This past week, I had the privilege of being asked to deliver the opening workshop on leadership for the 2015 AIM Conference. The theme of the conference was – The Power of Connection.
To set a foundation for the Leadership Workshop, we needed to understand what a leader is and is not. The term, Leader, has become more of a buzz word with everyone wanting to be a leader today but few knowing what it really means. Some even use it as an excuse to not manage when necessary.
An additional foundational element we explored was, “You cannot lead others if you cannot lead yourself.” The reminder of the Workshop focused on leading yourself – What are the different roles of a leader and how do those look in self-leadership?
As we go through transitions and changes in our lives, leaders will create the transition rather than react to it. Life Transitions from Glory to Glory is ultimately about creating transition and leading yourself through it rather than reacting to everything that happens. Transitions put you on a path – one role of a leader is about finding that path.Ultimately to align or connect correctly, we have to understand something our Saturday evening speaker (Bishop Taro Golden) said, “To be in authority, you have to be under authority.” I might rephrase slightly but don’t want you to lose the significants of the statement, “To be a great leader, you must be a great follower.”
In the context of The Power of Connection Conference, another leader role we discussed was aligning (connecting). There has been much written and spoken about the importance of right alignments and connections in this season. Questions such as, “How am I aligned to achieve vision and strategy (purpose)?” and “How do my alignments work together?” are critical today.
On Thursday evening, our speaker (Gaynelle Standfield) delivered a great message on connections that drove the point of “leading yourself through alignment” by emphasizing right alignments and those that are not right. There is a need for some extended teaching on alignments and connections because in this social media age, these terms have become just buzz words as well.
I left the workshop with this thought from 2 Thessalonians 1:11 (The Message Bible), “Because we know that this extraordinary day is just ahead, we pray for you all the time– pray that our God will make you fit for what he’s called you to be, pray that he’ll fill your good ideas and acts of faith with his own energy so that it all amounts to something.”
While the Leadership Workshop had to be very abbreviated, we will be looking at how and when to provide a full workshop along with exercises for self-leadership.
