Leadership GPS: Roadmap to Become a Leader for Life

Christ.

Introduction

Our leadership development journey does not occur in a vacuum. We are more than the work that we do – we impact and are impacted by others. There are some things you need to know and skills you want to develop as you embark upon this journey. Let’s walk one step at a time, making steady progress as we align ourselves with what Our Heavenly Father is doing as He further develops us as leaders for life.

If it truly takes the whole village to raise a child, it takes more than the village to facilitate the success of that child through a lifetime of experiences (both good and bad), and ensuring that the community continues to grow and thrive. We want to you to have good success as a result of reading and applying the scriptural and practical tools and techniques in this book – and then for you to help someone else have good success – and for that person to help someone else to have good success. Remember, every person is important, valuable, and special. Each of us must complete our assignment if we are to become the people leaders that God created us to be.

Therefore, welcome to your continuing investment in leading for life – whether as a formal leader in a corporate or nonprofit business or fraternal organization (e.g., sorority, fraternity, Links, etc), at your church, or in your family. You may be an informal leader, where no one has given you the official title as leader, but where you are influencing people left and right as a positive, effective role model. You may not see yourself as a leader today; however, we don’t know what tomorrow holds in your leadership future. This book provides you with some strategies that will

• Incorporate spiritual principles which allow you to leverage the whole person (mind, body, and spirit) as you grow and develop as a leader for life;"

• Help you to identify your areas of strength and development -- those things that are known to you and others that might be a blind spot."

• Enhance your professionalism and marketability AS A LEADER;

• Ground yo u in something (rather, SOMEONE) who is able to direct your paths and help you to have good success; and

• Provide some insights about others who have achieved success and cleared the pathway for you.

My personal style is to develop a plan for a journey, ensuring that I have gotten the money for the trip; checked the oil and tires on the car; made hotel reservations; had the oil changed; filled up the gas tank; gotten any available coupons; picked up breakfast (or lunch) for the trip; and packed and loaded the suitcases into the car. My husband, on the other hand, is more laissez-faire about such matters. He will wait until the same day of the trip to pack (sometimes to wash his clothes or to pick them up from the cleaners). He wants to pick up breakfast (or lunch) on the way. He might ask me if we have any money. He frequently wants to check the oil and tires and to figure out if we have gas. In other words, for him the journey unfolds on the way and he is having fun without planning or preparation. For me, the journey requires preparation; proper execution of our ensures that I will have fun. My daughter, Janelle, is more like me; my son, Justin, is more like my husband, Will. It made for interesting and often stressful family vacations. Janelle and I learned to plan activities that did not include Will and Justin and to encourage them to join in when they were flowing. In that sense, all of us won.

As with any journey, we need to locate our starting place. If we do not know where we are, we cannot adequately resource for our journey or identify the proper pathway that will take us safely and expeditiously to our end point.

To find out where we are going, we first have to figure out where we are. That sounds simple, but many of us are so busy doing that we have not figured out who we are. We have to locate WHO we are and WHOSE we are in order to understand and define where we are and to know where we are going.

Are you a leader if no one is following? This question is similar to an old adage that asks if a tree falls in the forest and there is no one there, does it make a sound? Which came first, the chicken or the egg – the leader or the leadership experience? It’s hard to consider oneself a leader if you are truly an Army of one. John Maxwell says in his book Leadership 101, that to be a leader, a person has to not only be out front, but also have people intentionally coming behind him, following his lead, and acting on his vision. A single individual can be effective; however, the scripture says that one can put a thousand to flight, but two can put ten thousand (Deut. 32:3). How much more effective the ministry would be if the individual contributor becomes a leader that other people will follow as they follow Christ! That’s what this book is all about – getting each individual prepared to lead and honing our ability to follow. Our true leadership model is the Servant-Leadership model that Jesus provided us. My first book, Called to Lead, Anointed to Serve discusses servant leadership in detail. The most effective leaders will be those whose orientation is to serve others, to get the best from them, to ensure that the overall mission is successful, whether or not the individual leader gets the credit.

What do you use to provide you with guidance and direction about the pathway you are to take? We all have a type of internal global positioning system (GPS) which will give us driving directions to a destination that we have chosen. For believers, our true North (our compass) should always point to God, our Heavenly Father. Jesus promised us in John 14:27 that He would not leave us comfortless, that He would send a Comforter who knows the mind of God to provide us with direction, who would guide our footsteps. The Holy Spirit indwells believers and serves as our internal GPS. Let me explain to you what I think of when I think of a GPS, based on what we know and understand about technology in the natural.

Our physical GPS has to be synced up with the satellite which provides an aerial view, many miles away, of what is reality on earth. The signal bounces off of a number of satellites, depending on where we may be positioned at that time. As we move (travel), grow, and develop, we get plugged into different satellites. The data provided is only as good as the quality of the satellite, the lack of turbulence in the atmosphere, and the angle at which it is placed on the atmosphere. These satellites can provide intelligence for the military and may sometimes be blocked on purpose, through weather, through military and other types of aircraft. Sometimes our GPS equipment will tell us that we have a weak connection; perhaps the GPS cannot find the correct satellite; sometimes it cannot find the location to which we want to travel. Sometimes the location is too new to have been captured on any type of map, and the system does not have the sophistication or sensitivity to get us to that destination. We know that it is a real place and that we have important work to complete there. Unfortunately, our manmade GPS is not omnipotent, omniscient or omnipresent. But our God is all of those and more! He is the satellite that our inner GPS is searching for – He provides us with direction, guidance, instruction, grace, love, joy, peace, mercy, goodness, kindness, faithfulness, and so much more. It doesn’t matter how advanced the GPS on the ground is – if you’re plugged into the wrong source – the wrong satellite, you will have directions to nowhere special, nothing significant; nothing lasting. We must always calibrate our natural GPS (what is innate, part of human nature) to the spiritual GPS, God’s Word.

We will use the GPS as a way of looking at our journey, both from spiritual and practical aspects. Let us begin our conversation about my perspective on how we can use our physical, electronic GPS. We’ll take a road trip later and talk about my spiritual GPS as well.

This physical GPS has the current time and driving time to whatever destination I inputted on it, along with a picture of a roadway and a road sign. Can you see that? Now look lower on the screen, there is an icon that says, drive to. . . If you click this icon, you will get another screen that identifies possibilities – places to which you could drive. For example, I have input where home is into my GPS; if you click this button, it will provide you with directions to get to my house, without having to identify the location further. If you have the specific street address, you have the option of entering the specific information – street number and name, city, state or zip code. You may even say it into the GPS microphone – you don’t have to take the time to type it. Then you would submit that information, and the GPS would process it. Perhaps you do not have the actual street address, but you do know the city and state to which you wish to go. You may either enter it and submit or say it. In either case, the GPS determines the best route to get there.

If you are not sure where you want to go, you also have the option of entering into the GPS the name of a business or type of business and clarify it with responses to some other questions. For example, perhaps you want to go to a favorite restaurant in another town and you don’t have the address. What are your options? You can enter the restaurant’s name and location, and it will find it for you. Or, you could enter the type of restaurant and have it find that restaurant in a number of different locations. In this way, you don’t have to know what city or state is your destination, only the name or type of business that you want to visit. You also have your choice of airports or can even choose the intersection of two streets.

There is an option which allows you to identify things by category – you may not know the name of the business, but you might input restaurants, and it will give you a list of restaurants by distance away from you, and you could choose your restaurant based on this computer-generated list. Are you getting the picture – there are a lot of options available to you – you have to choose the option that works best for you. Perhaps you have already travelled on this journey and know about particular places that you want to re-visit. There is an option on my GPS is labeled my favorites. This would identify places that you have identified as places you would like to visit again, places that are important or meaningful to you, or just places that you like. There is the opportunity for you to place a filter on your favorites to further categorize where you want to go. Another selection category is recent places. This particular option identifies for you where you have been before. It does not identify whether or not these were fun, meaningful or important places. Rather, you know where you have been or intended to go. You may select from these items where you would like to go again. My GPS has an additional option which allows you to select from your contact list. You can go to that option and select one of the people you have input and get directions to their location. However, if you don’t have an address entered, you get a prompt that states, no address listed.

Wow, I feel like we just went through the GPS technology maze! It’s good to get out of that loop. Let’s apply the natural aspects of the GPS described above and apply it spiritually. Our true GPS (the Holy Spirit) provides you with the route, but He does not start your vehicle, accelerate for you, depress the brakes, or turn the steering wheel. You have to be sufficiently connected to the Holy Spirit that when He says move, you move. When He says accelerate, you move faster. When He says, Slow down, you do so immediately. We are to allow the Holy Spirit to carve out the path for us – we move when He says move, and we stop moving when He says to stop. When there is the need for a lane change, He tells us that as well, when we are spiritually attuned to His leading.

My physical GPS also beeps when there is a camera at an intersection to warn me not to try to run through the light. Sometimes it beeps too late, and I am caught on camera or I do not understand what the beep means.

That is not true with my spiritual GPS. The warning is never too late – my ears may not be attuned to Him, but the warning is always timely. My spiritual GPS, the Holy Spirit, warns me of both seen and unseen dangers as well. Our spiritual eyes and ears have to be attuned to what the Holy Spirit is telling us. We need to know how to manage our direct reports; how to organize and direct our work; in what ways to respond to our bosses; nuances in meeting the needs of internal and external customers and the like.

Summary of the GPS available to us: