STP CLC Bonus: The Leadership Development Shortcut (Hint: It Doesn’t Exist)
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[00:00:05] James Marland: Oh, man. Hello, this is James Marland. I am doing something a little scary for myself. Normally, how I make the podcast is I'll talk into AI, read my notes, get a outline, then I'll have the outline turn into a, something for a teleprompter. Put the, put the outline on the teleprompter, and try to talk through it and talk in a natural voice.
[00:00:32] So what I'm doing now is I'm just taking my notes from the church leadership conference that I went to last week in Dallas, Texas, with a group from our church, 14 of us plus a couple elders.
[00:00:44] And we just went to sessions on how they reached out to their community. And one of the lessons, one of the sessions I went to that I got a lot from, it was my first one, it was on where do you get leaders? Uh, and I think it was called [00:01:00] The Easy Way to Develop Leaders. And this is a very important topic for me because I understand the development of leaders.
[00:01:09] I want to be a leader. I've often felt passed over for leadership, but also I feel like leadership and developing other people is one of the best ways to carry out the mission, and you can't get great things done without leadership and helping people. And I belong to a group in the church where we are helping marriages, and we're helping couples, and one of the biggest bottlenecks and roadblocks for that service, for that ministry, is getting enough couples to want to lead other couples through the process, through the 14 to 20...
[00:01:50] we've It's 14 lessons, but it ends up being like 20 weeks worth of material, 'cause sometimes we go back and forth with the material. So anyways, I'm like, "How do [00:02:00] we find these leaders to lead more couples?" Because I've been greatly benefit, had great benefit from the service of other people, and it's not gonna grow without leaders.
[00:02:14] You need leaders to lead it. So I, I went to this hoping to find ways to develop leadership. So I'm just gonna read my notes. This is gonna be my podcast on developing leaders from the Church Leadership Conference, uh, Watermark, Watermark Church in Dallas, Texas. The name of the person who led it was Luke Simmons, and, the title was Every Church Needs More Leaders, Stronger Leaders. This session provides actionable ideas for building the leaders your church needs to fulfill its mesh- mission. Leadership development made easy.
[00:02:46] So the first thing that Luke started out with was the title's a lie. There is no easy development of leaders. He just wanted to get people there, and I thought that was funny. [00:03:00] Now, what the first point he said was there's, there's two ways to get leaders. You either develop them yourself or you steal them from other people.
[00:03:10] No matter where you are, no matter where leaders come from, they are often, uh, most likely they didn't just w- step onto this earth with, with, uh, all the leadership skills and experience. Maybe they had skills but not the experience. And somebody put into their life, built into their life the experiences they needed to develop their leadership skills.
[00:03:35] So if you are l- missing leaders in your group or missing leaders in your church, you, you know you can't do nothing. You have to do something and you, you need the best, from what I was gathering, the best way to get these leaders is to develop them. So how do you develop these leaders? And he's gonna answer that later on.
[00:03:59] [00:04:00] He had, uh, six or seven main points. The first point is every believer is a disciple who should play a role in discipleship making. That's something the Bible commands. But not everyone should try to be a leader and I think that is a breath of fresh air for the people who are, who just wanna serve, who just wanna volunteer, who just wanna help.
[00:04:23] They don't need to be up front. They don't feel called to be up front but they wanna serve and they wanna develop people. So not everybody is gonna be a leader. Not everybody needs to have that leadership role. The next main point he said was the health and effectiveness of your organization will largely depend on the leadership that is being developed.
[00:04:46] And I thought, "Isn't that the truth?" Because in our church right now we're growing, we're reaching people, but there aren't enough leaders to lead groups, to serve in the ministry. [00:05:00] Even we were talking, as the church grows they assign elders to oversight but the more you grow the more they're assigning to the elders and at some point, not today, but at some point that's gonna expand beyond what one person or two people or 10 people can handle.
[00:05:19] And so how do you, how do you give oversight and leadership to that group without the people? And I think that's, uh, something ... You might think it's a tomorrow problem, like leadership's a tomorrow problem but it's a today problem. T- leadership is developed over time. You don't microwave it. Sure you can do things to create the environment where leadership is developed but it's not something that's just gonna happen And bang, you have it exactly when you need it.
[00:05:51] So the health is largely dependent on the leadership you're developing. This next point I really loved, [00:06:00] and I found it very challenging, is that character development is the most important part of leadership development. Character development is the most important part of leadership development. And there's all sorts of reasons for that.
[00:06:14] But one of the things that I'm pulling from my experience is ethics and trust. If you don't have the trust of the people, if they don't believe that you're in it for them, if they don't believe you have their back, if they don't believe that you have the same vision and mission and values, they're going to hold back a little bit.
[00:06:35] They're going to spend energy on friction, energy on resistance, energy on pushing back. And the best environment is the environment that has the trust advantage. I think that's a book by Patrick Lencioni that I read a while ago. I think he called it The Advantage. And he called it, trust [00:07:00] was in there, I believe.
[00:07:03] Trust and ethics is one of the best ways to have a smooth working environment where nobody's second guessing, where you're all moving in the same direction. And this was a church leadership conference, but I love the importance that Luke, I believe his name was Luke, put on character. Character is vitally important for leaders.
[00:07:31] Point number four, we must joyfully embrace the reality that we will sometimes give away our best leaders. Oof, that hurts, doesn't it? Don't you want to just hold on to your leaders? No, they can't leave. I trained them for five years or six years or five months, and now they're moving on to something else.
[00:07:53] That's just the nature of leadership development. You can't hold on to [00:08:00] everybody. You're going to develop people. They're going to contribute to the mission. Some of them are going to stay, and some of them are going to move on. I think the warning here is if you get jaded when people take your leaders, if you get hurt, if you exude the essence of guilt on people when they leave, that is going to be not very attractive for leadership development.
[00:08:36] It's going to leave a bad taste in their mouth. And so just embrace that you're going to develop people. Some are going to stay, and some are going to leave. And but do it with joy.
[00:08:48] At its best, number five here was at its best, leadership development involves relational environments that combine knowledge, experiences, and coaching. [00:09:00] Knowledge, comma, experiences and coaching. I'm trying to read my own writing here. It's difficult to say the least. Uh, yeah. Leadership experiences can go a long way to creating the impact that you want.
[00:09:17] It's very difficult to develop leaders one hour a week on a Sunday or one hour a week on a Wednesday during the ministry service. Sometimes you need that relational experience, and he goes into this, uh, further and gives you some examples. Sometimes you just... you, you have to create that environment where people rub up against each other.
[00:09:38] It's so hard to do virtually. It can be done, but it's just different. You don't have those water cooler moments. We went to the the CLC with a group of people, and we all rented the same Airbnb, and then we had an extra day after the event that... where we hung out together, laughed together, played together, [00:10:00] uh, asked questions f- from each other talked about the conference together.
[00:10:05] Those types of environments will create a bond a- and an experience that you can't reproduce one hour on a Wednesday or two hours in a, in a conference. You know, we- we're gonna do our leadership training, and it... that we're gonna do it. You have to have that experiential where the knowledge is shared. Number six. Oh, this is so good. Leaders develop leaders. Systems and curriculum are not enough. I f- s- This is sad, but I find this in my life. I read... I love the, the theory of leadership. I read books on leadership. I wa- listen to podcasts on leadership. Uh, and on my Facebook profile, I have leadership clips.
[00:10:52] But the, the problem is that does not develop me as a leader. All the courses I've taken, [00:11:00] I did a master's in ministry, leadership studies all the books I've read does not make me a leader. I'm knowledgeable, but I need the people to invest in my life. Uh, I need people to, to emulate I think of a man from our church who I met with for a while, and I didn't realize this when I started meeting with him.
[00:11:28] He's rich. He's millionaire, multi-millionaire, owns buildings and properties. And I started meeting with him 'cause he, he had the character that I liked. He was retired, and he was going on missions trips and funding missionaries. And I'm like, "Why is he doing this? You know, he could be doing anything.
[00:11:47] Why is he doing this?" So I started meeting with him as, as my mentor, and his sense of generosity and holding loosely to money and property really rubbed off on [00:12:00] me. He's still a leader even in his o- even in his retirement age, but he's just not forcing his way on pe- he's not an upfront type of person, but he's such a leader with his money and generosity and showing people how to end well.
[00:12:18] I need more people like that in my life. One of the points here that we're gonna get to is, well, what if nobody is going, trying to lead you? What if nobody is investing in you? I've been a little jaded on that myself because I, I sometimes feel like I get passed over. I sometimes feel like I, I've given a lot.
[00:12:39] I, I've learned a lot. I have so much to give, yet nobody's pulling out, it out from me and I'm not one to demand the spotlight. You know, what do, what do I do? You know, if I'm, if I f- if I wanna be developed, but I might not be people might not see me. So we'll get to that. And I... [00:13:00] And take heart, there is an answer.
[00:13:03] So leaders develop leaders. You need leaders to invest in people. And then I think this is just, uh, this is, this is a note I had, or maybe this was hi- his note. Every area is starved for leaders. Every area in the church, every area in the community, every area at school, every area in your home, every area in business, every area that you can think of that can benefit mankind and help people is starved for, for great leaders, healthy leadership.
[00:13:41] So there were two other points here. One is, uh, developing self as leader, and then how do you develop leadership if you're a leader? So this was the point about me where I was, I took, I took heart that, uh that I can do so I like I don't have to be a [00:14:00] victim of circumstance I can do something to help put myself in the position where I have the experience the experiences needing needed to help me develop as a leader one own the fact that nobody else is responsible for your leadership development Oh, that hurt.
[00:14:20] Because for many years I felt, you know, woe is me. Keep getting passed over. Nobody's looking. Nobody is developing me. Nobody's shepherding me. I'm just here wasting away. I have all these skills and talents and nobody is investing in me because and then and then your brain is like because you don't matter.
[00:14:45] That's such a lie. But, you know, your brain, you know, your brain tries to do confirmation bias and fundamental attribution errors and all those things. You don't matter. And then you do throw a pity party. [00:15:00] Guess what? Nobody else is going to develop you as a leader, at least initially. You have to own the fact that if you want to be a leader, if you want to develop.
[00:15:10] Then it's your responsibility. The second point on that was cultivate informal mentoring relationships, even without them knowing it. And this, I thought, was a great skill to teach anyone, really. If you're in an organization and you need to develop leaders, they don't know how to ask for being getting a mentor.
[00:15:37] That's one of the things I had. How do I ask? How do I get people to want to invest in me to develop me as a leader? So I did nothing or I felt like I'm just a victim. So this is a skill. This next thing I'm going to talk about is a skill. And I'm sure there's other ways to do this. But this was a very simple, practical way.
[00:15:57] And I believe this has to [00:16:00] be I really believe, especially for some of us introverts who don't like to cause waves. This is a skill that we don't have that needs to be taught to the general leadership pool or people who who have potential or everyone really, you know. But what are you going to do?
[00:16:19] How do you teach? How do you teach this skill? I didn't write it down, but this is what I this is what this is what I remember. Get-- find somebody that you admire or does something that that you believe could be a g- a good mentor. You don't have to use the word mentor, but somebody that you wanna get to know because they are in a p- place where you want to be.
[00:16:44] So I think of you know, my-- one of my Pastor Jim, he's the associate pastor, and he's gone through some family stuff. He's gone through some personal stuff. He's, he sorta lead... He's like a leader, but not, you know, [00:17:00] he, you know, he could be a leader anywhere really. He has a great, great heart, great preaching down to earth, easy to talk to.
[00:17:09] Uh, he could be a leader anywhere, but he doesn't... He's kinda humble, and he doesn't cause-- call attention to himself. So what I need to do is develop five questions on some area that I want to know how he does it. Like, how do you lead humbly? How do you deal with some of your family issues? How did you deal with those personal issues?
[00:17:29] What if some of the personal issues come back? Like, what are you gonna do? How do you manage that? He also talked about developing leaders. We had a conversation about this, and I'm like, "Well, how do you do that as you are thinking about leading the, the areas of ministry that you're over?
[00:17:47] How do you develop those leaders as we continue to grow?" I wanna know more about how he's, is thinking. So what am I gonna do? I can develop the five questions and just say, "Hey, I respect you so much. We had a brief conversation. I have some more [00:18:00] questions for you. Can we have a conversation on this?" And then I-- most people, when you come at it that way, like with something prepared, something worthwhile, and you're showing them respect, they're gonna say yes.
[00:18:14] Many, many people. Not everyone, but many people are gonna say, "Yeah let's meet." At that point, you have... You're getting... Then you listen. You ask your questions and listen and poke a little more, and then you're getting the the leadership development without them, and mentoring, without them even knowing it.
[00:18:34] And this could turn into more questions. Or you could say, "Hey, can I do some research for you on this thing, and come back and talk about it?" And that way, you have a follow-up conversation. So this skill of getting exposure to the knowledge, experience of other leaders that you can learn from can be taught to many people, and it's really easy.
[00:18:57] All it takes is the cost of a [00:19:00] lunch. The third thing he said is for developing yourself as a leader, the first one was the fact that nobody's going to Be responsible for your leadership, cultivate informal mentoring. The third thing was invan- invest financially in getting coaching. He said many of the pastors and people who are leading lots of people invest in their own leadership skills by getting coaching, whether it's focused or ongoing y- you can do things to increase your own leadership ability.
[00:19:37] The action items he had, uh, I feel like I'm out of order, but some action items he's had was when you're going to develop leadership, just do something. It's not gonna happen... it's not going to happen without somebody putting attention and energy into it. [00:20:00] And when you are developing leadership, he said, "Remember leadership one oh one pathway."
[00:20:09] And then he went on to explain it. When you're developing leaders, uh, this was the, uh, the five stages I do, you do thing, and you probably, you've probably heard this before. I do, you watch, we talk. Number two, I do, you help, we talk. Number three, you do, I help, we talk. Number four, you do, I watch, we talk.
[00:20:36] Number five, you do, somebody else watches. And that was, uh, developing leadership in different step, steps. Sometimes I think leadership is scary and handing off responsibility is scary because we don't do that process. Uh, thinking about the group that I lead, the marriage group, uh, we had a, a couple who had led a group before lead with us in our first time [00:21:00] through.
[00:21:01] It was so much easier to lead with them and to watch what they did than to do it on your own. I think we probably could have done a better job at talking over things at the end, but I think we s- we, uh, we also didn't have this process as a a roadmap for us, so we can do that going forward, and it's something I want to do well, as I lead groups, d- do that type of thing.
[00:21:27] The next step for developing leadership was don't go alone. If you're going to a, a place where somebody can learn something, take s- take somebody with you. If you're going to a hard meeting, take somebody with you to watch. If you are developing some curriculum and you're doing some research, maybe have somebody help you and do some of that research with you and make them a part of the process.
[00:21:53] We do not-- we often underestimate the be with factor, where somebody's just around [00:22:00] you in the periphery, and they watch how you act, and then you talk about it afterwards. So if you wanna develop leaders, don't go alone. And the, the final thing there was, uh, make sure you talk about it. Talk about what they do and help them process the environment.
[00:22:23] Then they-- he talked about l- the four levels of delegation. You can delegate tasks, you can delegate authority, you can delegate anxiety, which means they, they are owners of it, and they're worrying about it, and you can develop the delegate leaders. I think it's tasks, authority, responsibility, then anxiety.
[00:22:43] I think that's out of order. When you delegate tasks, you get doers. When you delegate responsibility, you get leaders. When you delegate the anxiety, you get the owners. And I didn't have something for authority but there's levels of [00:23:00] delegation. You don't have to delegate everything all at once. I thought that was, simple but brilliant.
[00:23:06] Uh, you can delegate portions of the responsibility until they become the owner of the responsibility. And then he had a chart that, uh, I checked the notes, and I didn't see it in the notes. I don't know if it got taken down, but he had a chart that has one column that is what is needed to volunteer, what is needed to lead the adults, what is needed to lead leaders, and what is needed to lead the ministry.
[00:23:37] And then on the top row, that was column one, the top row has knowledge, experience, coaching, and then I added the last column, who does this well, uh, or who is the person that you can get the qualities of the person who does this the best, [00:24:00] like the example. So if somebody's a volunteer in your greeter program, what do they need to know?
[00:24:07] What experience do they need to have? What coaching do they need to be a great greeter? If they are leading the adults in the greeter program, w- what do they need to know? What experience do they need to have? What coaching do they need? And then finally, you know, if they're the leader of the greeter program What do they need to know?
[00:24:29] What's the knowledge they need to have, the experience and the coaching they need? And then my column was, well, who does this the best? Is there somebody that has those types of qualities that you can sort of have the gauge? And it doesn't have to be somebody in your church, your ministry who does this well.
[00:24:48] I did this type of chart with, uh, uh, intake workers for therapy offices. What do they need to know for this responsibility? What experience do they [00:25:00] need? What coaching do they need? He started... He led with some challenges, or he, he ended with some challenges. He said, "Ministries are hurting and begging for leaders, but they are not doing the hard work in developing or investing in leadership."
[00:25:15] It's a challenge to us who feel pinched for leadership. What are we doing to develop them? You can-- Remember, you can develop them or steal them, and if you're stealing them from people inside your organization or inside your church, that does not always bring good feelings with it. So what are you doing to develop those people knowing that you're not gonna be able to keep all of them?
[00:25:42] Uh, he ended with some create an experience that is the high bar and exclusive and short term, uh, for developing leadership. So he gave an example of some experiential leadership that, uh, leaders can do to start [00:26:00] to develop leaders in their church. And he described a program where he created a valuable opportunity where he had some...
[00:26:11] He had five to 10 people in mind. He wrote them a letter, and he read the letter, and it, it sort of was setting it up. It set the expectations. He said it was a lot of work, but he also said, "I see something in you that I wanna invest in." He had the core studies, and it, he said it doesn't necessarily, it doesn't really matter what the core studies that you are-- have.
[00:26:34] It could be something meaningful to you or something meaningful from your life or an experience. Could be a book of the Bible. It could be a, you know, a book study on servant ler- leadership. The big thing was just pick something. And then what he did is he had a retreat. He charged them a little bit of money for the retreat and then said, "We're gonna meet for the next five months and cover these five topics.
[00:26:57] You're expected to come. It's gonna be challenging. [00:27:00] You're expected to do the work. If now's not a good time for you, that's okay. There's no shame in dropping out, but I really, uh, wanna invest in you." Something like that. And he has been able to generate some good responses for people who Um, our potential leaders.
[00:27:17] He said this isn't a prerequisite for anything, it's just I wanna build into your life. So the main, the main takeaways for me was the, there's a, the church or organizations need a culture of leadership development with three points. Number one, it takes an investment. It takes time, it takes money, it takes your in- your emotional investment in building into people.
[00:27:48] You cannot develop leaders without some sort of investment. Number two it's the, uh, the culture of leadership [00:28:00] development is iterative or there's iteration, and he did that in two... He said that in two different ways. One was the, uh, the leadership pathway 101. You know, I do, you watch, we talk. That's it- that's iteration.
[00:28:14] You're not just dumping it all on one. You are delegating and helping them learn. The other iteration was the levels of delegation. Not everybody not everybody is going to be a leader of leaders, but they can lead in certain ways. They can lead in doing the tasks or they can have responsibilities delegated to them.
[00:28:36] So you have these development pathways, this development roadmap where they are doing more and more activities and gaining these skills, and so that they can bear the load of eventual either leader of leaders or leader of ministries types of [00:29:00] development. But it's iterative, you know? You, it...
[00:29:04] And that goes back to the d- the it takes time. Y- a lot of people will say yes out of guilt. Oh, I've had that. I'm gonna say yes to this ministry because, well, why not? I have the time. But was, am I gifted for it? Am I excited about it? So work on the iteration of developing leaders and, and that takes focus.
[00:29:27] It takes you understanding the process, being clear on where you're going, understanding that there are levels of delegation, understanding that you have responsibilities, and then working with people to develop them. And the third thing of the culture of leadership development was invitation. It takes action.
[00:29:52] It takes you inviting people into your world to see what you do, to hear what you hear, [00:30:00] to serve with you in different ways, and it, it's- It probably takes action long before they are ready to take on a ministry. So have this leadership pathway developed, but take action. So my action steps what I'm called to do from this is I'm gonna find a group of people to talk over some things with.
[00:30:26] I, I probably... My main trouble is limiting the amount of stuff I wanna cover because there's several books that have made a big impact on my life, and there's several things I wanna go over with a group of people to relearn. One of that would be Here on a Mission by Donald Miller, plus The Man's Search for Meaning.
[00:30:49] Those two books have had an impact in my life. I no longer feel like a victim. I feel like I have a mission in life, and I wanna share that with other people. The other [00:31:00] i-item would be two books on habits, Atomic Habits and Be Your Future Self Now by Benjamin Hardy. Atomic Habits, I think was by James Clear.
[00:31:12] Ugh, AI fact-check me. But, uh, those two books are something that I am working on, and they've made an impact in my life, but I think if I did them in a group, I would have, it would be more beneficial. I would get more benefit, and also I could help people who are struggling. Then Redeeming the Future, the book on, um, time management and rest.
[00:31:40] The Mountain Is You. The Mountain Is You is a great book about your, about your limiting thoughts. And then forgiveness. I feel like God has given me a great gift for forgiving people for harms and slights and just giving it over to God, and that has made my life so much [00:32:00] better and freer.
[00:32:01] I have a better relationship with, uh, my wife over it. I have a better relationship with my family over it. I don't hold on to things that have, in the past, have stayed with me. So, uh, that's my first action step, and then, then my second action step, as I talked about already, I need to find Pastor Jim and invite him to lunch and ask him a couple questions.
[00:32:26] So my final challenge, and the challenge from this whole thing, is don't wait. Don't wait to develop those leaders. Do, do the hard work of creating a culture of leadership development by investing in people, giving people opportunity or iteration, and then invite people into the leadership. So don't wait to develop leaders.
[00:32:46] And then for me personally, don't wait for somebody to develop you. You can do things on your own. You can ask people to informally mentor you. There's plenty of people all around, there's plenty of people that I respect. [00:33:00] Just take some action on yourself, take responsibility, and go out and get developed as a leader.
[00:33:05] So I hope that helped. Uh, this was a little scary for me as I just talked through my notes, uh, on leadership development. Uh, but, but, uh, if you are looking for leaderships in your organization, uh, this-- I hope this helped you give you some, um, steps to take. If you're looking for church leadership development this is something definitely we can use.
[00:33:27] We can always use more people who are great leaders of character in the organizations that are doing the best work for the people to make the lives of people better here on Earth. Um, hey, it's now time to develop some leaders to help you put your mission in motion. We'll see you next time.
