Personal Growth
5 Signs Your Character is Slowly Imploding
There are few better friends for a leader than self-awareness. You’ve seen leaders who think they’re doing great when, in fact, everyone around them begs to differ. How do you not become that leader? One of the best things you…
How to Lead When You’re In Over Your Head
Here’s a leadership secret. Almost anyone who has ever led anything significant has felt like they’re in over their head at one point or another. You might be there right now. I hear from young leaders all the time or leaders…
5 Reasons Pastors Fail Morally (And What To Watch For in Your Own Life)
Twice this week so far, I’ve heard of church leaders who are moving out of leadership because they had affairs. Last weekend, another well known pastor had to step down after admitting to having had an affair. Yesterday I got a…
20 Honest Insights on Making It To 30 Years in Marriage
In 2020, my wife Toni and I celebrated 30 years of marriage. I love her more than I ever dreamed of. And it’s also been a totally different experience than either of us thought it would be. I love this picture of…
Why “Just Pray About It” Won’t Solve Your Church Problems
Every once in a while I hear from a leader who says “We don’t any need more ideas/strategies/conferences…all we need to do is pray.” Well actually, writing this blog, quite often I hear from people like that. Maybe you have…
Reinvention: The 5 Different Leaders You Need to Become To Stay Effective
You’ve heard it said here more than a few times, you are the hardest person you will ever have to lead. How do I know that? Because I’m the hardest person I have to lead. It was 20 years ago…
6 Reasons Leaders Grow Cynical (And How to Fight the Trend)
Find yourself becoming a little more cynical every year as a leader? Few of us decide we’re going to be cynical…we just kind of end up there. How does that happen? How does a heart grow hard? How do you end…
9 Things I Learned From My Most Recent Performance Review
Remember report card time? It always freaked me out a bit. Teachers would get to evaluate my life and tell me how well I was doing (or not doing). I always had a love/hate relationship with report cards. I loved them…
9 Everyday Situations That Say More About Character Than You Think
Sometimes progress in life can be tough to measure. You might feel stuck right now. Or just the opposite—you might feel like you’re making incredible progress. But are you? How would you know? Of all the areas in which I want to…
One Simple Question That Can Move You From Regret to Relief
Change is an issue you actually face daily. I don’t mean to imply that you’re actually changing everyday, I just mean you’re facing change. You’re either leading change resisting change avoiding change fearing change mishandling change (don’t like this one either,…
6 Ways To Stop Bad News From Hijacking Your Leadership (And Your Joy)
Tired of hearing bad news all the time? Even in growing and ‘successful’ organizations, leaders receive a disproportionate share of bad news. Why is that? As I tell my staff team all the time, we get paid to solve the problems…
3 Hard But Powerful Truths about Likeability and Leadership
So you probably want people to like you. Who doesn’t? Often when people say they don’t care whether people like them, it’s because they used to care whether people like them, but they got burned and as a result have become a bit…