How to become a Catalyst Leader

​With an empty notepad and an open heart, we lift our eyes to God to inspire and enable us, so that we may be catalysts for His kingdom.

.Those were the thoughts impressed upon me just minutes before the #CatalystOneDay conference opened up for the day. Catalyst is a Christian leadership conference that drives insight and leaves lessons that spread across various areas of our lives. I initially learnt about Catalyst after reading Brad Lomenick's book, H3 Leadership. Intrigued, I ventured down to Kirkland, WA to see what the movement was all about. 

The most common pandemic that organizations seem to experience is a severe and utter lack of leadership, resulting in a constant talent/brain drain. Quite often in my role, I share with business owners a Towers and Watson survey that shows that 66% of employees are disengaged. Perhaps we need better leaders who can invoke change...

Throughout the conference, each session peeled back the layers on leadership, revealing a deep need for us to take ownership in serving others
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Here are the 3 biggest things I learnt at Catalyst2016.
​Learn more at www.catalystoneday.com

1. Lead Up.
Speaker: Craig Groeschel 

Before you can be a leader, you must lead up to being a leader. 

Your ability to lead up now will help determine your ability to move up later. Leading up looks like providing value that surpasses what people currently expect of you. The biggest myth about leadership is that you have to be in charge in order to lead. Yet, people will follow a leader with a heart faster than a leader with a title. Leaders with the right heart give to an organization and support its growth without thinking of themselves first. Instead of asking how much can you get from your organization, how can you serve with humility, lighten your leader's load, and care about the people around you? 

It's not about who you are, it's about who you get to be. 

What would a great leader do? 

What would your life look like if you replaced the word 'leader' with son/mentor/husband/brother/fiancée/friend? 

2. Don't find great leaders, develop great leaders. 

The most common question people ask is 'Where do you find great leaders?' 
However, the right question should be 'How do you develop great leaders?' 

According to Craig Groeschel, the 4 Steps to Build Great Leaders are: 
A. Identify talent that others overlook. What are some talents that you seen in others that can be nurtured? These talents may not appear to be obvious right away, but often are intangible character traits like drive, initative, resilience and humility. 
B. Attract them to a vision bigger than themselves. Nobody gets excited about jobs or an endless task list. What people get excited about is something that they can find fulfillment in while they grow it. 
C. Develop them to go further than they thought possible. Can you believe in people more than they believe in themselves? When they hit their lid on performance, how can you help them break belief barriers? 
D. Empower them to fulfill a lifetime in ministry. Success breeds confidence and it's only a matter of time before your racehorses start running. It's your job to get out of the way once they clearly see their path ahead of them.   

3. Less is more
Speaker: Andy Stanley

The Two Best-Kept Secrets of Leadership 
A. The less you do, the more you accomplish. 
B. The less you do, the more you enable others to accomplish. 

The target: Only do what only you can do. 
With everything else, maximize other people and their strengths; allow them to grow. 

Think back to how you gained leadership skills. You were given an opportunity, you did a great job, so you were given another opportunity, and it kept on going. So how do you think you develop leaders? Where can you give them the opportunity to lead?

So then, how do you allow people to fail? 
- Celebrate and learn from failures as much as you do with successes. 
- Try/play around with experimentation. 
- Create a culture that allows for failure.  

When your people come to you for a decision, practice encouraging them:
'You decide.' 
'You know, that's your area - I'll let you make that decision.' 

It's easier to educate a doer than to motivate a thinker. ​

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The biggest thing I got out of today was leadership isn't about getting things done right, it's about getting things done through the right people. When we do things we don't do well, things don't go well. Figure out that you should do what only you can do, then help others figure that out. Before long, you've got a bunch of strength-maximizers building momentum together. 

Think of a train building up speed, slowly at the start, but then by the time it's reached full speed, it is very hard to stop. 
Who will you have on your train with you?