Leading a Next Gen team, especially during challenging times, Can put a Pastors strength to the test, keeping his or her team calm, focused and confident during periods of uncertainty at times leads me to feel like a like a military commander.

Leaders earn the respect and trust of their team by setting an example of excellence.

Showing your team that you have their best interest in mind as well as that of your church goes a long way to gain trust.Think with me about being on the battlefield, bullets flying everywhere and you as the leader being willing to take a bullet by taking responsibility for a mistake.

When leaders Lead strong, it shows integrity and ownership for your team’s decisions.When things go wrong, a weak team leader will quickly shift the blame,While a strong leader will hold him or herself accountable and looks for alternate solutions.

Being a Strong Leader means empowering your Next Gen staff, not micromanaging them where they do not feel safe offering an opinion for fear of ridicule.

Strong Leaders have the power to make or break a healthy team by ignoring petty politics, discouraging gossip and setting high expectations for themselves and their team.

Clear, effective communication and adhering to company’s goals and principles without wavering is what separate leaders that inspire loyalty from those who encourage their employees to jump ship where they will feel more secure.

Today Thought are all over the place are you picking up what I’m putting down?

What are your thoughts on how to Lead Strong?

I don’t know about you, but I generally never want to ask for help especially as the leader. I am sometimes too prideful to admit to anyone, even God, that I need their aid. Yet, God tells us to do otherwise.

God says that it is an ultimate act of faith in God to ask for help. If we truely have faith, will we not be eager to pass our requests on to our all-powerful God? I struggle most in bringing requests to God that seem too easy for me to not do them myself, or too trivial for God to worry about. I think “Oh, I can do THAT! I don’t need help; I don’t need God. I can handle it myself!” However, God tells us that it is a sign of respect and definitely a mark of humility and faith to bring even the small things to God.

However, God tells us that it is a sign of respect and definitely a mark of humility and faith to bring even the small things to God.

• 1 Peter 5:5 God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.
• Proverbs 15:33 The fear of the Lord teaches a man wisdom, and humility comes before honor.

So what exactly is humility? Humility is being humble, childlike, gentle, kind, willing to confess when you’re wrong, (as I lead this has been a great way to show humility)  and a willingness to take advice from others, a constant desire to put others before yourself, to be like Christ.

After all, Jesus is the King of Kings, yet in his royal procession, he rode a donkey instead of a horse. He’s God, yet he made himself a servant to all and suffered death on the cross for us. So what do we do to get humility?

It’s been said

Right now I’m striving to lead strong by being concern with what’s right instead of who is right!

What are your thoughts on how to Lead Strong?

I love getting people riled up!

What I should be saying is I love to get people thinking. I love to get my team to think outside of the box, beyond what they can imagine and help them find better solutions to bigger and more important tasks.

How have I been doing it? Asking Tough Questions……

Jesus was the perfect example of asking tough questions look at some of these….

• “After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions…” (The boy Jesus in the temple, Luke 2:46)
• “But who do you say that I am?” (Peter’s great confession, Luke 9:20)
• “What do you seek?” (To the disciples of John who followed him, John 1:38)
• “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” (To the woman caught in adultery, John 8:10)
• “What is written in the law? How do you read?” (Jesus replies to a lawyer who puts him to the test, Luke 10:26)
• “Which is easier to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven you,’ or to say, ‘Rise and walk?’” (At the healing of the paralytic, Luke 5:23)
• “Which of these three, do you think, proved neighbor to the man…?” (The Good Samaritan, Luke 10:36)
• “I ask you, is it lawful on the sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to destroy it?” (Healing on the Sabbath, Luke 6:9)

When my team has looked at the situation to a certain depth, but with that level of information, they can’t come up with a workable solution. I often begin to ask tough questions.

The bigger the question, the more ways it can be answered.

Your questions must be carefully constructed to create a climate for free exploration. Below are three characteristics of great probing questions:

They use the words your team is already using
They are crisp and concise
They are neutral

Here are a few of my favorites

• How does that decision align with your values?
• Sounds interesting. How does it work?
• What’s behind this? If making this change was easy, you ‘d have done it already and without my help.
• What makes it difficult?
• Why is this important to you?

What are your thoughts on how to Lead Strong?

Over the last few years, I have found that the strongest way I can lead is through compassion.

I rarely have had moments when a leader asked me to do something that is tough, strenuous, grueling, challenging, demanding, hard, tiring, exhausting, punishing, laborious, stressful, backbreaking and when coupled with compassion said no to.

There is something deep within leading strong and being lead by a strong leader that when coupled with compassion doesn’t seem so bad.

For me leading a team, I would be willing to interchange the quote “Teamwork makes the dream work” to

Brian Dodd lists these seven things that compassionate leaders do.

1.Compassionate Leaders Make Time For Others –
2.Compassionate Leaders Care About What Those They Serve Care About-
3.Compassionate Leaders Focus On Things Others Do Well –
4.Compassionate Leaders Acknowledge The Contribution Others Make –
5.Compassionate Leaders Are Genuinely Sincere –
6.Compassionate Leaders Give Others Hope –
7.Compassionate Leaders Put People Ahead Of Projects –

What are your thoughts on how to lead Strong