Category Archives: Decisions

Living vs Dead Leadership

22 Friday Jun 2018

Posted by in Actions, Attitude, Choice, Decisions, Leader, Leadership, Servant

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Any leadership worth its salt must be evident, not so much by faith, but by the works which are shown to others. If you live your leadership in the faith of hoping others will embrace your leadership, then your leadership is dead.

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Photo Credit: outreachmagazine.com

As leaders, one of our primary aims is to distinguish between living and dead leadership. Sounds easy, right? Probably easier than you realize, if you are a servant leader in your works that is seen and felt by others.

Three thoughts that can make sure your leadership is alive and not dead hinge on being a servant leader. Let’s see how it plays out…

CAUSE
The cause of living leadership is having your heart in the right place toward others. True leaders know they cannot produce living leadership merely going through the motions. This quickly leads to dead leadership. The leader with dead leadership believes they have the power within themselves instead of empowering others.

NATURE
The nature of living leadership is a firm belief of the truisms that others matter. Dead leadership is nothing more than emptiness and paranoid opinions that have no real effect on the heart of others. Living leadership, on the other hand, embraces the essence of others and surrounds itself with meaningfulness.

EFFECT
The effect of living leadership is the most important. This is where leadership can be distinguished. What your leadership says about others is more important than what your leadership says about yourself.

What effect is your leadership having on others? Is it living or dead? The beauty and the burden of the effect are that it will be one of the two.

Dead leadership leads others to trust in a vacuum. They get sucked in and just circulate within the chamber of self. Until we start providing living leadership, we are dead leaders walking.

Remember… THINK LEADERSHIP!

©2018 J Clay Norton

Follow me on Twitter at TheBookChamber

Subscribe via email to my blog at the top of the page

Is Your Leadership Useful?

20 Friday Apr 2018

Posted by in Attitude, Choice, Communication, Decisions, Expectations, Humility, Inspiration, Integrity, Leader, Leadership, Observation, Opportunity, Purpose, Servant, Useful

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Walking through a store the other day, I saw something and thought, “I need that.” Then I thought, “Need that for what?, Would I use it?” And then, the inner struggle started and wore me out mentally. I was trying to justify something that I thought I needed, and it would be useful, but how often would I use it. It made me start thinking about “stuff” that I have, and the notion of its usefulness. Then I thought, “There has to be a hidden meaning behind this and probably a good leadership blog to go along.” And… Here we are…

If you are in a leadership role, you lead; sounds about right. But, do you lead in a useful manner? Are you making the most of every opportunity available to you and for others? The better question might be, “Do others see your leadership as being useful?”

The very first item we must talk about is “What does it mean for something to be useful?” A few thoughts come to mind; something with a purpose, something that can be used over and over for good. It should be something that you are not ashamed of using.

Now the opposite question is also true, “What does it mean for something to be useless?” Take the opposite of every statement above, and you have your answer.

Be-useful

Photo Credit: sportstvratings.com

What does it mean for your leadership to be useful?

  • It means that you set your leadership apart from the world’s definition of leadership.
  • It means that you are intentional about your leadership being for good purposes.
  • It means that your leadership is prepared to lead for the right reasons.

With leadership today, there are many “hypes” being promoted. What we must do is have a discerning mind to help us weed out the bad leadership that comes in many different forms and fashions; more exact, the useless leadership.

We must have a useful leadership mentality. The usefulness that goes against the norm and allows others to have a stake in the leadership game while finding usefulness in the leadership that we provide.

Be useful in your leadership.  Everyone around you will be better for it.

Remember… THINK LEADERSHIP!

©2018 J Clay Norton

Follow me on Twitter at TheBookChamber

Subscribe via email to my blog at the top of the page

The CANNOTs of Leadership

06 Friday Apr 2018

Posted by in Actions, Attitude, Authentic, Balance, Choice, Clarity, Culture, Decisions, Humility, Ideals, Inspiration, Integrity, Leader, Leadership, Momentum, Opportunity, Passion, Perseverance, Power, Purpose, Servant, Team, Trust, Understanding, Unity

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“Leadership is an aspect of power, but it is also a separate and vital process in itself.” – James MacGregor Burns

Society has done a terrific job and an injustice of conditioning the minds of many leaders to be shallow and superficial. It distorts our thinking and our ability to make decisions. In some sense, it becomes a drug that is killing the future of what great, quality leadership should be.

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Photo Credit: gettingsmart.com

Unless there is a radical change in our thought process of the way we view leadership, to be for others and not ourselves, leadership will simply fade away.

Here are a few thoughts that we CANNOT allow ourselves to do…

  • We cannot simply flow with the societal trends of leadership.
  • We cannot elevate our leadership and at the same time not hold to the foundational truths of leadership.
  • We cannot promote our leadership by not living out what we say our leadership is.
  • We cannot fall victim not acknowledging that leadership requires humility.
  • We cannot fail to realize that leadership requires enthusiasm.
  • We cannot abandon our desire to want right leadership.

Today’s leadership models promote so much focus on self that we lose sight of serving others. It is self-absorbing. To make matters worse, we buy into it. We accept it as the norm. We allow it to become part of our inner being… ME FIRST!

Our defense against leadership, that is worldly and weakens right influence, relies on distrusting our ego to the point that we must separate the error it causes in our thinking.

Remember… THINK LEADERSHIP!

©2018 J Clay Norton

Follow me on Twitter at TheBookChamber

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Your Choices Mean A “Lot”

09 Friday Mar 2018

Posted by in Actions, Attitude, Choice, Conflict, Deciding, Decisions, Leader, Leadership

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“It is our choices… that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.” – J.K. Rowling

Choices

Photo Credit: taylorintime.com

The other night for Bible Study, we looked at Genesis 13-14 and 18-19, with a focus on the choices that Lot made and how they affected him and his family.   As I was riding home, I begin to think, while maybe not on the same “extreme” level, we as leaders have a “Lot” riding on the choices we make.

I will let you read the verses in Genesis on your own to see the “before and after” of the choices Lot made.  What I would like to do is highlight three of them and show how they coincide with our leadership.

Because of Lot’s choices, He faced:

WAR (Genesis 14:11)

Now, we might not face war such as Lot did, but we fight inward and outward battles every day.  Most of them are just petty conflicts that have nothing to do with nothing, and we get caught in the middle.  What we should do is let our fight be for others.

KIDNAPPING (Genesis 14:12)

Most of us have never been kidnapped and held hostage.  However, from a leadership point of view, our minds can be easily kidnapped.  When we let “things” invade our mind and consume our thoughts and time, we are kidnapped.  I firmly believe that social media is kidnapping our society.  I am sure you can add to the list of the “things.”  What we should do is make sure we are letting our minds be captivated by what will not only build ourselves to be better but also others.

OPPRESSION and TORMENT (Genesis 19:1-11)

One word:  Drama… It can wear you out mentally.  Drama is everywhere.  If you do not go looking for it, it will find you. You know that saying, “Run for your lives.”  That is what we should do to avoid being associated with drama.

There are some other results of Lot’s choices, but I thought that these three were very pertinent to leadership today.  What we should realize is every choice we make as a leader dramatically affects our lives and the lives of others.

Decision making is an art that evolves with time.  We learn from our right and wrong choices, in the hope that we can do better every opportunity that comes next.  If I could impress one thought on today’s topic is that we should never make our choices lightly.

Remember… THINK LEADERSHIP!

©2018 J Clay Norton

Follow me on Twitter at TheBookChamber

Subscribe via email to my blog at the top of the page