Top Level Leadership

 

It didn’t matter who, what, when or where.  A Sunday afternoon Monopoly game with my brother and cousin.  A six-man flag football game at my three-room country school. The 50-yard dash in the state-wide Junior Olympics.  High-school basketball. Hiking to the top of an Oregon butte, a sand dune or a Pacific Ocean overlook. I love to get to the top of the mountain for the first view. I grew up with a love to win.  Continue reading “Top Level Leadership”

Level 5 Leadership

 

Over three decades ago, I heard one of my earliest leadership mentors, Dr. John Maxwell, speak about the five levels of leadership. He described them this way:

1) POSITION (Rights) People follow you because they have to.

2) PERMISSION (Relationships) People follow you because they want to.

3) PRODUCTION (Results) People follow because of what you have done for the organization.

4) PEOPLE DEVELOPMENT (Reproduction) People follow because of what you have done for them.

5) PINNACLE (Respect) People follow because of who you are and what you represent.

As a young 30-something church planter, I set my sights on Level 5. Continue reading “Level 5 Leadership”

I Have a Dream

 

I was almost a 10 year old. We had no television in our home at the time. Growing up in a rural farm community of Oregon, I had no idea that history was being made on August 28, 1963 on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC. Across the country that day, Martin Luther King, Jr., was leaving a memorable mark on the civil rights timeline of the United Stages. The imagination of civil rights activists and sympathizers, was captured with the leading line of the entire last half of Dr. King’s speech—“I have a dream…” Continue reading “I Have a Dream”