Category Archives: Leadership Lessons

I’ve begun mentoring one of our pastors in leadership – every month I write another lesson, send it to him and he works through it. I’m posting them here as we go, and once a number of these are compiled we will make them available as a free download pdf – another good addition to our resources I trust.

Leadership Lesson Four – Relationships before Productivity

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Those who gravitate to leadership are often those able to make things happen. Those who ‘do’ among us are rewarded and given positions of responsibility and authority. And yet any leader who wants to continue in respected positions of leadership must learn that at the heart of all great leadership is an ability to relate with people. John 13:34-35

Now, many of us would shake our heads ‘Yes!’ as we hear this, and yet what happens when a relationship goes bad? What happens when we are given the choice of choosing productivity or relationship?

Sadly, particularly when we are immature, we often choose the productivity rather than working to right any relationships. And yet, relationships reveal the heart of any leader. Matthew 5:23-24

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Leadership Lesson Three – Let Your Yes be Yes and Your No be No

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To become a trusted and respected leader we must be straight-up with others. This means that we don’t play games with our words, we don’t lie or cover over things, and we don’t manipulate to get what we want.

To deal dishonestly with people may seem a solution to some problems but it is short-term thinking. Dishonesty of our words and intentions will always come back in a bad way. We want to make decisions out of integrity with others and ourselves.

Integrity is a word we use to indicate the strength of something through and through. For instance, imagine a board, a piece of wood made from a tree. Imagine that you want to use this board to make a stage to stand on. Now, to stand on a stage the stage must be made from good boards.

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Leadership Lesson Two – Short Accounts

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As leaders it is important to maintain regular housekeeping of conversations and relationships.

Just as a house can be in disrepair if not attended to, so too can our relationships. Proverbs 10:9

A good habit is to keep short accounts at all times. This means that any conflict that has not been worked out, any conversations uncompleted, any bad feelings, any apologies that need to be made, any difficulties that need to be addressed, we deliberately attend to these. Ephesians 4:32

We do this first and foremost with our team. Then we do this with those we are serving. And finally to anyone on the fringes that have been drawing our attention. Philippians 2:3

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Leadership Lesson One – TRUST

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The first leadership lesson that I give is this:

LESSON ONE – Leadership is about Trust – 1 Corinthians 4:2

When we first come into leadership we may think it is about:

  • Status
  • Power
  • Position
  • Authority

But these things are the lowest forms of leadership.

A true leader does not worry about status because status is about self, and a leader is for others. Matthew 23:12

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