Skip to main content

Leadership can be exhausting

Sometimes leadership is exhausting - but in a good way.  Whenever you have many people around you looking to you for direction (whether a team, employees, congregation or children) there is a lot to manage.  The bigger the group, the more to handle.  You've probably heard that as any group grows, you can (and need to) delegate more and more tasks.  That is true.  This helps the group be more connected as they take on additional responsibility.  This lightens your load, right?  Yes and no.  Yes, some tasks are now being performed by others, but now you have more people that are accountable to you.  You now have the additional task of overseeing, mentoring, training, guiding and sometimes picking up the slack.  All this in addition to growing and mentoring new additions to your group and developing new ways to engage and encourage the original group.  Your load changes, but doesn't get smaller.  When you choose to lead, the only time your total load is lightened, is when it gets smaller... and smaller...

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

People test

"If you do not pass the people test, nothing else matters. Promotion without connectivity is destructive. I often share with church leaders that most of the churches in the United States should not promote themselves. Why? Simple. If your current membership is not actively inviting people or visitors are not staying, there are reasons why. If you do an advertising campaign, you are asking people to come in your doors only to realize why no one wants to invite anyone to your church. They never come back and leave to tell all their friends what they did not like about your church. This is not good marketing. The heart of marketing is people. Don’t start with mailers. Start with people. Ask yourself, “What am I doing this week to learn how to reach people more effectively? It's time to evaluate. Are we creating an atmosphere that fosters growth or are we ministering unto ourselves?" http://www.beyondrelevance.com/index.cfm/PageID/913/blog_year/2010/blog_month/2/index.html...

Clean House

While flipping through some late night television, I came across "Clean House: Search for the Messiest House in the Country 4".  Now, without getting into a rant about how people could let their house get so full of "stuff" (let alone letting it be broadcast to the world), I want to touch on one of their underlying issues.  The dad traveled a lot with his job, and every time he came back, he brought his family gifts to show them that he loved them and thought of them often when he was away.  These gifts were contributing to a huge clutter problem and many gifts had never even been opened.  The family was disconnected, because the wife and children really just wanted to spend time with the dad, who had to keep working more to buy more gifts... do you see the problem? This whole situation took me back to a book I read many years ago, "The 5 Love Languages" by Dr. Gary Chapman.  According to Chapman, the 5 are: Acts of Service, Words of Affirmation, Quality ...

Volunteers

I've heard many in leadership lamenting about the lack of volunteers.  If you lead a church or other non-profit, or are in direct sales, you lead an army of volunteers.  Sometimes, your volunteers will not hit you over the head with their willingness to serve.  Sometimes, they will.  Are you ready to mentor them in their volunteer position so that they will be successful?  Do you follow through with them while enthusiasm is high?  I think we all believe we do. About two years ago, I volunteered with a non-profit in the Quad Cities area.  It took several weeks just to be able to get through to the correct person to volunteer my services with.  I was invited to attend an open meeting, where I spoke of the service that I was willing to provide.  Although there was much agreement that my service would be a great addition to the service they were providing, and several follow up calls on my part, I never was given the opportunity to volunteer. A...