Facing business struggles, setbacks, conflicts, and hard financial times is something that business leaders and CEOs expect to experience.
I enjoy unhurried conversations where joys, hopes, dreams, and fears bubble to the surface of our often too-busy lives. As a pastor and frequent speaker on faith, work, and economics, I not only really like a bold cup of coffee but enjoy catching up with congregational members at a favorite coffee shop.
Creating a talent advantage defines much of the human capability (talent + leadership + organization + HR) agenda. HR professionals often gain credibility and have an impact when they help create a talent advantage by answering such questions as why talent matters, how to improve talent, and how to prioritize talent.
I’ve met some interesting animals on my path. A pygmy marmoset is one of the smallest monkeys in the world. If you’re lucky, you might see one in Peru. Remarkably, they can rotate their heads 180 degrees. My mother was skilled in this department!
I’ve been through another season of funerals—8 in the past 3 months. Family, friends and business associates passed on and so I attended their memorial service or celebration of life, depending on their belief system. This now regular event gave me ample opportunity to pause and reflect on my own destiny, something that, I hope, you all do on occasion.
The haunting feeling of isolation is among the top reasons a business leader will seek out Convene Peer Advisory Groups. It’s really kind of strange how we need connection and community and so seldom find it.
There are several syndromes that hamper the leader in this quest for connection.
Leadership, in my view, consists of the merger of heart and science (in that order). Leadership in God’s Kingdom is learned, driven by character, and operated with excellence.
Heart generates vision statements, mission statements and values developed in relationship with the Holy Spirit living in and through us.
Time is your most important scarce resource. Does anyone have enough time in this information overload age? Gadgets are blasting us—tempting us with “news” stories that we all too often chase down with regret. TVs give too many options, yet people still lament there is nothing to watch. T.S. Eliot had it right decades ago when he wrote, “Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?”. People have way too much information and way too little of what they really need—wisdom, and the focus to implement it. There is urgency all around in a world that needs importance.
There are numerous examples in the Bible about pride and its consequences in the lives of leaders and followers. And, having worked over the years with hundreds of leaders, and having interviewed over 5,000 of them, I have seen so many leaders like those in the Bible. I have witnessed their disgrace, as written in Proverbs 11: 2 (ESV); “When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with the humble wisdom.” In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis wrote, “Pride leads to every other vice; it is the complete anti-God state of mind.” And pride prevents you from serving God.
