One of the cool things about one of my seminary courses this fall is that part of the coursework has involved watching the DVD’s of a Leadership Forum Weekend Conference hosted this past February by Southeastern University – an Assemblies of God affiliated Christian college in the south. It’s been awesome to listen to quality presenters like Erwin McManus, Ken Blanchard, Tony Dungy, Bill Hybels, and John Maxwell among others. Over the coming weeks I’ll be sharing some of what I’m taking away from this conference.

I watched the Ken Blanchard session today and loved it. He’s the author of The One Minute Manager, The Servant Leader, and more recently Leading at a Higher Level. I’ve always loved listening to him, especially as he became a follower of Christ later in life and often has a unique perspective on Christian leadership as a result of that.

Blanchard identifies 4 things you need to look at if you want to lead like Jesus:

1. Your Heart – your intentions, why are you leading?
2. Your Head - your beliefs about leading people
3. Your Hands – what you do, what people see in your actions
4. Your Habits – what you do on a daily basis to re-calibrate who you want to be

The focus of all these points though is the idea of transformational servant leadership, which is what I’ve spent the last 3 1/2 years studying and reflecting upon. Over the course of the Transformational Leadership program at Bethel Seminary we spent a lot of time looking at Matthew 20:20-28 which really is a powerful and clear mandate that followers of Christ are to lead, but are to do so in loving sacrifice and service, which is a direct contrast to the power and status driven ways of the world. Blanchard anchored his presentation in this passage as well, but I love how he speaks towards what this looks like in leadership today.

In the coming days I hope to post on Blanchard’s analogy of the duck pond and how it relates to servant leadership and several other thoughts that were challenging.

But, Blanchard points us to consider how we are currently leading. Are we leading to be served or are we leading to serve others?

Here’s a great insight to end from Ken Blanchard’s session:

“You finally become an adult when you realize that you are here to serve instead of be served, to give instead of get.”

 

Tagged as: Jesus, servant leadership