In the months leading up to the year 2020, there was no shortage of social media posts, articles, sermons, and more talking about a “2020 Vision.” For many pastors, it was a dream topic to build a sermon series around – and many did.
A sampling of sermon topics in January 2020 would have shown an intentional look forward into a future of a year or two, or maybe even five years or more.
But when March 2020 rolled around, and the realities of the COVID-19 pandemic began to sink in, the lofty visions of 2020 evaporated. Church leaders around the country and the world began to shrink their vision from the lofty goals of just a few months earlier to, “What are we going to do this weekend?”
Fifteen months later, though that immediacy has lessened somewhat, only to be replaced with even more troubling questions like these:
- How long is this pandemic going to last?
- Will we be able to return to normal?
- What if normal never returns?
In just a few weeks, future thoughts became present realties, and many leaders find themselves stuck there today.
Even when treading water in reality, leaders can get mired in a flood of information and answers about what to do next.
The world around us is evolving at dizzying speed. Tomorrow refuses to cooperate with our best-laid plans—the future routinely pulls the rug from underneath us.
Although people yearn for a return to “normal,” or try to predict the “new normal,” there is no such thing as normal. There is only change. Never-ending, constant change. Sometimes slow, sometimes fast, but constant nonetheless.
Answers to vexing problems are no longer a scarce commodity, and knowledge has never been cheaper. By the time we’ve figured out the facts – by the time Google, Alexa, or Siri can spit out the answer – the world has moved on.
Obviously, answers aren’t irrelevant. You must know some answers before you can begin asking the right questions. But the answers simply serve as a launch pad to discovery. They’re the beginning, not the end.
THE QUICK SUMMARY – Confident Leader! Become One, Stay One by Dan Reiland
You’re a good leader, but leadership is challenging and can rattle your confidence. Setbacks, challenges, and problems can cause you to second-guess yourself, doubt, or pull back. Your confidence may be stretched thin, but there is a way to strengthen it.
In Confident Leader!, Dan Reiland draws from his 39 years of leadership experience to share a practical, workable, and transformational process that results in your ability to become a more self-assured leader and achieve maximum success. Building unshakable confidence will positively impact your personal work performance, your belief in self, your support and approval from others, and your trust and reliance on God.
In this book you will learn how to:
- Make deep foundational decisions about your core identity
- Implement practical steps for deliberate character development
- Incorporate daily, practical disciplines that transform your leadership ability
Together these essentials present a step-by-step plan to greater confidence, increased influence, less uncertainty, and more significant accomplishments. Learn how to become the most confident version of yourself today.
A SIMPLE SOLUTION
Leadership expert John Maxwell says that, in over fifty years of developing leaders, he has learned that very few leaders are naturally confident, and even less are consistently confident.
Author Dan Reiland believes that every leader struggles with confidence at some level.
On the other side of that struggle is cockiness at the worst, or over-confidence at best. Finding the right balance of confidence on this continuum is tricky, but essential in today’s climate.
The majority of leaders do not maintain a consistent quality of confidence. Their confidence goes up and down too easily, impacted by a wide variety of factors, such as personal performance, size of church, belief in self, support from others, approval from others, mistakes made, and trust and reliance on God.
Dan Reiland
There is a process, a road map, by which you can develop a more consistent and authentic confidence that will serve you as a leader.
Deep Foundational Decisions – There are specific decisions you can make that establish stability and certainty in knowing who you are and how you were designed to lead at your best. These five decisions set the foundation of your confidence.
- Ownership – Take charge of your leadership confidence
- Belief – Overcome the great confidence breakers
- Identity – Value first who you are, then what you can do
- Attentiveness – Hear and heed God’s voice
- Soul – Embrace five core qualities of confident leaders
Deliberate Character Development – Your character is at the core of your confidence. Here are the five specific areas of your character that will strengthen your confidence.
- Consistency – Lead yourself well before leading others
- Authority – Accept it, develop it, and use it wisely
- Adaptability – Look for ways to become the best version of you
- Improvement – Aim for better, not bigger
- Resilience – Handle pressure well and bounce back
Daily Practice Disciplines – There is a direct connection between competence and confidence. However, you can be competent, yet not confident. And you can be confident, yet not competent. Both are needed together. Here are five essentials that you will need to become and effective leader and increase your confidence.
- Direction – Know where you are going and lead others
- Focus – Stick to the game plan
- Heart – Care genuinely about those you lead
- Communication – Live and convey and optimistic message
- Mentoring – Develop other leaders intentionally
Dan Reiland, Confident Leader! Become One, Stay One
A NEXT STEP
Select a single idea from each of the three areas listed above, one that you would like to improve on. In other words, your greatest area of challenge in each of the three areas.
Using a chart tablet, write the idea across the top of the page.
Viewing this idea as your destination on a journey, imagine you are moving toward it but encounter roadblocks on your journey. These represent the primary obstacles to completing your journey.
Identify at least three roadblocks you are facing on your journey to obtaining the idea at the top of the chart tablet. Use the following questions to help you identify the roadblock:
- What do the roadblocks look like?
- Who put them there, or keeps them there?
- What does the road ahead look like, with the roadblock gone?
Develop a plan to dismantle the obstacles. When you do, you will have cleared the way to complete your journey to achieving the idea.
Repeat this with the other two ideas.
Part of a regular series on 27gen, entitled Wednesday Weekly Reader
During my elementary school years one of the things I looked forward to the most was the delivery of “My Weekly Reader,” a weekly educational magazine designed for children and containing news-based, current events.
It became a regular part of my love for reading, and helped develop my curiosity about the world around us.
Along with early and ongoing encouragement from my parents – especially my father – reading was established as a passion in my life that I was happy to continually learn from, share with my children, and watch them share with their children.
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