Have you ever had somebody you wanted so badly to impress that you were sure to set yourself up for disaster?
Not really?
Okay, you can just laugh at my story then.
I was in my first pastorate – a lovely country church just out on the edge of a small town in southwest Alabama. People there were so kind and gracious to us. I was new and eager to impress, plus was passionate and excited about reaching people and seeing the church grow and flourish.
But this isn’t about reaching people or growing churches. It’s about chicken.
Grilling chicken, to be precise. [click to continue…]
Wanna get away? Want some great in-flight entertainment? Just take a trip with your favorite three-year-old. And try making a list of all the questions you hear. Here, hot off the press, is a partial sampler from a flight we took this past Friday.
What’s amazing is how many of the questions are the same when we’re 33 or 55. We just develop questions behind the questions as we get older. The rest of this is written by Mr. Cohen Thomas (he just doesn’t know it yet)…
Why are we not going?
Are we going down?
[After passing through the clouds] Where is God?
Are we almost to Disney Wouwd? (World)
What’s that button for?
Why are we not going to Grandma and Granddaddy’s house?
Are we almost to Disney Wouwd?
Why are we going to be there tonight?
Why? [click to continue…]
Last month Penelope Trunk, writer for the Boston Globe and the Brazen Careerest blog, wrote about her relationship with her favorite mentor, Chris Yeh. It’s a great read (here) about the importance and cultivation of mentoring relationships. When Penelope started her company, she asked Chris to be an advisor. He agreed and told her the best way to use advisors:
-
Call at times you know are easy for them to talk,
-
Keep them up to date, and
-
Ask them what you should be asking them about.
Read that last one again. Chris understands something about leadership, productivity, and guiding people toward personal and professional excellence: Exceptional leaders aren’t the ones with all the right answers; they’re the ones who ask the right questions.
Want an interesting study? Check out the lives of great leaders, past and present. Find their guiding questions. Go beyond what Churchill, Ghandi, Dr. King, Golda Meir, Jack Welch, Lincoln, Margaret Thatcher, Colonel Sanders, or General Patton said or did. (How’s that for an eclectic bunch?) Look at the questions they asked.
[click to continue…]
