Top Ten Leadership Mistakes

I found this post on Tim Steven's blog. I think it has some great stuff.

Top Ten Leadership Mistakes by Tony Morgan

Tony delivered a content-rich talk to open the Church Solutions Conference. Here are my notes from his talk about the top ten leadership mistakes he has made:

1. Hiring Too Fast. Firing Too Slow. Every minute I delay in firing, I take away opportunity for God to work in that person's life.
2. Putting Projects before the People. Embrace the tension and find the balance between leadership and shepherding.
3. Trying to Fix the Problem Rather than the Process. Ninety percent of the time it isn't a people-problem. It is a process-problem.
4. Delegating Tasks Instead of Responsibility. It is hard to delegate, because many times I (wrongly) think I'm the only one who can do it right.
5. Assuming it is Always Black and White. Following rules is a lot easier than trying to deal with relationships.
6. Not Following my Gut. When we stop listening to God, he stops talking to us (consider the 13-year gap when God stopped talking to Abraham).
7. Dwelling on the Worst-Case Scenario. Worry might not be your issue, but everyone has an issue that can derail them.
8. Waiting Until There's a Problem to Provide Feedback. I have to discipline myself to encourage my team.
9. Staying Busy. It is a lie, but I tend to think if I'm staying busy, I'm adding value to my organization. (Fire ? At this point in Tony's speech, the emergency alarms sounded and the Phoenix Convention Center was evacuated for 20 minutes. Yes, I'm serious.)
10. Spending Too Much Time on the Details Rather than the Dreams.

Other notable quotes from Tony…

* "Are you going to focus on changing diapers or potty-training?"
* "I love executing the policy."
* "My dream for years was, 'I want to be a City Manager.'."
* "The sin I struggle with most in my life is worry."
* "I am encouragement-challenged."
* "My title is meaningless, no one knows what it means, which lets me do whatever I want."

Strategic Leadership Team

We will have our first meeting with the Strategic Leadership Team of Calvary Church today. It's a group of 10 of us that will help to provide vision and strategy for achieving that vision. Our agenda for today looks like this:
1. Season of Prayer - just some good old fashioned prayer in an open way.
2. Senior Pastor sharing his vision for the group
3. Then we will have each person share their hopes for the group. What would this group ideally accomplish and how would it function?
4. Operating Principles - this is sort of like a covenant to each other of how we will act and respond. This could include many things, but things like We will be open, honest, and direct with gentleness and respect. Also, things like "silence is agreement." This isn't a group for people to just listen and not participate.
5. Vision, Logo, Branding - we want to take our Connect, Grow, Reach vision to the next level. This will begin that and we will probably schedule a half day brainstorm to work on it.

I'm looking forward to it very much.