How to Serve Those Who Serve Us

September 3rd, 2010
2
 

This week has been one filled with great inspi­ra­tion and sor­row for me.

I am writ­ing this from one of the most beau­ti­ful loca­tions I have ever been to. I am at Mal­ibu, which is a Young Life Camp located in Canada in a nar­row fjord called Princess Louisa Inlet. The first pic­ture included here shows the beauty of this place. The other is my inspi­ra­tion for this post.

On Mon­day, I arrived here with my son Wes­ley and about 50 young peo­ple from our church. We are here to serve the fam­i­lies of US mil­i­tary who have recently returned from deploy­ment in Afghanistan or Iraq. Some have only been back in the states for a few weeks, and this is the first real down time they have had with their wives, hus­bands and kids.

Re-entry can be very dif­fi­cult, and my role has been to serve as a small group leader with a few cou­ples. It has been truly rich and wonderful.


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Posted in Family | 2 Comments »

Keeping Your Perspective

August 25th, 2010
1
 

We all fight bat­tles at some point in our lives and careers, and some of these strug­gles can last a long time. Lengthy bat­tles cause weari­ness. Over time, weari­ness erodes our con­fi­dence. When we lose con­fi­dence, we can eas­ily lose our perspective.

When a leader loses per­spec­tive for too long, it can be terminal.

So what should one do who finds them­selves tired, fear­ful, and con­fused? Here are 5 sug­ges­tions for those of you who might be trapped in this very uncom­fort­able place right now.


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Posted in Health, Leadership | 1 Comment »

Don’t Confuse Management with Leadership

August 4th, 2010
8
 

In one sen­tence, how would you define “Lead­er­ship?” How about “Man­age­ment?” Are you crys­tal clear on the dif­fer­ence between the two?

Any­one who is respon­si­ble for get­ting results through oth­ers needs to be able to effec­tively prac­tice both Lead­er­ship and Man­age­ment. Unfor­tu­nately, many man­agers use these terms interchangeably.

Man­age­ment is the act of over­see­ing and influ­enc­ing peo­ple, assets, and processes to achieve pre­de­ter­mined results. You are a Man­ager based on the author­ity assigned to your position.

Lead­er­ship is the act of engag­ing the heads and hearts of peo­ple in ways that inspire them to give their best in order to achieve a com­mon goal – a goal that, quite often, only the Leader can clearly see. Any­one — from the front desk to the cor­ner office — can be a Leader.


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Posted in Leadership | 8 Comments »

Stacking Questions

July 30th, 2010
8
 

For the past year or so, I have been coached for the pur­pose of obtain­ing an Exec­u­tive Coach­ing des­ig­na­tion that will help Build­ing Cham­pi­ons with some of our cor­po­rate and inter­na­tional work. My coach is very gifted, and has been effec­tive in help­ing me to improve my coach­ing skills.

As part of the process of get­ting this des­ig­na­tion, I have spent time being observed while coach­ing Mas­ter Cer­ti­fied Coaches from the Inter­na­tional Coach­ing Fed­er­a­tion. These are peo­ple whom I have never met or even talked to prior to the ses­sions. These have been pretty chal­leng­ing, and I must con­fess that I com­pletely botched last week’s session.

The con­ver­sa­tion went some­thing like this…


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Posted in Coaching, Communication | 8 Comments »

Can You Feel It?

July 21st, 2010
2
 

I had a coach­ing ses­sion last week with a client who owns a great com­pany here in the North­west. Like many busi­ness lead­ers, his nat­ural behav­ioral style is on the dom­i­nant side, which means he is a take-charge kind of guy. For those of you famil­iar with the DISC behav­ioral lan­guage, he is a High D.

I know this type very, very well.

Stud­ies have shown that there is a cor­re­lat­ing emo­tion for each behav­ioral style which emerges when that per­son is frus­trated or chal­lenged. For a High D, the emo­tion is anger.

In this ses­sion, my client shared that he feels some very real phys­i­cal changes when he is being chal­lenged or threat­ened. What he expe­ri­enced has every­thing to do with Emo­tional Intel­li­gence, or EQ. 


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Posted in Communication | 2 Comments »

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