Ministry Journey Blog

Thoughts on Ministry

11 Jun

Five key tools for leaders: Authenticity

Posted in Uncategorized on 11.06.16 by Merlyn

Leadership is tricky. Good leadership can be illusive and there are no set factors that will help someone be a great leader in all circumstances and contexts. As I think about the great leaders I have seen, worked with, read, listened to and learned from as well a handful of moments of good leadership on my part, I have noticed 5 key things all leaders have (and need). After sharing them in this post, I will write about each specifically in future posts.

The five things that I believe all leaders need are:

-Trust

-Teachability

-Self-knowledge

-Authenticity

-A Focus on Christ & Kingdom

Great leaders are authentic. Being authentic is a challenge in our culture, particularly in many faith based settings. Being authentic is different than being genuine, though that is a part of it. It also requires transparency, it is to be fully yourself, fully real. This does not mean that leaders must share all of their thoughts, feelings and every aspect of their lives. It does mean that leaders must be personal and willing to be transparent about many parts of their lives. Authenticity is required to build deep trust. It is also essential in building relationships. In order to fully lead people, they must be able to trust you and have some quality of relationship with you. Authenticity is required if you want people to follow your lead.

Leaders recognize that they cannot ask people to do, share and act in a way that they do not. Leaders also recognize that they are not a leader if they do not have followers and no one will follow someone they do not know and trust. It can be both scary and risky demonstrating the kind of transparency that is required to be truly authentic. It also takes a lot of integrity. Integrity is when your words, actions, beliefs and lifestyle are all consistent. Authenticity both builds and requires deep humility. It is often counter cultural, especially as we look at other leaders in our country and world today, but it is essential to be a healthy and effective leader.

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04 Jun

Five key tools for leaders: Self-Knowledge

Posted in Uncategorized on 04.06.16 by Merlyn

Leadership is tricky. Good leadership can be illusive and there are no set factors that will help someone be a great leader in all circumstances and contexts. As I think about the great leaders I have seen, worked with, read, listened to and learned from as well a handful of moments of good leadership on my part, I have noticed 5 key things all leaders have (and need). After sharing them in this post, I will write about each specifically in future posts.

The five things that I believe all leaders need are:

-Trust

-Teachability

-Self-knowledge

-Authenticity

-A Focus on Christ & Kingdom

Great leaders have high levels of self-knowledge. Self-knowledge is hard and takes constant effort. Perfect self-knowledge is impossible not only because we are ever chaining and growing, but because no one can fully understand another human being or themselves. That said, the pursuit of self-knowledge is essential to be a good leader.  The pursuit and the process may be as important and as meaningful as gaining in self-knowledege. A leader who has strong self-knowledge is wiser, more savvy, more empathetic, authentic and trustworthy amongst other things.

Leaders recognize that they must first be able to lead themselves. We also all tend to lead out of our own instinct, personality and experiences which can be good or it can be very unhealthy. Self-knowledge helps us to see when we are doing this, filter these responses and gives us the ability to think through whether or not our instinctual response is actually the healthy response. Additionally it allows us to learn more about others and ourselves and causes us to be strong, more effective leaders. Every leader has blind spots, weaknesses, personality flaws, temptations and challenges. The more we know about ourselves, the more we can recognize these things. The more we recognize these issues, the more effective we become at leveraging them for good, removing them when they are unhealthy or managing them when they appear to be insignificant.

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