This is a guest post by Tyler Crosson. Tyler is student pastor where I serve. He’s an excellent communicator and has a passionate heart for Jesus and for ministry. He knows God is preparing him for a more lead role in a church, and it’s been fun to watch him in this journey. Part of our development time together led to me asking Tyler to write this post.
I am a young leader. The kind that desires to not only improve my own leadership capacity, but one day grow into a great leader in a great position. I recognize that I have a long way to go in developing my own leadership skills, and I recognize that I have plenty to learn about leadership in general. There are many excellent resources out on the topic of leadership, and I definitely try to be the kind of leader that is a reader. There are books, articles and blogs, the one you’re reading is the best. (Ron is my boss, so I figure a little plug for him serves us both!) If you’re anything like me, the vastness of it all seems a little overwhelming and a little impersonal.
One day, through a discussion about leadership with Ron, I stumbled into what has served as a gold mine of wisdom and has changed the way I pursue learning about leadership. I wish I could call it a secret, but I’m willing to guess that this method is also staring you in the face. Want to know what the “secret” is? Here it is: leaders. Yep, leaders. All over my city, and I’m guessing leaders are all over your area, too. Good leaders. Some are even great leaders!
I decided to tap into this gold mine of leadership wisdom that is in action right here in my community. People that are busy making the community I’m invested in better every day. Here’s what I did: I asked if I could meet with some of these leaders. Earth shattering, huh? Yeah, not really. I just began to seek out people that I (and others I trusted) appreciated as leaders, and I asked for an hour of their valuable time. I let them know that I respected their leadership and I simply wanted an opportunity to ask them a few questions about their leadership in an effort to learn for myself.
I take seven questions into the meeting (which seems fitting, since Ron is a seven points kind of guy), and I have yet to struggle to quickly fill an hour of time in discussion.
