Tag: David

Posted on

Yes, You Are Called to Be a Leader for Christ

Yes, You Are Called to Be a Leader for Christ

Times are changing, and so are the ways people work and collaborate.  The idea of being a leader can be daunting.

When you consider the word  “leader  who and what comes to mind, perhaps your Pastor?  The BBC show the Apprentice? Your manager? A colleague at work in another team perhaps  or  an individual  who literally has “Project Leader”  on a business card or email signature?

Well, it may not be part of your job title, and you may even struggle to find the words in your job description, nevertheless, the call to follow Christ is a call to leadership.

In the Oxford ditionary a project Is defined as “an individual or collaborative enterprise that is carefully planned to achieve a particular aim”

When you think “project”, you typically think about big things, such as:

  • Church building developments
  • Developing a new product
  • IT system integration
  • Writing a tender

But actually, many smaller activities  can also be classed as a project, such as:

  • Creating and delivering an internal training course at church
  • Creating and sending a church e-newsletter
  • Creating new  team processes

In fact, according to David Allen,  pioneer  of the productivity system Getting Things Done (GTD), a ‘project’ is  any multi-step action. In other words, creating a new ad campaign, outreach planning, feeding the poor initiative, even buying a new car or making a 3-course dinner for your significant others are  all different  types of daily projects  you manage.

What does this mean for people  not called project leaders?

Well, failing to realise this could mean that you are missing out on important lessons that the  people with the ‘project leader’ label on their business cards know only too well.

If  you  approach  your daily tasks  and projects with the mindset, “I can do this in a structured, organized way,” then the outcome will substantially improve. Additionally, it may seem glaringly obvious, but someone needs to own a project, and not  every church  organisation or team  has a certified project leader to call upon.

1.   Change your approach

“Stake Your Claim That This Is Now a Project You‘re Managing”

Professional project leaders have formal training on the best way on approaching a project and use methodologies which take time to master. However, this  just isn’t appropriate for people who are juggling the role of unofficial project leader alongside many other tasks.  

Simply changing your mindset can make a difference in how you approach the work.

2. Create an action plan

“Make a List of the Actions It Will Take to Get You to the End Goal”

It’s very easy to jump straight in and get moving on  a project. Spending time planning can seem like wasted time, but in fact, without good planning, you could be wasting your  time and energy on things that just aren’t needed. In other words, skipping the planning phase of a project is a sure-fire way of encountering problems  down the line. The basics of what you’ll need to establish include your project vision (or guiding light), what your project will deliver, the risks to the project as well as your budget, resources, and timescales  and don’t forget to pray before you start.  Prayer is the portal that brings the power of heaven down to earth. It is kryptonite to the Enemy and to all his ploys against you. Pray in the Spirit at all times and at every stage of the project.

3.  Set a realistic deadline

Without a Deadline Your Project Will Sit at the Bottom of Your To-do List and Will Go Nowhere

When it comes to assessing your timescales, you need to figure out what is realistically achievable, while not padding out your timelines too much.

4. Communicate regularly

Developing a Project in a Bubble Will Result in Problems Later On

Regular communication is vital.  Meetings, emails and even a quick trip to your colleague’s desk are all needed to make sure you have not missed anything important and  that  everyone in on the same page.

5. Faith is not a spectator sport.

The Opportunities are Endless and Harvest is Plentiful.

Finally, please remember aside from managing projects that faith is not a spectator sport. It’s easy to come to church to be entertained and not invest time in serving the church community. But Jesus isn’t here for our amusement. He didn’t die so we could experience cool sermons  alone. The Christians we remember throughout history were the men and women who did not wait on the sideline when there was work to be done.

There are many places to lead. The opportunities are endless and harvest is plentiful.

Posted on

42 Masterful Quotes to Inspire Healthier Relationships

42 Masterful Quotes to Inspire Healthier Relationships

Conflict is part of our working life and is often used as a way to work out our differences and reach a conclusion. It’s usually the approach you take that tends to exacerbate the issues and cause undue stress. How you deal with conflict reveals your character.

  1. The wise man doesn’t give the right answers, he poses the right questions — Claude Lvi-Strauss
  2. A crisis is a turning point — Anne Lindthorst
  3. Conflict is inevitable, but combat is optional — Max Lucade
  4. Don’t be afraid of opposition. Remember, a kite rises against, not with, the wind — Hamilton Mabie
  5. There is no way to peace. Peace is the way — AJ Muste
  6. The real art of conversation is not only to say the right thing in the right place but to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment — Dorothy Nevill
  7. The most basic of all human needs is the need to understand and be understood. The best way to understand people is to listen to them — Ralph Nichols
  8. The more we sweat in peace the less we bleed in war — Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit
  9. To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong — Joseph Chilton Pearce
  10. A man convinced against his will”¦is not convinced — Laurence J. Peter
  11. My problem is I say what I’m thinking before I think what I’m saying — Laurence J. Peter
  12. Discussion is an exchange of knowledge; argument an exchange of emotion  –  Robert Quillen
  13. You can’t influence somebody when you’re judging them — Tony Robbins
  14. Quarrels would not last long if the fault were only on one side — Duke François de La Rochefoucauld
  15. It is astonishing how elements which seem insoluble become soluble when someone listens. How confusions which seem irremediable turn into relatively clear flowing streams when one is heard — Carl Rogers
  16. If it’s mentionable, it’s manageable— Mr. Rogers
  17. Don’t let yesterday use up too much of today — Will Rogers
  18. The best way to persuade people is with your ears,  by listening to them  — Dean Rusk
  19. The greatest challenge to any thinker is stating the problem in a way that will allow a solution — Bertrand Russell
  20. It is with the heart that one sees rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye — Antoine de Saint-Exupry
  21. Human beings love to be right. When a person is willing to give up being right, a whole world of possibilities opens up — Pete Salmansohn
  22. The test of a successful person is not an ability to eliminate all problems before they arise, but to meet and work out difficulties when they do arise — David J. Schwartz
  23. Why not go out on a limb? Isn’t that where the fruit is? — Frank Scully
  24. Before you speak, ask yourself: Is it kind, is it necessary, is it true, does it improve the silence? — Shirdi Sai Baba
  25. When things are not working for us, instead of fighting and struggling, we need to say, “What’s happening here? How am I not being true to who I am? What is pulling me away from my purpose?” — June Singer
  26. The only people with whom you should try to get even are those who have helped you — John E. Southard
  27. It takes two to quarrel, but only one to end it — Spanish Proverb
  28. The first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn, but to unlearn— Source unknown
  29. Confidence, like art, never comes from having all the answers; it comes from being open to all the questions — Earl Gray Stevens
  30. Life is ten percent what happens to me and ninety percent how I react to it — Charles Swindoll
  31. If you are patient in one moment of anger, you will escape a hundred days of sorrow — Carol Tavris
  32. Peace is not the absence of conflict but the presence of creative alternatives for responding to conflict—alternatives to passive or aggressive responses, alternatives to violence — Dorothy Thompson
  33. Let us not look back in anger, nor forward in fear, but around in awareness — James Thurber
  34. A good manager doesn’t try to eliminate conflict; he tries to keep it from wasting the energies of his people. If you’re the boss and your people fight you openly when they think that you are wrong,  that’s healthy — Robert Townsend
  35. Knowledge becomes wisdom only after it has been put to good use — Mark Twain
  36. People who fight fire with fire usually end up with ashes — Abigail VanBuren
  37. The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any — Alice Walker
  38. It isn’t a mistake to have strong views. The mistake is to have nothing else — Anthony Weston
  39. I’ve found that I can only change how I act if I stay aware of my beliefs and assumptions. Thoughts always reveal themselves in behavior — Margaret Wheatley
  40. I would not waste my life in friction when it could be turned into momentum — Frances Willard
  41. When you’re at the edge of a cliff, sometimes progress is a step backward — Source unknown
Posted on

34 Thought Provoking Change Management Quotes

Change is good. It’s also often hard. The status quo can be so much more comfortable. But to succeed in business, you must run toward change.  Companies most likely to be successful in making change work to their advantage are the ones that no longer view change as a discrete event to be managed, but as a constant opportunity to evolve the business

Here are 34 thought provoking change management quotes:

  1. It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change —  Charles Darwin
  2. One key to successful leadership is continuous personal change. Personal change is a reflection of our inner growth and empowerment — Robert E. Quinn
  3. Change before you have to — Jack Welch
  4. You must embrace change before change erases you.
    — Rob Liano
  5. Change before you have to — Jack Welch
  6. Too few leaders have the emotional fortitude to take responsibility for failure.
    — Paul Gibbons, The Science of Successful Organisational Change: How Leaders Set Strategy, Change Behaviour, and Create an Agile Culture
  7. People don’t resist change. They resist being changed! — Peter Senge
  8. If you want to make enemies, try to change something — Woodrow Wilson
  9. The key to change is to let go of fear — Rosanne Cash
  10. The world hates change, yet it is the only thing that has brought progress — Charles Kettering
  11. There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things — Niccolo Machiavelli
  12. Change is the law of life and those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future — John F. Kennedy
  13. Even those who fancy themselves the most progressive will fight against other kinds of progress, for each of us is convinced that our way is the best way.
    — Louis L’Amour
  14. Whosoever desires constant success must change his conduct with the times — Niccolo Machiavelli
  15. Your success in life isn’t based on your ability to simply change. It is based on your ability to change faster than your competition, customers and business — Mark Sanborn
  16. Change your thoughts and you change your world — Norman Vincent Peale
  17. If you don’t like change, you will like irrelevance even less —  General Eric Shinseki (U.S. Army Chief of Staff, 1999-2003)
  18. We now accept the fact that learning is a lifelong process of keeping abreast of change. And the most pressing task is to teach people how to learn — Peter Drucker
  19. Whosoever desires constant success must change his conduct with the times
  20. — Niccolo Machiavelli
  21. All is connected, no one thing can change by itself
    — Paul Hawken
  22. Learn to adjust yourself to the conditions you have to endure, but make a point of trying to alter or correct conditions so that they are most favorable to you — William Frederick Book
  23. We would rather be ruined than change
  24. We would rather die in our dread than climb the cross of the moment  and let our illusions die  — W. H. Auden
  25. Every generation needs a new revolution  — Thomas Jefferson
  26. Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, concerned citizens can change the world. Indeed it is the only thing that ever has  — Margaret Mead
  27. I’ll go anywhere as long as it’s forward  — David Livingstone
  28. Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself  — George Bernard Shaw
  29. Adaptability is about the powerful difference between adapting to cope and adapting to win— Max McKeown
  30. You can’t build an adaptable organization without adaptable people–and individuals change only when they have to, or when they want to — Gary Hamel
  31. People will try to tell you that all the great opportunities have been snapped up. In reality, the world changes every second, blowing new opportunities in all directions, including yours — Ken Hakuta
  32. A wise man adapts himself to circumstances, as water shapes itself to the vessel that contains it — Chinese Proverb
  33. The price of doing the same old thing is far higher than the price of change — Bill Clinton
  34. Each of us has the opportunity to change and grow until our very last breath. Happy creating — M.F. Ryan

Change or die? we  choose life! How about you?  

 

As seen on