Delegation (4) - Exodus series (4)

What lessons do we have so far?

Number 1. Effective leaders acknowledge limitations.

This is a difficult task for ambitious people. If you're young, you’ll say: I’m young, I’m high energy and my time will come later but it never does. Until and unless you recognize that you can’t do everything, you will soon be over extended and headed for burnout. Learn to say yes at the right times but learn to say no too.

Number 2. Effective leaders determine priorities. We often talk about spiritual priorities, God, family, job but a leader must think about his priorities as it relates to his circle of influence.

• What are we gifted to do?

• How can my time be spent most effectively?

It's part of the universal 80-20 rule. 80% of your time should be spent on 20% of your priorities. If you have 10 priorities and you spend 10% on each, that’s not very good and each of them will get short changed.

We must continually ask ourselves, what is my priority?

And then we need to choose to spend our time there, accordingly.

Number 3. Effective leaders train other leaders.

A good manager gathers followers but a good leader gathers leaders. They train, empower and trust those leaders. And when you train leaders there is no limit to what can be done.

Often when people refer to Rick Pitino they will also refer to all the coaches that are successful right now who once were on his staff. Under him they learned how to coach and all of basketball has benefited because of his leadership. 

This is what leaders need to be about:

• Challenging

• Training and

• Recruiting leaders 

Number 4. Effective leaders keeps his ego out of the way.

Yes, this is hard to do. Moses has a decision to make.

• Do I want everyone to need me? Do I want or need to be the Big Cheese?

Or

• Do I want to do God’s will and get these people to the Promised Land?

I have to ask myself, do I want people to depend on me or do I want people to depend on the true source (the true vine) Jesus Christ, themselves and the things they have learned? Sure, it is a great feeling to be needed and wanted and to be appreciated, but if we are to go forward, I must let others take the lead at times.

We have to continually ask:

• Why am I here?

• What does God want me to do?

I can do nothing outside of Christ. The scriptures admonish us to not fix our eyes on the world but to fix our eyes on Jesus.

Are you leaving good leaders in your wake?

How are you specifically helping traing future leaders?

[continued...]