Dan Gould

Tag: Leadership Development

  • Leaders Summit @ Grace – Day 2

    Well day two of the Leaders Summit went much better than the first day.  It seemed that Chris (one of the speakers) was more relaxed and able to connect with the audience (our staff) a lot better today.  Again we covered some things that aren’t new when it comes to leadership and then other concepts that really challenge and stretch you.  For me, I am able to look at where I was four months ago compared to where I am now.  I am thankful that i see some consistency with my answers.  That tells me that I am not delusional or lack self awareness.   Here are the four areas of leadership that we covered today

    Change Agent
    Character
    Emotional Awareness

    I might be missing one?  I am sure that says something about my learning ability.  But anyhow, the three above had some great times of learning and discussion, even some quiet moments as we avoided awkward conversations or what some call pink elephants. However, I believe today was a healthy learning day for all of us and it will be interesting to see how we apply some of the principles that we learned today.  I also enjoyed getting to know some of the staff that I don’t know to well during our table discussions.

    I still have a lot to learn and process!  I will post more of my learning about each skill at a later time!

  • Leaders Summit @ Grace – Day 1

    Today, the team from Leaders Summit met with the staff at Grace Community Church for what will be a three day leadership conference.  This will actually be the second time I have gone through the material.  This is really good stuff, some of it basic, while other very thought provoking and even convicting.  It is interesting to see how our team responds to this.

    To be honest, I don’t know if I agree with all of the things that are said.  Like the example of not watching live TV in order to maximize time.  Please don’t get me wrong, I am all about maximizing time, but this sounds a little rigid and very scheduled.  Almost driven to the point of not having fun unless it’s scheduled.  That scares me!

    However, it’s easy to get caught up on the things that we don’t necessarily agree with, or get caught up on the way things are said, that we miss the point.  The principles we are learning are very good, the method however, may be different for different situations.  Example, if you don’t want to write in a journal because you have an on-line journal called a blog that fine.  The principle is capturing the thoughts that come, so you don’t lose them later.

    It was interesting to see what I wrote a couple of months ago and what I wrote today.  I do like the fact that we are meeting on Mondays from 9am to 3pm over the next three weeks instead of 2 days in a row starting at 8am and ending at 5pm.  I feel like I will actually get more out of it especially where my brain shut down during the last sessions toward the end of the conference last time.  We will see what happens.

    Today we talked about why it’s important to study leadership.  Based on our self assessment, click here to take one for yourself, we were able to see possibly our strength and weaknesses as it pertains to the hard and soft skills of leadership.  Here are the three Leadership Principles we talked about today.

    1. Vision
    2. L3 – Life-Long-Learning
    3. Team Work

    I am excited to learn and begin/continue to apply these leadership principles to our student ministry.