Like I have said before, God is teaching me more and more everyday about what it means to really be a leader! It’s a lot harder than I ever dreamed, and I’m no where near being good at it, but I love it!
Through this, I’ve found that there are always going to be small everyday choices that affect the big picture. The big picture is a great way to always keep things in check, but these situations try to sneak under the radar. These situations bring with them the temptation to act in a way that won’t grow me or the people I’m leading…but for some reason they’re still so tempting.
I call these the temptations of a leader. They ‘come up’ most of the time in our everyday ’smal’l decisions that we don’t think twice about…but maybe we should. We’re going to look at one of these today and two more tomorrow…
the NEED to feel needed
As leaders, there will be many times when we will have to have to relinquish control of things and give it to our volunteers. But something in us won’t want to do this.
We’ll say it because “we don’t want to overwhelm them” or “this is something I just need to do”…but is it really?
Chances are…no. The temptation is to always keep ‘certain’ things on our plate, but most of the time we don’t have to. If we’re really honest with ourselves, many times us NOT giving up something isn’t a trust issue in our people…it’s a pride issue in us.
We feel that if we give up item ‘X’ that our people won’t ‘need’ us anymore.
The truth is, if we are a good leader…our people don’t ‘need’ us. We will have empowered, equip and encouraged them to LEAD. We are simply their cheerleader who keeps casting vision!
More tomorrow… 
July 28th, 2008 at 11:10 am
Right on Pudge!!! The three “E’s”….. we’ve got to keep them before us if we are going to effectively lead! Dude, YOU ROCK!!!