Enhance my leadership abilities! Please!

Q:  "What are some of the PERSONAL keys, meaning ones that I personally have direct and total control over, that will enhance my leadership and my ability to manage the various situations that come up during my time as leader? I heard you say once, “You have to do what has to be done and you have to listen to those who have valid counsel for you.”  What's that mean in every day terms?"

A: Of course there are many, many factors out of your control. That’s why I insist that leaders work on the factors on a personal level, where they have total input. Here are five of the rock bottom basics: 

1) Get proficient at following. You have to first be a follower. That's where you get the basics. Following someone who's already done it. Receive counsel, advice and direction, and then. . . Follow it! Do whatever those who have already been there tell you to do.  

Your family or friends might make fun of you, like they did me when I would ask my pastor what to do and then I'd do it, or when I'd say what he told me to say. They'd say: “Can't you think for yourself anymore? How come you do everything Pastor Wolfe tells you to do?” I'd have to answer, “Because I don't want to stay immature, selfish, defeated, broke, unblessed and a half hearted hypocrite, that's why!  

2) Make friends with leaders. By “leaders” I mean not just your church or organizational leaders, who are below you, positionally. You need to make friends with and spend as much time as possible with those who are doing better than you in some area. How can you grow if you're only hanging around with people who know only what you know? Associate with at least two or three people who are ahead of you in the Lord, in understanding and lifestyle. Associate with people who have a walk like you want to have. Learn everything you possibly can from them. Ask questions! You can’t hang around leaders without learning something. 

You'll never find people who are so willing to help and to share their insights as you will find among the leaders in the Body of Christ. Men of God are almost always willing to pass on their insights, if they believe you will act on them. 

3) Develop your faith. Faith comes from hearing and hearing from the Word of God. Part of being a leader is having faith enough and vision enough to be inspired to do whatever you have to do to fulfill your life's purpose. You get vision from reading the Word, reading the stories of other men and women of God, gathering your skills and wisdom from books on leadership and people skills. You need to read enough and pray enough to know that if God can bless anybody else, He can and will bless you. 

When you run into struggles and disappointments in the work of God, it can whittle away at your level of belief. If you don't BELIEVE enough, you can at least HOPE! Hope will get you moving and get you focused. We serve the God of all hope, the Bible says. We're not like those without hope. Hope is eternal just like faith and charity are. Get you faith up, your hope active, your vision clear and start acting in faith. Say what you would say if you DID have faith. Do what you would do if you had faith. 

4) Set the example – become a person that people want to follow! You have an obligation to them in this area. There’s faith, there’s hope and now here’s charity, or love for other people. You have an obligation to them to have faith, hope and love. You have an obligation to them to have vision. You have an obligation to prosper, to be in health and for your soul to prosper. They are looking to you.  

You have an obligation for them to see God's blessing clearly enough in your life that they can say, “If YOU can do it, I can do it!” They're waiting to see you be blessed, joyous, happy and prosperous. Then, their faith springs into action.

You have an obligation to your people to step out, see things by faith and to call those things which be not as though they were, to call forth things you never thought about. You have an obligation to explore, to take the risk, to talk it, take the chance of falling flat on your face and being laughed at, as a fool for the Kingdom of God.  

5) You have to develop a strong “who and why.” Who needs you to succeed? Who needs you to be close to God and full of the Holy Spirit? Who needs you to learn to speak well, to be more persuasive, to be effective as a man or woman of God? 

WHY do they need it? Why MUST you prosper in all that you put your hand to? Why must you read the Word, pray, be in the house of God?   

When the “why” is strong enough, the “how” will come. You can do anything God puts in your heart to do, and the truth is, you just haven't found enough reasons WHY yet.   

You can have all the information in the world, all the “how to” books and tapes and conferences, but it will all be meaningless until you have a strong enough list of WHY you need to use that knowledge. Knowledge the Bible says, puffs a person up – but charity, loving other people, having some “who's” and “why's” edifies you, makes you stronger, gives you abilities you never even knew you had. Charity, love for other people in your life, in society and in this world is what turns the how to information into a reason to take action and to become what God put you on the earth to do in the first place!

Copyright Steven L. Davis  www.SteveDavis.org