How NOT To Use Coaching As A Leader/Boss!

When coaching a client or a friend, it's important that the person being coached chooses the focus. They decide what goal they want to move forward toward and what their next steps will be.

Not so with business.

Well, not completely anyway.

Gone are the days when the "boss" tells people what to do and how to do it. No one wants to work there, but at times I have seen the pendulum swing completely the other way.

In some circles, there is a lack of clarity on how goals should be set and who should be setting them. Some leaders simply leave the work to the workers and "respect" what they choose to focus on. This is not coaching. Some would even call it distancing, or even neglect.

ENTER Patrick Lencioni and The Advantage. 

The concepts he promotes in this book are over-arching if you are a leader of anything really, maybe even just your own home or your own life. He proposes every leadership team take time to make a list of their core objectives. For a business that could...

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? Discipleship, Leadership Development, Coaching and Spiritual Formation ?

How should we grow? How will we know?

This is a time of redefining norms for our world and for the church.

As we move through this season - people are coming back to church in person, or not. People are getting back to relationships they once invested in, or not. People are sticking with new habits they formed, or not. People are pursuing plans they once had, or not.

There's a lot to navigate.

For me personally, I would love it if God just gave us a step-by-step plan that we could follow, and then we would KNOW we were doing "it" right! 

I would love that full confidence and embrace the challenge to do all the things.

Turns out that is not how He designed our faith walk to be.

Well, not exactly.

The truth is He does have a step-by-step plan for us, but it is an individual path. You probably know the verse as well as I do, but Psalm 119:105 says, "Your word is a lamp to guide my feet and a light for my path."

I wish He would just give us a...

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How To Take Your Leadership To The Next Level!

What if taking your care to the next level required less of you but was more effective?!

Is that even possible!

Caring for the young requires a lot from the caregiver.

  • They need things done for them.
  • They have to be taught about expectations.
  • They need to practice to get things right.

It can be downright exhausting, but now that my kids are grown I am so proud of them. They feed themselves, tie their own shoes, read on their own etc. In fact my kids have mastered adulting and are having their own families and making an impact on the world! I’m so proud of them.

When they were young it wasn’t always easy, but as we taught them how to do things they grew and became more and more healthfully independent.

Our church family is like this, too.

When people are young in faith they need to have things done for them, be taught about expectations and they need practice to get things right.

As leaders it can be easy to get stuck thinking the people we are caring for are...

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Three Ways Coaching Is Like Eating Organic Food!

Talking with a couple coach trainees yesterday got me to thinking about how eating organic food is like coaching.

Here’s some of my thoughts. Organic food by definition is pure. It has no additives or artificial interference. It is slow, you can’t rush it or grow it in a hurry and it has a different constitution than say, fast food.

So, here’s the three ways that Coaching is like eating organic food.

1.Organic food is not what we naturally crave.

I crave a soda and fries… but as I learn to listen to my body better I am finding that those cravings were a mask to what I really wanted and needed.

In my spiritual life I crave someone just telling me what to do. I don’t really want to dig behind the mask to find out what is really needed in my life.

2.You probably can’t get organic food in a drive thru.

I want a quick fix. If I could get a godly answer in a drive thru situation I would wait in line for it. But the waiting God has for me is of a...

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