Leadership Wednesday 03 - Leader in Training

Over the weekend I met someone new and I was introduced as a “minister in training.” It was a good-natured rib to which I didn’t take offense. Thinking about it, though, it would have been very easy to take offense at being labeled a “minister in training.” My business card doesn’t say “minister” on it but it does say “pastor.” I have been involved in ministry for over 10 years; I have had a lot of on-the-job training. I have been professionally trained by Fuller Theological Seminary; I studied for three years to earn the title, no matter how pretentious, Master of Divinity. It would be easy for me to think that after all this experience, all this schooling and two years as a full-time pastor that I would be beyond the training phase. The reality for leaders, though, is that we’re never fully beyond the training phase.

When I was 19-years-old I had been doing ministry for two years and I thought I knew everything. I really thought I was God’s gift to ministry and that there wasn’t anything I didn’t know.

My ideas were the best.

My ideas were the brightest.

My ideas most reflected the character and heart of God.

Obviously, none of those were true. I was 19 and I really didn’t know anything, especially how to hold a learning posture. I thought that two years of training were adequate; I didn’t need to be trained, I didn’t need to learn and I didn’t need to listen to anyone. At that moment, at that age, with my experience, I was ready to be the next great leader for God’s kingdom.

Looking back, I wish I understood then what I know now:

A leader’s learning process is never over.

Never.

Maintaining a learning posture is a vital component of effective leadership. We need to be willing to learn from others: from their experiences, from their successes and from their failures. If we’re not inputting new ideas then we’re just going to continue outputting the same ideas and insights. Those ideas and insights may have worked a year ago, they may have worked six months ago, but we need to keep adding to our knowledge base to meet new issues or readdress old issues from a new perspective.

I have the honor and privilege of meeting with some wonderful people who view me as some sort of mentor. Over the last few months I began to realize in my discussions with them that I was sounding a lot like a broken record. I wasn’t gathering any new input into my life so I had no new ideas to share, no new insights to bring to the table. I realized that I wasn’t being a good steward of the respect given to me and of the opportunity to speak into the life of another person. Armed with that realization, I decided to take a learning posture and spend an hour reading every day, just to garner some more knowledge and gain some new input. I want to expand my knowledge base so that I’ve got something more to give.

So how do we take and maintain a learning posture? Here are three ways.

Read something worthwhile every day.

Reading is so important for the life of a leader. Former White House Advisor, David Gergen, said “Not every reader is a leader but every leader is a reader.” There is a wealth of information out there, all sorts of new input that can shape our ideas and insight; we just need to read it. Read a nonfiction book on leadership. Read a fiction book that addresses the human condition. Find the blog of a pastor or CEO whom you admire and bookmark it. Sign up for Twitter and follow people who use their tweets to disseminate valuable information, not just that they’re standing in line at Starbucks. Here are some people who are worth following for the information that they share: Michael Hyatt, Rick Warren, Mike Foster.

Spend time with other leaders.

Some of the best insight I’ve gained about leadership hasn’t come from a conference or a structured meeting; it has come over an impromptu cup of coffee or a quick lunch during a break from the office. If there is someone in your life from whom you would like to glean new ideas and insight, call him or her up. Set up a lunch or schedule a coffee appointment. It doesn’t have to be a structured interview about different facets of leadership; just spend time with a knowledgeable, growing leader and you’re bound to learn something worthwhile.

Learn from anyone and everyone.

It is impossible to have a learning posture and still say, “I can’t learn anything from that person.” We can learn leadership lessons from anyone and everyone at all times; we just have to be willing to learn them. From the lowest person on the totem pole to the person at the top, everyone has something to teach if we have a learning posture. We need to humble ourselves and realize that we don’t know everything, we can’t know everything. And, even if we don’t particularly like someone else, that doesn’t mean we can’t learn from them.

If we are leaders then we are still in training and will be until the day we die; the onus is on us to recognize and embrace that fact. If we can’t, our knowledge base will continue to shrink as the world continues to grow and we’ll begin to sound like a broken record to those we lead. If we can, then we’re only limited by the time we commit and our ability to continually apply what we’ve learned. The opportunity to lead is a wonderful gift and an invaluable honor. We will make the most of that opportunity if we maintain a learning posture and embrace the reality that we’ll always be in training.