Leadership GPS: Roadmap to Become a Leader for Life

Janice Witt Smith

Description

Welcome to your continuing investment in leading for life – whether as a formal leader in a corporate or nonprofit business or fraternal organization (e.g., sorority, fraternity, Links, etc), at your church, or in your family. You may be an informal leader, where no one has given you the "official" title as leader, but where you are influencing people left and right as a positive, effective role model. You may not see yourself as a leader today; however, we don't know what tomorrow holds in your leadership future. This book provides you with some strategies that will

¥Help you to identify areas of strength and development;
¥Enhance your professionalism and marketability AS A LEADER;
¥Ground you in something (rather, SOMEONE) who is able to direct your paths and help you to have good success; and
¥Provide some insights about others who have achieved success and cleared the pathway for you.

Sujets

• Gestion et management
• Economics
• Business
• Leadership

Informations

• Publié par: eBookIt.com
• Date de parution: 05 avril 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781456603557
• Langue: English

Extrait

Leadership GPS: Roadmap to Become a Leader for Life
By Dr. Janice Witt Smith, SPHR
Christian Educator, HR Consultant, Leadership Development Expert and Executive Coach
 


Copyright 2011 Janice Witt Smith,
All rights reserved.
 
 
Published in eBook format by eBookIt.com
http://www.eBookIt.com
 
 
ISBN-13: 978-1-4566-0355-7
 
 
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
 


Dedication
This book is dedicated to the Glory of God in thanks for all He is and has done for my family and me. I honor my father, Leroy R. Witt, Sr., who went home to be with the Lord on November 6, 2005; my mother, Helen P. Witt; my sweet Will, my husband of 24 years, William "the real" Will Smith. I am so grateful for my darling daughter, Janelle Clemons, and her family -- husband Patrick and now six year old Joshua and three-year-old Gabrielle; and my wonderful son, Justin Smith. Much love to my siblings -- Leroy, Jr., Judi (and Mel) Fowlkes; Beverly (and Charles) Branch; Peggy (and E.L.) James; and nieces and nephews (Alison Branch, Ambria and Altra Witt, Michael and B.J. James). I also thank my good friends Drs. D. Kathy Stitts, Gloria Clark, Sharon White, and Monica Cain for their friendships and encouragement. Special thanks to Bishop George W. and First Lady Edna G. Brooks at Mt. Zion Baptist Church of Greensboro, NC, for fifteen years of training and ministry; and to our new First Family at Wake Chapel Church of Raleigh, NC, Pastor J. Jasper Wilkins, Jr., and First Lady Cheryl Wilkins, who have loved us into service at this new location. Much love to Bishop Tommie L. Triplett, Jr., and the FGBCFI Christian Education Taskforce. God is so awesome, and He has given us the perfect leader through Jesus the Christ.
 
Introduction
Our leadership development journey does not occur in a vacuum. We are more than the work that we do – we impact and are impacted by others. There are some things you need to know and skills you want to develop as you embark upon this journey. Let’s walk one step at a time, making steady progress as we align ourselves with what Our Heavenly Father is doing as He further develops us as leaders for life.
 
If it truly takes the whole village to raise a child, it takes more than the village to facilitate the success of that “child” through a lifetime of experiences (both good and bad), and ensuring that the community continues to grow and thrive. We want to you to have good success as a result of reading and applying the scriptural and practical tools and techniques in this book – and then for you to help someone else have good success – and for that person to help someone else to have good success. Remember, every person is important, valuable, and special. Each of us must complete our assignment if we are to become the people leaders that God created us to be.
 
Therefore, welcome to your continuing investment in leading for life – whether as a formal leader in a corporate or nonprofit business or fraternal organization (e.g., sorority, fraternity, Links, etc), at your church, or in your family. You may be an informal leader, where no one has given you the “official” title as leader, but where you are influencing people left and right as a positive, effective role model. You may not see yourself as a leader today; however, we don’t know what tomorrow holds in your leadership future. This book provides you with some strategies that will
 
• Incorporate spiritual principles which allow you to leverage the whole person (mind, body, and spirit) as you grow and develop as a leader for life;"
• Help you to identify your areas of strength and development -- those things that are known to you and others that might be a blind spot."
• Enhance your professionalism and marketability AS A LEADER;
• Ground yo u in something (rather, SOMEONE) who is able to direct your paths and help you to have good success; and
• Provide some insights about others who have achieved success and cleared the pathway for you.
 
My personal style is to develop a plan for a journey, ensuring that I have gotten the money for the trip; checked the oil and tires on the car; made hotel reservations; had the oil changed; filled up the gas tank; gotten any available coupons; picked up breakfast (or lunch) for the trip; and packed and loaded the suitcases into the car. My husband, on the other hand, is more laissez-faire about such matters. He will wait until the same day of the trip to pack (sometimes to wash his clothes or to pick them up from the cleaners). He wants to pick up breakfast (or lunch) on the way. He might ask me if we have any money. He frequently wants to check the oil and tires and to figure out if we have gas. In other words, for him the journey unfolds on the way and he is having fun without planning or preparation. For me, the journey requires preparation; proper execution of “our” ensures that I will have fun. My daughter, Janelle, is more like me; my son, Justin, is more like my husband, Will. It made for interesting and often stressful family vacations. Janelle and I learned to plan activities that did not include Will and Justin and to encourage them to join in when they were flowing. In that sense, all of us won.
 
As with any journey, we need to locate our starting place. If we do not know where we are, we cannot adequately resource for our journey or identify the proper pathway that will take us safely and expeditiously to our end point.
 
To find out where we are going, we first have to figure out where we are. That sounds simple, but many of us are so busy “doing” that we have not figured out “who we are.” We have to locate WHO we are and WHOSE we are in order to understand and define where we are and to know where we are going.
 
Are you a leader if no one is following ? This question is similar to an old adage that asks if a tree falls in the forest and there is no one there, does it make a sound? Which came first, the chicken or the egg – the leader or the leadership experience? It’s hard to consider oneself a leader if you are truly “an Army of one.” John Maxwell says in his book “Leadership 101,” that “to be a leader, a person has to not only be out front, but also have people intentionally coming behind him, following his lead, and acting on his vision.” A single individual can be effective; however, the scripture says that one can put a thousand to flight, but two can put ten thousand (Deut. 32:3). How much more effective the ministry would be if the individual contributor becomes a leader that other people will follow as they follow Christ! That’s what this book is all about – getting each individual prepared to lead and honing our ability to follow. Our true leadership model is the Servant-Leadership model that Jesus provided us. My first book, Called to Lead, Anointed to Serve discusses servant leadership in detail. The most effective leaders will be those whose orientation is to serve others, to get the best from them, to ensure that the overall mission is successful, whether or not the individual leader gets the credit.
 
What do you use to provide you with guidance and direction about the pathway you are to take? We all have a type of internal global positioning system (GPS) which will give us driving directions to a destination that we have chosen. For believers, our true North (our compass) should always point to God, our Heavenly Father. Jesus promised us in John 14:27 that He would not leave us comfortless, that He would send a Comforter who knows the mind of God to provide us with direction, who would guide our footsteps. The Holy Spirit indwells believers and serves as our internal GPS. Let me explain to you what I think of when I think of a GPS, based on what we know and understand about technology in the natural.
 
Our physical GPS has to be synced up with the satellite which provides an aerial view, many miles away, of what is “reality” on earth. The signal bounces off of a number of satellites, depending on where we may be positioned at that time. As we move (travel), grow, and develop, we get plugged into different satellites. The data provided is only as good as the quality of the satellite, the lack of turbulence in the atmosphere, and the angle at which it is placed on the atmosphere. These satellites can provide intelligence for the military and may sometimes be “blocked” on purpose, through weather, through military and other types of aircraft. Sometimes our GPS equipment will tell us that we have a weak connection; perhaps the GPS cannot find the correct satellite; sometimes it cannot find the location to which we want to travel. Sometimes the location is too new to have been captured on any type of map, and the system does not have the sophistication or sensitivity to get us to that destination. We know that it is a real place and that we have important work to complete there. Unfortunately, our manmade GPS is not omnipotent, omniscient or omnipresent. But our God is all of those and more! He is the satellite that our inner GPS is searching for – He provides us with direction, guidance, instruction, grace, love, joy, peace, mercy, goodness, kindness, faithfulness, and so much more. It doesn’t matter how advanced the GPS on the ground is – if you’re plugged into the wrong source – the wrong “satellite”, you will have directions to nowhere special, nothing significant; nothing lasting. We must always calibrate our natural GPS (what is innate, part of human nature) to the spiritual GPS, God’s Word.
 
We will use the GPS as a way of looking at our journey, both from spiritual and practical aspects. Let us begin our conversation about my perspective on how we can use our physical, electronic GPS. We’ll take a