Leadership Summit at the Beach

When’s the last time your team devoted a day to professional development? This week we brought our staff together for an intense day of leadership development as we watched and discussed several sessions from the 2013 Willow Creek Leadership Summit. It was a great opportunity to bring the staff together and gain some new insights and apply them to our ministry context – being in a beach house on the Atlantic Ocean was an extra bonus.

Bill Hybels emphasized the need for courage as we face our leadership challenges. He referenced God’s words to Joshua,

“Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous! Do not tremble or be dismayed, for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go.” (Joshua 1:9)

Specifically in his talk he stressed the need for courage to . . .

Pursue a vision
Define current reality
Build a fantastic culture
Establish and enforce values
Finish strong

We also heard from Henry Cloud who discussed principles from his recent book Boundaries for Leaders. His talk was entitled, “Reversing the death spiral of a leader”. There are three “P’s” we encounter that can cause us to spiral downward:

We take the situation personally not realizing that our life is a movie, not just a difficult scene.
We think the problem is pervasive thinking that we’ve lost all control.
We believe the situation is permanent and we must therefore get perspective from others.

This session was especially helpful as we discussed strategies to prevent and overcome the downward spiral in our lives and our organization.

We ended the day with a presentation by Liz Wiseman on the “Multiplier Effect”. Multipliers use their intelligence to amplify the capability of the people around them thereby enabling them to do their best work. In contrast to the multipliers she introduced the concept of diminishers who reduce the capability of others because they assume people will not figure it out without them. Her discussion of accidental diminishers was especially helpful revealing how our ostensibly good traits may diminish the effectiveness of those around us. Here are some common accidental diminishers:

The idea guy
Always-on
Rescuer
Pacesetter
Rapid Responder
Optimist

We closed each session with a time of reflection and processing the information and its implications for Lifepark. It was a content rich day with the opportunity to learn new information and fellowship with our fellow co-workers.