The conferences actually begun on Wednesday and Thursday, not on Tuesday, as I mentioned in the previous post. It’s currently fixed on the blog, but I found out after the blog post hit your email.

Click here to view the accurate info:

Sorry!

On Wednesday the 9th The Nines will be starting at 9:09 Central standard time. Different speakers will be speaking each for nine minutes. It will be going on all day long, so I think most people will be tuning in and out as the day progresses, perhaps to catch their favorite speakers. It’s not too late to register. Go here.

Then on Thursday the 10th and Thursday the 11th the National Leadership Forum will be taking place online. This one has some of the bigger speakers. Click here to register and attend.

[image by Brian Villarin]

It’s not through reading books. This will help, of course. You’ll get ideas for broad principles that you can try to apply. But this will not do it.

It’s not through attending seminars or conferences. This will give you exposure to top level leaders, and will show you how they manage their time or something. Again, this can be very helpful, but mostly it’s just inspiring. So this will not do it.

So what’s the best way to learn? By being around leaders and getting mentoring from them.

Here are some steps on how to do that:

This would be someone in your area that you can have access to, and that is successful in their given field. For pastors, this should not be difficult. Just look for a church that is growing and doing well in your area. That’s usually an indication that something is working well in the realm of leadership.

But keep in mind that you wouldn’t want to select someone that is years ahead of where you are. They are already dealing with issues that are far too removed from where you are, so they actually wouldn’t be that helpful. Instead, select someone that is about 50% ahead of you. They have just recently passed through the issues you’re dealing with, and everything is still fresh in their minds.

Leaders are busy. They don’t really have time for you. Mentoring someone else is probably not at the top of their agenda. Running their organization is. But eating is something that everyone has to do. Offer to treat them at a restaurant that would be most convenient for them. And if that doesn’t work, offer to order a meal and have it delivered to their office. That way they don’t even have to budge and move a muscle. They can just receive you, munch, and not waste any time.

Don’t just say I’d like to meet with you. Give them specific parameters so they can know what to expect and plan for the rest of their day. So ask if you can meet with them over lunch from 12:00-12:50pm, for example. If they don’t have much time, ask for half an hour. And respect their time. When you see that you have about 5-10 minutes left begin to close shop. It always takes a few minutes to do so.

Don’t just show up and say, “ok, tell me what you know.” Or “ok, I’d like you to mentor me.” That doesn’t work. Leadership is very broad and can be quite specialized. And you want to make the experience as easy as possible for them. That usually happens when you’ve come prepared with specific questions that you’d like answers to.

Bob Franquiz gives some wonderful points on this:

“When I make an appointment with a leader I want to learn from, I prepare for the meeting. I write out a list of questions that I want to ask (usually more than I will be able to ask in a thirty to sixty minute meeting). I keep the follow-up questions in mind based upon their answers. I bring a notebook and a pen, so I can write down the answers to their questions because the old saying is true that the shortest pencil is better than the longest memory…my goal in meetings like this is to say as little as possible, so the person I’m meeting with can say as much as possible” (Zero to Sixty, p. 51).

Bring questions that you’re dealing with in your organization. Thing you don’t understand well. How to streamline a process. How to implement something.

They didn’t have to meet with you. They’re taking of their time out, so the least you could do is to have some professional courtesy and write them a hand-written thank you card. This just shows that you respect and appreciate their time.

Have in mind other leaders in your city that you can meet with. Make a list of them. Perhaps you can do a “leadership lunch” once a month. It’ll cost you about $20, but it’s well worth it.

I learned these principles through experience. I took out a pastor of a growing church nearby about two weeks ago. He planted his church about two years ago, and it’s now running about 650 in attendance over three services. I brought my questions with me. I had my notebook with me. And I even asked for his permission if I could record our conversation on my iPhone “memo” app.

I was blown away by the stuff he shared. Super inspirational. It was better than any book or conference I’ve attended on the subject. Why? Because I could stop and clarify and ask probing and specific questions that I’m dealing with. And he even said I could join him in one of his staff meetings to see how they do things! Quite excited about that.

After that encounter I made the commitment that I’m going to repeat the process every single month with a different leader in the area. I honestly think it’ll be the best $20 you’ve ever spent.

[image by rahul_tel 2]

Here’s why I’m liking the book so much: it doesn’t assume that you know how to do something. Most leadership-type books out there assume way too much. They give lots of general principles of things that you should be doing, but they don’t teach you specific ways on how to do them. That’s a really important distinction.

In chapter 5, for example, he gives some questions they use to debrief after a church service, but that I think can just as easily apply to any kind of event.

1. What went right?

2. What went wrong?

3. What was missing?

4. What was confusing?

He says,

“We praise God for what went right. We send thank-you cards to show appreciation to volunteers who went beyond the call of duty. We encourage one another for a message well preached, a song well sung, or a video produced. We all need encouragement. This created an opportunity to build up staff and servants who are working very hard. Then we discuss the other three questions at the same time. This allows us to be specific about problems that took place on Sunday and how they can be remedied. Lastly, we assign the task of fixing the problem to a specific staff member. The solution may be as simple as buying duct tape…or cutting ten minutes off a future message…” (p. 38).

I think there’s two important factors here that we shouldn’t miss. For one, they’re willing to do the painful work of a thorough debriefing. I’m sure this isn’t always the most comfortable thing to do, especially if you’ve messed up in something. But it’s important to learn from it so that the mistake doesn’t happen again. Secondly, they do this every single week on monday. Everything is still fresh on their minds from how the worship experience went. I know most churches (mine included) do not currently debrief this often. But I think it’s the best way, and I will be transitioning to do this very soon.

The video below gives more information, but it promises to put, “message outlines and notes, Bible verses, interactive polls, space for taking notes, questions for response,” prayer requests and online giving….all on your phone. Yup. It’s blowing my mind also.

Check it out.

I have to agree with them on quite a few levels.

Yet, at the same time, my interest and appreciation of Twitter has been growing. Here’s why.

Where else can you have access to the musings and mentoring of high caliber leaders? This is the great difference between Facebook and Twitter. Facebook is for those you know. Twitter is for those you’d like to learn from. In a sense, I see it as being more professional. The leaders there aren’t necessarily sharing information about things they’re doing in their day. Some leaders never share that kind of information. Instead, many share links to valuable resources, quotes, and things of interest to them personally.

Here are some examples:

Steven Furtick is the lead pastor of Elevation Church, a young and fast growing church running around 5,000 in attendance in three locations at the moment. He consistently shares challenging and helpful thoughts.

Rick Warren, of course…well who doesn’t know Rick Warren? Founding pastor of Saddleback Community church and author of Purpose Driven Life. A man with an enormous wealth and breadth of experience, which he shares daily. They’re like mini sermons. Actually, most of his “tweets” are great outlines for simple sermons.

And there are a ton of other leaders out there just like him in your particular field. I’m currently following 109 pastors, leaders, CEO’s and others.

For whatever reason, these same leaders are opening up special opportunities, especially on Twitter. Take these tweets, for example:

For those that don’t know Dr. Ed Stetzer, he’s the president of LifeWay Research. Along with Thom Rainer, they’re experts in most things church. Well, yesterday I noticed this particular tweet. He opened himself up for free coaching to pastors of smaller churches for 90 minutes. How cool is that?

I see opportunities like that arise fairly often. A few months ago, as a result of a tweet by Michael Hyatt, CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishing, I was able to get a free book and enter into a program where I can receive some free books on a regular basis.

A few days ago, I noticed that Ryan J Bell, pastor of the Hollywood Adventist Church in Hollywood, California was vacationing fairly close to where I live. His church is becoming well known for their “incarnational” forms of ministry (feeding homeless, helping the poor, education). As a result of that tweet we were able to meet up and he was able to share with me in person more about what they’re doing and how they’re doing it.

And if I hadn’t been on Twitter, I wouldn’t have found out about these two great and free leadership conferences: The Nines and The National Leadership Forum.

Twitter is fast becoming a source of breaking news. Michael Arrington, founder of TechCrunch, one of the premier tech blogs out there shares in this post why he thinks it’s a great source of breaking news. And I’ve been able to see this myself.

I recently read that EE Cleveland, a pastor, evangelist, and civil rights leader passed away recently. I wanted to get more information on the topic, so I turned to the Twitter search function to see what people were saying. Here are some of the results of that search. The reason you can get more immediate information through twitter is that Google doesn’t immediately index information that someone might have posted. They’re working on getting faster, but at the moment Twitter trumps it by a mile.

A few months ago, when I wanted to get some breaking info on the newest iPhone software upgrade, I didn’t turn to Google, but to Twitter. I went on there because I wasn’t able to connect to the serve to upgrade, and I thought that Apple had postponed the upgrade. Upon doing a search on Twitter, I found that many people at first also thought that the upgrade had been postponed. But by the minute, I could see the tide-turning, and people beginning to trickle in with more information about what was happening. It would have been impossible to get this kind of immediate information any other way.

By the way, I know many people that are turned off by technology just rebuff stuff like this by saying, “I don’t have time for stuff like that,” seemingly implying that it’s a waste of time and that they focus on much more important matters. I would say two things. For one, it doesn’t have to take a long time. I spend no more then 15 minutes a day on Twitter. I check it on my iPhone and can quickly scroll through 150 or so tweets. Secondly, if you don’t have time for leadership development and to learn, where are you spending your time?

Will you live if you’re not on Twitter? Of course. It’s just a tool like any other. But it’s a tool that I’m really being blessed by and recommend you check it out.

But there’s one feature that really stands out that has helped me a great deal: Google Books. Through the Books project, Google has scanned more than 10 million books that can be found and accessed on line, mostly in partial snippet form. In some cases, though, whole books may be available.

I regularly use this to do research and sermon prep. Here’s how.