We’ve all heard it said, and it is so true… Leaders are readers.  If you want to continue to grow as a leader then you must always have a book by your bedside, in your car, in your briefcase and in your bathroom.  But if you’re strapped for cash and can’t run down to Barnes and Nobel to refresh your library check out the first three on this list for some FREE reads!

• Heard all the buzz about Seth Godins book Tribes, but still haven’t read it yet?  Here’s your chance to download it FREE.  Just click on THIS LINK and start reading within minutes!  If you are a leader and want to increase your influence in this new day and age you have to read this book.
• On his blog Lead Change Group Mike Henry shared a link to a free audio download of the book Tribal Leadership.  Read Mike’s review of the book HERE and then download it free HERE.
• Melanie posted a link this week on one of my posts with this little piece of gold for your worship leaders.  This is a 72 page research paper by Joel French entitled Worship Leader Mentorships.  In this paper French gives some great detail about mentoring young worship leaders.  You can GET IT HERE FREE.  Thanks Melanie!
• And finally WWBR – What Would Bill Read?  Here is Bill Hybels recommending reading list for leaders.  CLICK HERE print and post this list by your computer and over the next 2 years start checking off the list as you read them one by one.  This would be a great personal leadership development plan for any leader.

Are there other free book resources for leaders that you’re aware of?  Share the wealth and let me know

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the changes taking place with leadership development.  One of those changes is Customized Learning plans.  Well, last week I was meeting with a sharp young worship leader who wants to develop his leadership skills.  During our meeting time we went through the following steps to develop a customized development tool he can use for himself and his team. 

1. Identify a Key Job Responsibility
2. Create a list of no more than seven competencies (skills) that are necessary to do that responsibility well
3. Have the learner rank themselves 1-5 on each competency
4. Choose one area to work on and create a 30 day growth plan
5. Follow-up and share your progress

This young man chose the responsiblity of Leading a Worship Band.  Here is the customized tool we developed for that particular responsiblity. 

1  Read each sentence below and rank yourself on each of the competencies.

SCALE:  1 = I don’t have a clue  2 = I know a little bit  3 = I have some experience  4 = I’m fairly confident  5 = I do this really well

Leading a Band requires the following competencies… rank yourself 1-5 on each.

• Dynamic of Worship  – The leader understands the rhythm, focus and dynamics of each song in order to maximize that particular songs message
• Confrontation  – The leader brings correction or adjustment to each team members attitude and performance
• Connect with team – The leader connects with team members by communicating and relating to them outside of church services
• Spiritual leadership – The leader brings spiritual insights and encouragement to the team and serves as a model for spiritual leadership.
• Encouragement – The leader helps each team member understand and maximize the strengths they bring to the team.
• Communication – The leader communicates clearly before rehearsal by informing members of service details in advance and during rehearsal by addressing each team member in a way that brings clarity and understanding.
• Servant Leadership – The leader models servant leadership by serving each member of the team with humility and kindness.
• Time management – The leader will effectively manage rehearsal time by starting and ending on time as well as sufficiently covering all songs according to the need of the band members.

2  Next work with your mentor or learning group to choose one area you will focus on over the next 30 days. 

3 Write down 3-4 next steps you can take to help you develop that particular competency. 

Use the following to help prompt your thinking about your next steps:

• I will read…
• I will meet with…
• I will Google search…
• I will do…
• I will listen to…
• I will observe…
• I will go…

4 Meet again within 30 days with your partner or mentor and share your progress as well as what you have learned.  I would recommend discussing the following questions:

• What next steps did you take?
• How well did you do?
• What would you do differently?
• What did you learn?

Who are you personally developing?  Create your a customized growth tool by following the steps listed above. Give it a try over the next 30 days and see what happens.

Do you remember those long boring hours in school studying subjects that you could care less about?  Your teacher would try to motivate you by saying, “You’re going to need this one day”  There was no motivation to learn the subject because it just didn’t feel relevant at the time.  This type of “Just in Case”  training is rarely very effective, especially for adult learners.   However, this tends to be the approach we emphasize the most in our leadership development efforts.

When I was in seminary I was sick and missed the day they taught how to do a funeral.  It didn’t really matter any way because it was “just in case” learning and I wouldn’t have paid a bit of attention.  But after I graduated it wasn’t long until someone in our church died and I was asked to perform the service.  All of the sudden I felt panic inside, I started going through my files, looking for books on performing funerals and calling pastor friends asking for advice.   I was looking for anything I could get my hands on to do the job well. 

This type of “Just in Time” learning is so effective because the learners emotions and teachability are at an all time high.   Plus they get to put what they are learning into practice right away!  Look for “just in time” learning opportunities for those you are mentoring.  If nothing obvious is on the horizen simply ask them a couple of the following questions and you will discover the “just in time” learning opportunities.

• What are you most frustrated with in your role right now?
• Where do you feel like you’re failing?
• What challenges are you facing that you can’t figure out?
• Is anyone on your team giving you problems that you aren’t sure how to handle?
• What do you feel unprepared for right now?

What ” just in time” learning opportunities are presenting themselves for those you are developing?  Are you capitalizing on them?

Throughout my day yesterday I had the opportunity to meet with three different young leaders.  I walked away from each meeting impressed with the  hunger,  teachablity and leadership potential of each young man.   I envy these guys as they are beginning their leadership journey in this day and age.  We live in a world where we are surrounded by a wealth of content for self-development.  I mentioned this to one of these guys and told them - there was no internet when I was his age – he couldn’t begin to imagine that!  Below are a few online resources I use regularly  in my own leadership development journey.  I hope you find them helpful as well.

1.  Book Summaries

There are many book summary services out there today.  I subscribe to Business Summaries at www.bizsum.com.  I like this service because they send you 52 summaries a year, they are accessible in a variety of formats including PDF, Powerpoint, MP3, Mindmap and more.  Plus right now they are having a SALE so you can get a one year subscription for $69.  Way worth it.  Another book summary service I like is www.christianbooksummaries.com this is an absolutely FREE service…you can’t beat that.

2. Self-Assessment

 Tim Irwin has recently released a new book through Nelson Publishersentitled Derailed.  In this book Irwin describes the failures of six different CEO’s and draws leadership principles that help us from getting derailed in our own leadership.  Here is the cool thing…there is an online assessment that helps you identify your risk of derailment in four key areas.  Take the assessment by clicking on this LINK.

3.  Social Networking Community

If you are a Campus Pastor or a Multisite Leader and are looking to strengthen your leadership and pastoral skills you have to check out www.leadingmultisite.ning.coma social networking community for multisite leaders to share best practices and learn from each other.  The site also features a Training Videos section that features training from a variety of multisite church leaders.  Each video session includes a three step mentoring process to help the learner process what they are learning with a mentor.

4.  Leadership Podcast

Andy Stanley has a Leadership Podcast that I highly recommend.  I devour these when I am on the treadmill in the gym.  They are short but loaded with rich content.  You can access these podcasts at the following LINK.

5. Leadership Blogs

Here are some of my favorite Leadership Blogs:  Michael Hyatt, Steven Furtick, Perry Noble, and John Maxwell.

What resources have you found helpful on your personal leadership development journey?

Every year your organization and mine spend thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours on leadership development.  We know it’s important, but what are we hoping to get from it all?  Below are seven things I hope our leadership development efforts produce.

1. An increased sense of self-awareness among our leaders.  We want them to understand and live out who God has designed them to be as leaders.
2. A greater ability to practice self-leadership.  Until a leader masters self-leadership they will struggle leading others. 
3. A maturation of character.  Leadership is just as much about character as it is about competency.
4. A mounting sense of inspiration.  Christian leaders aren’t just filling roles, they have a calling and the deeper that sense of calling the more faith and passion they will exhibit.
5. A growing sense of confidence.  As leaders develop their competence they naturally develop their confidence.  And the truth is better leaders produce better results.
6. An expanding harvest of leaders who are consistently reproducing leaders.  Leadership development should ultimately produce a value in everyone of our leaders for reproducing themselves in the lives of others. 
7. A deepened sense of engagement.   Leaders who feel like someone is investing in them have greater levels of satisfaction at work.

What do you hope to get out of your leadership development efforts?

People are very selective in how they use their discretionary time these days.  In large, this is why we hear church leaders complaining they can’t get people to come out for training events.  It’s not that people don’t want development, they just live busy and complex lives.  This is why we have to rethink our leadership development delivery system.   The Fourth Movement I see in Leadership Development is HI-TECH, HI-TOUCH APPROACH.

Because we live in a Hi-tech society many organizations are now capitalizing on technology and providing their leadership development content online.  But if you simply put courses online and expect people to work their way through the content and “be trained” you will be disappointed.  The Hi-tech approach is not enough on it’s own…it must be combined with a Hi Touch element.  This means providing the content online but ensuring the learner then engages with a coach or mentor to debrief their learning experience. 

Using this approach you can provide training any time, any place at any pace.  For example, I am currently acting as a mentor for a Rockbridge Seminary student.  This week he will do his course work online at his own discretion and pacing, then we will meet on Saturday via a phone call to debrief and discuss what he is learning.  This combination is intended to move the learner beyond information to transformation.  

Making the move to a Hi-Tech, Hi Touch approach is not an easy one…

1. You must be willing to decentralize your training efforts.  Traditionally churches have centralized their training by having potential leaders come to the church building where a professional clergy provides the necessary training.  In the Hi-Tech, Hi-Touch model multiple leaders are empowered and encouraged to equip other potential leaders any time and any place.

2. You must take the time to get an understanding of the available technologies.  This can be frustrating because of the ever changing improvements with technology.  At Seacoast we currently use an on-line education management software called Moodle to house our online leadership classes.  This was a learning curve for all of us.

3. You must make the decision: Are we going to develop our own content or find existing content?  Because we live in a content rich world, I would recommend using existing content.  It is easy to copy embed codes from Youtube or Vimeo sites and insert videos into the training platform of your choice.

4. You must be patient.  It takes time to make this shift in your culture.  Start slow, simple and small and allow it to become a viral movement in your culture.

Check out the following sites that can be used in developing leaders…

• For training small group leaders:  www.smallgrouptrader.com
• For training worship leaders: www.worshiptraining.com
• For Student Ministry leaders: www.leadingyouthministry.ning.com
• For Multisite leaders: www.leadingmultisite.ning.com
• For Ministers: www.rockbridgeseminary.org

Check back tomorrow – I will be posting session one of the new Seacoast Small Group Leader Training.

Last week I started a series of posts about The New Movements in Leadership Development, the first was MENTORING, second was INTEGRATION.  The third shift I see is CUSTOMIZATION. 

Traditionally development has been very linear: the learner has to complete 101 before moving to 201.  But today’s learner prefers “just in time” learning- the opportunity to learn where they have questions, curiosities or need.  While we cannot ignore some of the very basics of leadership as we develop potential leaders, we also have to acknowledge the areas they desire to grow.  This inquisitiveness raises the learners motivation and ability to retain what they’re learning.  While customizing an individual learners development path is a great approach, it shouldn’t be done a part from a coach or mentor.

There are  basically four steps to building a customized development plan:

1. Identify the necessary /expected competencies

2. Agree upon area(s) for development

3. Work together to build a development plan.  List assignments that will provide development in desired areas.  Assignments could include:

• Reading:  books, articles
• Listening: Video, Audio, Podcast, etc
• Interviewing: meeting with an expert in a particular field and asking them questions
• Doing: Actually practicing a skill that needs to be developed by taking on a project, task or stretch opportunity. 

4. Provide mentoring.  I would recommend you follow what I call the Three E’s to mentoring. (Read more about 3 E’s at this link)  This process ensures the learner isn’t just getting information but actually experiencing transformation.

What can you do to begin providing customized learning opportunities in your organization?  Who do you need to work with to develop a customized development path? 

Here is an interesting question:  Where does leadership training take place?  I used to say the classroom, seminar, denomination headquarters or Bible College.  The common perception has been leadership development is somewhere you go to attain the appropriate information you need to lead, and then returned to put your new knowledge into practice.  So typically when we have a potential leader we start looking for the place to send them for training.

Not so today.  The second movement in leadership development is INTEGRATION – integrating your leadership development efforts into the everyday responsibilities of your organization.  The best classroom today is your workplace or ministry. 

As I have said before if you want to teach a person to swim, put them in a swimming pool not a classroom.  The same goes for leadership:  If you want to teach someone to lead, put them in leadership not a classroom.  Ran Charan, in Leaders at all Levels says, “Leadership can only be developed through practice.”  If this is true, which I believe it is, then the best place to “practice” is in real life situations.  So we must find ways to develop leaders in the context of what we are currently doing.

What are some ways we can do this?

• Encourage your managers to find intentional opportunities to delegate specific responsibilities for the purpose of developing young leaders. 
• Ask the questions:  Who do we need to focus on developing to the next level?  What assignments can we give them that will help them acquire the skills they need to get there?
• Utilize Project Teams to develop young talent.  There have been occasions we have put together a project team and assigned a young leader to lead the team for the sole purpose of developing their leadership skills.  They end up growing and gaining confidence as a leader, plus we get an important project done for the organization. 
• Promote someone before they are ready.  You don’t want to do this for everyone, but for some of your high potential leaders that is the best way for them to grow. At the appropriate time put them in a position that is over their head and watch them rise to the occasion.  Of course match them with a mentor who will coach them along their journey, to insure they are learning from their frustrations and failures.
• Embrace a mentality that recognizes failure is an absolute essential part of the development process.  Create a culture where failure is celebrated and coached.

For integration to truly take place in your culture, leaders at every level must have a development mentality.  They must understand that developing leaders is an every day part of their responsibility.

I recieved an email the other day from Warren Bird, Director of Research at Leadership Network, saying LN did a poll recently asking 5000 church leaders about their top areas of interest. Guess what the #1 topic was? You guessed it- Leadership development. 

It’s become clear that churches are struggling with leadership development and our current approach has to change. Well, the good news is there seems to be change happening. In yesterdays post I mentioned I would be sharing several movements that are happening in leadership development, so here we go: The first is a movement to MENTORING. 

Okay I admit that mentoring is by no means new, it was Jesus exclusive method for training leaders. I’m not sure why, but somewhere over the centuries the church seemed to move away from it, but now mentoring is making a comeback. Even in the business world mentoring is becoming the preferred method of development. Leading business thinkers such as Noel Tichy and Ram Charan are promoting mentoring as a primary way of developing up and coming leaders. 

I like to think of mentoring as the intentional investment of an experienced leader into the life of one who is less experienced for the purpose of developing their leadership character and competencies. 

Carl George says it looks like this:
I do, you watch, we talk
I do, you help, we talk
You do, I help, we talk
You do, I watch, we talk
We each begin to train someone else. 

Now while this sounds pretty simple, please understand this is no small change. This is a paradigm shift for most organizations that will take time, effort and focus.  Moving to a mentoring approach decentralizes your leadership development efforts and puts the responsibility of equipping leaders back into the hands of the leaders in your organization. If you are up for the change I promise you it will not be easy, but it will be worth it.
 
This approach will take…

• Commitment, not only from senior leaders but ALL leaders in the organization will be expected to identify and equip potential leaders.
• Patience, mentoring is not the fast track to development. It takes time for true development and transformation to take place.
• Reestablishing roles, expectations, processes and tools to execute this approach to development.
• Equipping your current leaders in the ancient art of mentoring.

Check back tomorrow for movement #2

Leadership development is changing.  There have been several shifts over the past few years moving from centralized to decentralized, teacher based to mentor based, classroom to real life, linear to customized.  These changes demand that we look at the relevancy of our current leadership development efforts in the church.

In 1975, at 14 years old, when I was assigned to write a research paper I would go to the library and flip through encyclopedias and microfilm.  While those methods of research are still available today my 14 year old is much more efficient logging on to the internet and using Google or Ask Jeeves to research  her  topic. It’s faster, more efficient and the information is up to date.

In a day when there is a leadership deficit we must remain on the cutting edge of development methodologies.   Ram Charan, highlights this challenge in his book, Leaders at All Levels, when he says, “The first law of holes- when you’re in one, stop digging – tells us what to do: abandon our traditional leadership development practices.  Tinkering and fine tuning won’t solve the fundamental problem.  It’s time for a completely new approach to finding and developing the kinds of leaders businesses need.”

Are you frustrated with your leadership development efforts?  Perhaps it’s time for a change. This week I’ll be posting about The New Movements in Leadership Development and sharing how each applies to the church today.