May 19, 2012

My Least Favourite Moment at The Global Leadership Summit

What is my least favourite moment at The Global Leadership Summit?

It’s the same moment every year. And every year I resolve to do whatever it takes to minimize the likelihood that it will recur.

It’s the moment as the Summit ends, when leaders throughout the auditorium, and in auditoriums across Canada, are pumped up, high-fiving each other…and then invariably they start talking about other leaders on their team they wish had attended.

I hate that moment.

And that moment leads to later moments where the leader who stayed home feels like an outsider as their fired-up teammates tell story after story of the impact of the Summit. New visions are born. New determinations to build the Kingdom are unleashed.

And there sits the lonely leader, the one who missed out.

This will be my final word on the subject. Don’t be that person. Don’t be the leader who missed out.

Instead, do whatever it takes to free up the time and resources necessary to participate at The Global Leadership Summit, September 29-30.

If you need one more reminder why, take 5 minutes and watch what happened last year.

Wouldn’t you know it. It got me again.

I just re-watched a clip from the 2010 Global Leadership Summit, and once again something started to stir inside me. It happens every time.

Bill Hybels opened the clip with these words: “I really do believe…you’ve heard me say it a thousand times….that the local church is the hope of the world. But for it to reach its redemptive potential, it must be well led.”

Bill-Hybels-laughing-mainHearing these words I once again found something welling up inside me that just can’t be suppressed. It’s the passion to see the Church in Canada become all that she can be; all that she MUST be in order to see a spiritual resurgence take place from coast to coast.

And Bill is right. For this to happen, the local church must be well led.

If you need to have this passion re-awakened within you, I dare you to watch this four-minute clip for yourself, and see if that fire doesn’t start to smolder within you too.

The timeliness of this is that we are days away from the deadline for the best prices for the 2011 Global Leadership Summit. The way many leaders do the math is simply this; the lower the price you are able to get for the Summit, the more leaders you can bring, the greater the impact you will see in your church.

So go ahead. Watch the clip. I’ll bet something starts to stir inside you too.

For me, it happens every time.

How have you leveraged the Summit to fire up leaders in your church?

Leadership Lessons from Toy Story; Communicate Change Openly and Directly

One of my favourite scenes from the original Toy Story movie is when Woody assembles the toys for a “staff meeting”, where he intends to inform them that their owner, Andy, has had the date for his birthday party changed.

Knowing that this news is likely to evoke a strong reaction, Woody starts by bringing them a couple of fairly innocuous pieces of information (eg, “Does everyone have a moving buddy?”) before delivering the real news.

Almost under his breath, Woody nonchalantly looks on the second page of his agenda and mumbles, “Oh, and one minor note, the date for Andy’s birthday party has changed…to today.”

Watching Mr. Potatohead, Rex, Ham and the others totally freaking out is pretty hilarious.

The leadership lesson for Woody? How you deliver this kind of news is as important as what the news itself actually is. In this case, news of this importance required clear, open, up-front communication.

Similarly, at the close of this year’s Global Leadership Summit we delivered some fairly significant news; that starting in 2011 the Canadian Summit is moving to the end of September. And while we had no reactions nearly as intense as those of Woody’s friends, this news is worthy of open discussion.

Here then, is the background to this move.

At the start of June we met with our Summit host pastors, along with Bill Hybels, and asked them how we could extend the impact of the Summit. I was surprised to hear them say that we should move the dates.

After getting feedback from church leaders across Canada, two vital themes emerged. The first was that the single greatest factor which limits the impact of the Summit is the time of year.

Secondly, Canadian church leaders want the Summit to more fully reflect our own country’s leadership issues. This move will allow us to not only capture the entire U.S. Summit experience, but also enhance it with new content.

Moving forward there’s another Toy Story leadership lesson to be gleaned. Woody made the mistake of simply announcing this change and then moving on. We want to engage in dialogue. So here are a couple of questions I’d love to get your input on:

  • How can we leverage the Summit to impact more church leaders in Canada?
  • What are the most pressing leadership issues facing the Canadian church that could be addressed in the Summit?