Session 4 – The Leader Worth Following – Part 2

Fast Action Steps

1. Think about the difference a Personal Plan could make in your life, then write out a few of the benefits.
2. If you haven’t already, begin a Personal Plan by making a list of your top priorities in life.

Session Transcript

In the last session, we looked at what it means to be a Leader Worth Following. We looked at the first of 3 essential attributes of The Leader Worth Following – Knowledge.

In this session, we are going to look at the second essential attribute of the Leader Worth Following – Connection really involves WHO and WHAT matter most.

Take a moment right now to download the Worksheet for this session so you can follow along as we move through the session.

If you’re like me, you’re incredibly busy. In fact, it’s probably why you are here. My roles include husband and father, small group member, blogger, member of several boards. I’m A CEO. I lead several roles.  I’m sure your list of roles is similar to mine. And many people, like you and me, plan regular work projects. We might plan to start a new business or start a new venture, plan for vacations or entertainment, plan for our career, plan to build a new home or our next home. But, I’ve met very few people who have a plan for the most important relationships in their life and in their work.

As a result, they come to the realization that a major portion of their life has slipped by. And, discouraged and disillusioned, they try to figure out why their relationships have drifted.

We all want our life and work to matter. Yet the harsh reality is – how you live determines how much your life will matter. And if your life is going to matter, you are going to need to be very intentional with how you develop and maintain relationships.

The leader worth following understands who is most important in their life and in their work and they have a plan for continuing to develop and maintain those relationships.

Years ago, to help me with this, I wrote out a Simple Personal Plan. If you’ve never had a personal plan, learning from my experience and from thousands of leaders who we’ve served over the years, may save you a lot of time and trouble.

My experience with a Simple Personal Plan has resulted in transformational improvements in my life, in my work, in my home, and in my relationships.

My plan is relatively simple – it’s less than 5 pages, but it made such a difference in my life that I developed a tool around it. We’ve been using it for more than 15 years. It’s basically a list of the top priorities in my life and in my work. Its areas in which I want to achieve maximum equity. Here’s a list of those areas:

1. Faith
2. Self
3. My wife
4. My children
5. Friends
6. Career
7. Finances

Each account in my Simple Personal Plan has five sections:

1. The clear and concise end result I desire for this account. It is why this account is so important that it’s a part of my Simple Personal Plan. Why it’s a top priority for my life or for my work.
2. Since I want my life to be built on transcendent principles or values that have stood the test of time, I selected a foundational principle — a universal principle — for each area of my Simple Personal Plan.
3. This section details where I want to be 20 or 30 years from now in each account. It’s my vision for each relationship or each life area.
4. This is where it got really challenging for me – it wasn’t that it was hard; it was just very revealing for me. I asked myself, “Where am I in relation to my envisioned future, in section 3? How could I improve in this area? How am I doing in this area? What is my current reality?” Then once I was clear about my reality in section 4, I moved on to section 5 which is..
5. To move from my current reality toward my envisioned future – to build equity in each one of these most important (these top priority areas) of my life, I noted 1 or 2 key actions that I could do right away to make progress. The questions I asked myself were, What specific disciplines will I develop so that I can see immediate improvement in this account – daily, weekly, monthly? What am I going to do?

For more detailed information about how you can create your own Simple Personal Plan, you can check out the Simple Leadership Masterclass using the link in this lesson. In the masterclass, we guide you through a step-by-step process so we won’t go into a lot more detail here in this fast track.

Here’s what is important – Life doesn’t come with its own road map – and there’s no universal list of pros and cons for your path in life. A simple personal plan helps you to do that by regularly bringing you back to those things and those people who are most important.

People want to follow a leader who is connecting with them relationally. Leaders who are aloof and distant cannot develop influence and impact.

The Leader Worth Following understands and prioritizes Connection and Relationship.

So we have looked at 2 of the 3 essential attributes of The Leader Worth Following:

1. Knowledge (Competency, Expertise, Education, Experience) Relevant Competence
2. Connection (Relationship, Care, Support)

If you haven’t already, take a moment right now to download the Worksheet on this page and complete the action steps for this lesson. Remember, everything that we do with Guide Stone works because of applied learning. These things don’t happen by accident. You must be intentional and you must intentionally apply the learning to your own life and your own work.

Next Session

In the next session, we are going to look at the third essential attribute of a Leader Worth Following. This is the attribute that most leaders struggle with. It’s often the blind spot for leaders.

Remember, when it comes to connection and relationship, you don’t have to get it perfect. You just need to take the next step.

I’ll see you in the next session.[/text_block]