Old friend called yesterday. It had been a while.
“I’m calling to ask you to pray,” she began. “I’ve just had a bombshell dropped in my lap.”
Like you would do, I’m sure, my mind started racing at the possibilities. Family? Finances? Health? It could be anything.
I won’t tell you what hers was, but it really doesn’t matter. What matters is that she was handed some bad news she didn’t see coming.
Kabloom!
What matters more is that she was really making some progress in some areas of her life, and this jeopardizes all that.
Kabloom again!
And what matters to you is that next time it could be you.
Have you ever noticed that when you start moving in a positive direction, life has a way of testing you out of center field with alarming or disarming stuff? And it comes dressed in any number of ugly outfits. [click to continue…]
Pssst.
Over here.
I have something you need to see.
I’m not showing it to anybody else yet because I wanted you to be the first to take advantage of it. But next week it goes public. And this won’t be a secret for very long. This is a once-in-a lifetime…
(wait for it…)
…yeah, that.
Opportunity. It’s an often-used, sometimes over-used concept. Americans throw it around as if we own the copyright to the term. You can see and hear it everywhere… [click to continue…]
There’s a well-known philosophy in some leadership circles that leaders never admit their mistakes. This being an election year, you can expect to see that in full force.
The problem with that philosophy is that being in a position of leadership – formally or informally – puts you out in front of people where they can see your mistakes loud ’n’ clear. So when you pretend you don’t have any, you look worse than proud. You look rather stupid.
The biggest issue with mistakes in leadership is not whether you make them, but whether you repeat them. Show me a politician, a corporate executive, a pastor, or any other form of “leader” who dodges the issue of failures, I’ll show you a leader destined to repeat the same mistakes.
On the other hand, if it’s true that being a leader means being “first learner,” then one of the best places to start is with your own lessons learned the hard way. Here are 10 lessons I learned by getting it wrong before I ever got it right: [click to continue…]
Old friend called yesterday. It had been a while.
