far more but requires far more thought from us.
In short, candor informs better, it communicates more, it allows people to have their say and it if you start using it people will be candid with you which will help you make better calls.
How candid are you?
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Leadership: Communication
Hypocrisy alert! One of the things that my team is constantly telling me to work on is communication, so I feel hypocritical blogging about communication but I think good leaders communicate so here it goes:
Here is why communication matters:
Communication says that you matter. If I forget to tell you the things I needed to tell you or should have told you this communicates something. It communicates that you are not important enough for me to tell you what I need to tell you.
Communication lets everyone know where the team is at. If I very rarely communicate I run the risk of people getting off mission or just plain thinking that what they are doing does not matter to the rest of the team. I try to communicate once every two weeks to every volunteer that what they do is Important and how grateful Resolved as a church is for them helping out. I also remind them of where their contribution fits in at Resolved.
Communication shows I am willing to say what needs to be said. A person whom communicates is far more likely to have the hard conversation that no one likes having but we all know needs to happen
Communication allows the leader to hear how their people are going. If I do not talk with my people How can I be their leader/pastor? So I need to be communicating with them
Things I am trying to do to communicate more effectively:
Replying to every text, voice message, email, facemail, twitter message even if it is just replying with “Cool” or “I got it” or “Paul Liao is not part of the Christian Music scene he is the Christian Music scene!”
Writing a list at the start of the day of people I need to communicate with for that day and designating the best form of communication (email, phone call, face to face meeting, etc.) to communicate what needs to be communicated and then communicating!
Every phone call or meeting I have I write out what I want to say on piece of paper and if possible have it in front of me when I am having the phone conversation or the meeting. This is so that I do not miss out on anything I wanted to say or ask. Now I do not do this in pastoral situations where a person needs to chat. But in those situations I do write down what I want to talk about before hand (if there is anything) just so it stays in my head. I also write down anything I need to do after the meeting is done.
I pray before and after ever significant bit of communication. I tend to screw things up so I always ask for Gods help in leading me to say the right things especially when difficult things need to be said or talked about.
Have you got any tips for me on how to communicate better?
Here is why communication matters:
Communication says that you matter. If I forget to tell you the things I needed to tell you or should have told you this communicates something. It communicates that you are not important enough for me to tell you what I need to tell you.
Communication lets everyone know where the team is at. If I very rarely communicate I run the risk of people getting off mission or just plain thinking that what they are doing does not matter to the rest of the team. I try to communicate once every two weeks to every volunteer that what they do is Important and how grateful Resolved as a church is for them helping out. I also remind them of where their contribution fits in at Resolved.
Communication shows I am willing to say what needs to be said. A person whom communicates is far more likely to have the hard conversation that no one likes having but we all know needs to happen
Communication allows the leader to hear how their people are going. If I do not talk with my people How can I be their leader/pastor? So I need to be communicating with them
Things I am trying to do to communicate more effectively:
Replying to every text, voice message, email, facemail, twitter message even if it is just replying with “Cool” or “I got it” or “Paul Liao is not part of the Christian Music scene he is the Christian Music scene!”
Writing a list at the start of the day of people I need to communicate with for that day and designating the best form of communication (email, phone call, face to face meeting, etc.) to communicate what needs to be communicated and then communicating!
Every phone call or meeting I have I write out what I want to say on piece of paper and if possible have it in front of me when I am having the phone conversation or the meeting. This is so that I do not miss out on anything I wanted to say or ask. Now I do not do this in pastoral situations where a person needs to chat. But in those situations I do write down what I want to talk about before hand (if there is anything) just so it stays in my head. I also write down anything I need to do after the meeting is done.
I pray before and after ever significant bit of communication. I tend to screw things up so I always ask for Gods help in leading me to say the right things especially when difficult things need to be said or talked about.
Have you got any tips for me on how to communicate better?
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