leadership conference in St. Louis

I just got back this past Sunday night from a conference and it was pretty exciting to be there. There were several highlights from the weekend, but one of the biggest ones for me was the opportunity to hear Dr. Robert Rohm speak, which was a first time for me. Dr. Rohm is an expert on personality styles and speaks all over the world. His book Positive Personality Profiles is incredibly helpful in learning how to relate to others better at work, in your home, etc.

If you don't know about these personality profiles, you basically start with two questions. Most of the time (you can change your mind later on), are you:
1) more outgoing or more reserved?
2) more task-oriented or people-oriented?
You then have 4 different personality profiles D-I-S-C, based on how you answered those two questions. Keep in mind that people are a combination of all 4 of these, but most people are predominantly one or two of these.
D= outgoing and task-oriented
I= outgoing and people-oriented
S= reserved and people-oriented
C= reserved and task-oriented

Dr. Robert Rohm is also a world-class speaker. One of the best speakers that I have seen in terms of delivery, amount that I learned, and examples used to illustrate points. It's pretty neat and interesting that Rohm's 4 daughters are dominantly each of the 4 different personality profiles.

All in all, it was a great weekend, with over 20,000 attendants hunger to learn. More on the conference later.

blessings

to God be the glory

This post is dedicated to Zach Blickens, a friend of mine who is a youth pastor and worship pastor at River of Life in Cedar Rapids, IA. You can find more info about him and his wife's ministry here.

Last Thursday, I heard a message on Daniel 2. Daniel is a great example of a young leader. Many people of faith can benefit by taking his example of leadership. In this chapter, King Nebuchadnezzar can't sleep due to repeated dreams that keep him awake. He demanded his magicians, scorcerors, and "dream experts" to not only interpret the dream, but first tell him what the dream was. If they can't, they will be put to death. Well this was impossible and they said no man can do this. Daniel and his three close friends- Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah- got wrapped up in this, too. They came together and fervently prayed to God for wisdom. God granted them the mystery of the king's dream and Daniel ended up telling the king his dream in great detail.

I encourage you to read about the dream and the whole chapter. There are many points to be made, but the one I want to bring up is how Daniel gave the glory to God. First, when he received the mystery of the king's dream, he praised God. Then, standing before the king, he gave God full credit for being able to relay the king's dream and its interpretation. In addition to that, he gave credit to his friends twice in the chapter for their accountability to him. After all, they prayed fervently to God with Daniel and ate the vegetables and water diet with him in the previous chapter.

Now why do I dedicate this blog to Zach? Because he always praises God for gifts that he and others have, good things that happen in his life and those around him, and probably even the bad things sometimes too. He doesn't take credit at all when he receives compliments because he knows that everything good comes from God. So when I try to be more like that, I think of Daniel's character in these few chapters, and Zach too.

Personal Mission Statement

A little while ago I wrote a blog based on a talk I heard at a leadership conference. Well, it turns out that the speaker, Chuck Goetschel, just posted notes from that talk on his blog. You can find it here. Additionally, you can find a link to the article by Laura Stack that he got that exercise from in writing a personal mission statement. Or he can view that here. Please take a look! Whether it is for the first time, or to look again to make sure I got things right, if you wrote your mission statement after my first blog. Let's try and spend more time doing the things that are important and not urgent, rather than the other way around.

what's your mission statement?

As some of you know, I was at a leadership conference recently in KY. So much speaking- but really good. One of the speakers, Chuck Goetschel, who I admire a lot, gave one of the most meaningful talks that weekend. He first listed a bunch of words and told us to circle the six that meant the most to us:

integrity
influence
love
justice
success
spirituality
friendship
truth
authenticity
wisdom
legacy
peace
power
wealth
joy
happiness
recognition
family
career
fame
status
(there may have been a couple more words but I missed them)

Next, he told us to cross out three of the six we circled that don't mean as much. Ones that we could do without more than the other three. Then we ordered the three that were left- 1 being the most important one to us. We then set goals by defining what each of those three remaining words meant to us personally.

This is one way of writing down your life's mission statement. What is most important to you? Most people won't write this down, which is why most people don't fulfill their life's purpose. I hope all of you do this at some point.

It doesn't stop there. We then have to set priorities on the things we do and choices we make daily. Every choice should be bridging the gap from the present to our future destination determined by the goals we wrote down. The way Chuck set priorities was with ABCs. A's are things we absolutely have to do today because it is in line with my mission. B's are things that are somewhat important. There are some consequences if I do not accomplish them today. And C's have no consequences if not accomplished today.

Finally, we have to stay the course. Don't stick with doing the things not in line with your mission. Stephen Covey compares the combination of things that are/are not important and urgent:


1) important/not urgent
2) important/urgent
3) not important/not urgent
4) not important/urgent


Most people stay focused on #4, doing not important, urgent things. We should really should be spending more time focused on #1, doing important, non-urgent things. Of course there will be times when urgent things come up, whether they are important or not, and we can do those. But our main focus should be on what's important.

I encourage you to at least start off and find the words that mean the most to you and define what they personally mean to you. Mine were love, justice, and integrity. If any of you do write those down, please let me know. I'd love to have a conversation with you.

What's in your basement?

***Here's a blog I wrote awhile ago that bears repeating about age and pursuing goals.

What's in your basement?
Current mood: bored
Category: Goals, Plans, Hopes

I recently saw Rocky Balboa with my buddy Luke. He's quite the Rocky fan and I'm certainly a fan also. Besides this new Rocky movie, I hear he's doing a new Rambo movie too. We'll see how that goes. This new Rocky movie is pretty decent though. Sylvester Stallone had a big hand in the creative process- writing, directing, and starring in the underdog role again.

Stallone has become quite public with his beliefs too. He did a lot of promos and interviews for Christian media. He keeps saying that Rocky Balboa is not a boxing movie. The strong themes, including perseverance and fighting the good fight, are what the movie is really about. There is quite a lot of Christian marketing material for the film too. In fact, the same company that did Chronicles of Narnia. It's funny because they keep making the point that it's not a Christian movie- which I could write a blog about in itself, but I won't.

There's a point in the movie where everybody is questioning why Rocky wants to come back and do a boxing match. Among the reasons, Rocky says there is something more in him, "in his basement," that he needs to get out. "What? You haven't peaked yet?" asks Paulie. At first, it sounds a bit weird and maybe childish. But let's compare him to a biblical character named Caleb:

10 "Now then, just as the LORD promised, he has kept me alive for forty-five years since the time he said this to Moses, while Israel moved about in the desert. So here I am today, eighty-five years old! 11 I am still as strong today as the day Moses sent me out; I'm just as vigorous to go out to battle now as I was then. 12 Now give me this hill country that the LORD promised me that day. You yourself heard then that the Anakites were there and their cities were large and fortified, but, the LORD helping me, I will drive them out just as he said." (Joshua 14:10-12)
Mark Gorman, a speaker I like very much, talked about this passage once. Basically, he opened up saying, "Here's a guy, 85, willing to pick a fight." Despite the differences, I see two men here with very similar hearts- Rocky and Caleb. Rocky, in his late 50s (pushing 60 shortly) wanting to get back into the ring. Caleb, not weary from battles and just plain wandering around in the desert for 40 years, at age 80, ready for battle.

I always tell people that age is a mental state of being. And that I would not tell people I feel old until I'm atleast 80. Well now with Caleb in the picture it looks like I have to wait until I'm atleast 85. When my friends tell me they are getting old I just laugh at them because it's ridiculous! 45 years since he surveyed the land, Caleb claims he is still as strong and ready to fight for it.

So what's in your basement? The day you quit battling for something, you're dead. So what should you fight for? Find what you are passionate about. Find wherever God wants you to serve and whatever God wants you to fight for. Because when you stop fighting, you might as well "lie down and pick out what flowers you want," as Mark Gorman says. Don't settle for mediocrity or status quo. Learn who you are, what you are called to do, and fight for it.

blessings

***Reading through this again, I clearly needed to hear that last paragraph again. Please pray for my heart and actions to change at work and the rest of my life.