Reinvention 1: The Emotionally Intelligent Leader
Many of you were already chafing at my instinctive leadership style (aggressive, clear, focused and direct). And, honestly, it rubs some people the wrong way.
Your first reinvention as a leader has to happen when you realize your strengths have accompanying weaknesses.
The best leaders aren’t just intelligent, they’re emotionally intelligent.
The key to emotional intelligence is self-awareness.
As a result, wise leaders develop ‘learned behaviours’. Learned behaviours are simply behaviours you adopt to compensate for the edges of your strengths. For example, I’ve had to learn to listen, to be gracious, to be compassionate and to value the input of others.
It’s a little embarrassing to admit I had to learn those things, but it’s true.
There are behaviours you have to learn to. if you’re not sure what they are, just look for characteristics that are the opposite of your gift set or, better yet, ask people around you. They’ll tell you.
Reinvention 2: The Leader of Leaders
If you’re a bit gifted, it will easy to rely on your own charisma, gifts and skills to help grow the ministry. Don’t make that mistake.
Growing things all by yourself just doesn’t scale well, and it’s not sustainable. Eventually, things will implode and you’ll end up leading only the people you can personally impact directly.
If you’re going to lead well over the long haul, you have to learn to lead others well. And more than that, you have to attract highly capable people to leadership.
In fact, you have to learn to lead people who are better than you.
That’s big task, but it’s a necessary reinvention.
I outlined 5 ways to attract leaders who are better than you in this post. And I also outlined 6 reasons many leaders lose high capacity people in this post.
Reinvention 3: The Healthy Leader
Everybody has issues. And after a few years in leadership, yours will unmistakably surface.
Your personal demons and issues will infect your leadership, your marriage and your home life. There’s just no escape.
If you’re at that stage right now, there are three stories that might really be able to speak to you:
