I attended an excellent workshop called "Exploring the Gifts Among Us" about leadership development in our Congregations, conducted by Rev. Nancy Brown and Rev Terasa Cooley. They have put their power point slides on the web (along with some of Rev. Cooley's other presentations probably also worth a look) here is a link to the pdf version.
One of the many learnings from this 3 hour workshop is the importance of:
simply talking to others in the Congregation (see the slide that says Conversation, Conversation, Conversation!)
How useful these conversations would be for leadership, both connecting current leaders to the Congregation and encouraging new leaders!
For example: We might ask Board members to have a conversation (a real one!) with one person in the Congregation that they do not know, perhaps once a month. One question they could ask is, what do you think? what are your passions? how can you serve? Well, 3 questions...I'm curious! But I think the conversation is more important than the specific info gleaned.
Another message rang clear from this workshop: the mark of a leader is the capacity to encourage more leaders.
In fact, the above is the only quality all leaders need to possess (otherwise, it is a mixed bag, choose the leader that has the right mix for the issue they will address!) Of course, there were also slides about empowerment, how to support new leaders and the complexities of doing this basic work well.
Mary Ann Muller also went to this workshop. We both bubbled over talking about it, feel free to ask us about it; start a conversation!
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