Leadership is not just about being in charge. The best leaders know how to use influence and relationships to lead up, down and sideways in order to shape the things they care about.

Conversation Overview

• What are some of the frustrations and challenges that come with trying to lead in an organization where you’re not in charge?
• What does it mean to lead up? 
• What are some mental models we need to let go of to effectively lead up?
• What are the practices of leading up?
• The importance of learning to lead myself
• Influence and systems thinking
• Continuum of commitment 
• Emotional bank accounts

Links: 

• How to lead when you're not in charge
• 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
• The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization
• Leading from the Second Chair: Serving Your Church, Fulfilling Your Role, and Realizing Your Dreams

In this episode, we talk with Ben Sternke and Matt Tebbe authors of "Having the Mind of Christ: Eight Axioms to Cultivate a Robust Faith". During the conversation, we explore deconstruction, how our response to it impacts those we lead, and much more!

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Conversation Overview: 

• Ben & Matt's Book: Having the Mind of Christ: Eight Axioms to Cultivate a Robust Faith
• "Lenses don't change the world, but they change how we see the world."
• What is deconstruction?
• Is deconstruction a bad thing?
• Code-switching 
• "We have to abandon the pursuit of the one universal way of describing everything. I think we have to abandon that because it just doesn't exist."
• The mental model shift in the book of Acts
• "The kind of deconstruction we're talking about is necessary."

Links:

• Having the Mind of Christ: Eight Axioms to Cultivate a Robust Faith
• Nate Pyle 
• Gravity Leadership, gravityleadership.com
• theleadersjourney.us/newsletter
• [email protected] 
• [email protected]

Today we're talking about what it means to be coachable and what it means to have a posture of coachability.

Leaders who learn to lead through coaching and who develop a culture of coaching in their organization will effectively raise up people who can consistently be the healthiest, most effective version of themselves and do their best work.

Conversation Overview

• Overview of episodes in the series so far
• What does it mean to be coachable? 
• Reflecting on our own coachability
• The importance of being coachable at every level in an organization 
• Developing curiosity
• The value of an organization or community committed to personal growth and development

Links

• Faithwalking
• The Leader As Coach: Five essential skills
• The Leader As Coach: Developing People
• Giving and receiving feedback
• Defined and Connected
• Learning is Imperative for Effective Leadership: Part 1
• Two Feet Walking Workbook
• Coaching description on our website
• Our Love Hate Relationship with Goals (podcast episode)
• Two Feet Walking Podcast Series

The five skills that leaders can start to work on today to become more effective leaders through coaching are deep listening, inquiry, giving clear feedback, guiding focus, and doing your own work. 

Leaders who learn to lead through coaching and who develop a culture of coaching in their organization will effectively raise up people who can consistently be the healthiest, most effective version of themselves and do their best work.

Conversation Overview

• Coaching is "deliberately providing a safe and challenging environment where change is possible"
• Deep listening
• "Being profoundly heard by another person is a transformative experience." – Jim Herrington
• "The experience of being deeply listened to makes us different." – Trisha Taylor
• Inquiry
• One reason we get bored listening is because we're not actively asking questions. We're not really all that curious, we're busy, and we're distracted. 
• Giving clear feedback
• Guiding focus
• Part of the skill of guiding focus is helping people pay attention to the things they need to be paying attention to.
• Doing your own work

Links: 

• The Leader As Coach: Developing People
• Giving and receiving feedback
• Defined and Connected
• Learning is Imperative for Effective Leadership: Part 1
• Two Feet Walking Workbook
• Coaching description on our website
• Our Love Hate Relationship with Goals (podcast episode)
• Two Feet Walking Podcast Series

Thank you for listening. If you enjoy listening to The Leader’s Journey Podcast, the best way to support us is to take just a few seconds and leave a rating and/or comment over on iTunes or share it with your friends on Facebook … Thank you!

Leaders who learn to lead through coaching and who develop a culture of coaching in their organization will effectively raise up people who can consistently be the healthiest, most effective version of themselves and do their best work.

Conversation Overview:

• Leadership mental models
• What do we mean by coaching?
• Coaching styles and approaches
• How will leaders need to change in order to take on coaching as a key method of leading?
• Feedback and accountability
• Working from a shared vision
• Developing a culture of coaching in an organization

Links:

• The End of Leadership by Barbara Kellerman
• Two Feet Walking Workbook
• Coaching description on our website
• Our Love Hate Relationship with Goals (podcast episode)
• Two Feet Walking Podcast Series

Thank you for listening. If you enjoy listening to The Leader’s Journey Podcast, the best way to support us is to take just a few seconds and leave a rating and/or comment over on iTunes or share it with your friends on Facebook … Thank you!

In this episode of The Leader's Journey Podcast, Trisha and Jim are reflecting on the past two years, what they've learned, how things have changed, and what they can see differently now from a different vantage point.

In part of the episode, Jim and Trisha reflect on a few podcasts and blog posts they shared during the early stages of the pandemic. We wanted to encourage you to review those resources and reflect on the leadership challenges you've faced in the last two years to learn from them and take that learning into the future. Here are a couple of those resources:

• ​Systems Thinking in Anxious Times​
• ​Leading in Uncertain Times (COVID-19)​
• ​After the Adrenaline: Self-care in a Time of Crisis​
• ​The Big Picture: Pandemic, Anxiety, and Society

In our most recent newsletter, Trisha shared three things she hopes people will reflect on as they read and listen to the resources above and this episode of the podcast.

After reviewing the resources above and listening to this episode of the podcast, we want to hear from you. What do you notice when you reflect on your role as a leader over the past two years?

Conversation Overview:

• So is the pandemic over? Where are we now?
• Reflecting on a few of our podcasts and blogs from early stages of the pandemic
• What do leaders know now that we didn’t know before?
• What systems principles do we need to remember in this time?

To navigate the storms in our systems it is important to be able to notice and identify them as ambient anxiety from a culture in chaos, a crisis eruption, or the conflict that shows up as a symptom of the anxiety in our system.

The Leader's Journey Book Series

The process of researching, studying, and writing the book The Leader’s Journey changed the trajectory of our lives. In this series, we are joined by our co-author Dr. Robert Creech and together we’ll be going over some key ideas from the book and the impact those ideas have had and are having on our lives.

Conversation Overview

• The storms that arise in a system: ambient anxiety from a culture in chaos
• The storms that arise in a system: when crisis erupts, often without warning
• The storms that arise in a system: the conflict that shows up as a symptom as the system experiences anxiety
• Tammie Jo Shultz story
• How the practice of the spiritual disciplines moves us toward transformation
• Why is a focus on learning so crucial?
• Thinking systems as a Christian
• Family Systems and Congregational Life

Links:

• The Leader’s Journey
• Tammie Jo Shults air traffic control audio
• Dr. Robert Creech on Amazon
• Family Systems and Congregational Life
• Edwin Friedman-Generation to Generation and A Failure of Nerve
• Victoria Harrison 
• Family Systems and Congregational Life

Thank you for listening. If you enjoy listening to The Leader’s Journey Podcast, the best way to support us is to take just a few seconds and leave a rating and/or comment over on iTunes or share it with your friends on Facebook … Thank you!

In this episode, we explore that question as we discuss the third section of our book entitled Family Patterns.  

The process of researching, studying, and writing the book The Leader’s Journey changed the trajectory of our lives. In this series, we are joined by our co-author Dr. Robert Creech and together we’ll be going over some key ideas from the book and the impact those ideas have had and are having on our lives.

Conversation overview: 

• What do you consider to be a connection between your own call to ministry and the family you came from?
• What is the value of a family diagram?
• How does working on our emotional maturity within our family system impact us outside of our family system?

• The Leader’s Journey
• Dr. Robert Creech on Amazon
• Family Systems and Congregational Life
• Edwin Friedman-Generation to Generation and A Failure of Nerve
• Victoria Harrison 
• Flawed Families of the Bible by David and Diana Garland
• Family Ties That Bind by Ronald Richardson
• A Family Diagram Workbook by Israel Galindo
• Extraordinary Relationships: A New Way of Thinking about Human Interactions by Roberta Gilbert

To think systems, we have to give up cause-and-effect thinking. Everyone in a particular system is influencing and being influenced all the time.

The process of researching, studying, and writing the book The Leader’s Journey changed the trajectory of our lives. In this series, we are joined by our co-author Dr. Robert Creech and together we’ll be going over some key ideas from the book and the impact those ideas have had and are having on our lives.

Conversation Overview: 

• What is a living system?
• How does systems thinking differ from other ways of seeing the world?
• What is the effect of systems thinking on leadership?
• How can a leader learn to manage self in those predictable triangles?
• What are some ways we can practice emotional maturity while we’re under pressure?

• The Leader’s Journey
• Dr. Robert Creech on Amazon
• Family Systems and Congregational Life

Thank you for listening. If you enjoy listening to The Leader’s Journey Podcast, the best way to support us is to take just a few seconds and leave a rating and/or comment over on iTunes or share it with your friends on Facebook … Thank you!

"An effective leader, one who can galvanize individuals and groups and who has the potential to help transform society is a person who has the capacity to know and do the right thing." – The Leader's Journey

The process of researching, studying, and writing the book The Leader's Journey changed the trajectory of our lives. In this series, we are joined by our co-author Dr. Robert Creech and together we'll be going over some key ideas from the book and the impact those ideas have had and are having on our lives.

Conversation Overview

• What does it mean to be a leader who has the capacity to know and do the right thing?
• What are living systems? How does looking at living systems change our thinking about leadership?
• What do we believe about how change takes place in a person's life?
• What have we learned about this in our own lives?
• How does Jesus serve as a mentor for us as we grow our capacity to "know and do the right things?" What can we see in Jesus' life about how to show up in the systems we are part of?
• How can listeners/readers use this book?

Links:

• The Leader's Journey
• Dr. Robert Creech on Amazon
• Family Systems and Congregational Life