Have you ever felt like you don’t belong? My hand is raised right along with yours! Much of my life, I’ve felt like I haven’t belonged! I took gymnastics when I was younger and because I was much taller than any other girl in my class, I needed a special leotard that wasn’t quite like everyone else’s. In fact, I was the tallest girl in my class until middle school. There was no blending in for me. Let’s not even go into the puberty stage…does anyone feel like they belong then?!

Have you ever wished you were being intentionally developed more in your current position? Did you know that being developed by your boss is one of the most desired aspects of someone’s job that doesn’t happen? In fact, in his management research, Michael Losey found that the Number 2 reason people leave an organization is because of a lack of career development (the Number 1 reason being compensation and benefits). Whether or not your boss intentionally helps you with your development plan, know this: YOU ARE WORTH INVESTING IN. So, what can you do about it?

Fears are one of those things that we ALL have. No one is free from them. The reality though is that too many people let fears hold them back and keep them from pursuing their God-given destiny. Whether it’s fear of rejection, fear of failure, fear of loneliness, fear of success, fear of saying no, etc. We ALL have them. It seems no one is immune.

As women continue to gain access to leadership positions historically unavailable to them, it is so common for women to be the only woman at the table. Sometimes this can be intimidating, sometimes it can be a reminder of what you've had to overcome to get a seat at the table, and sometimes it reminds you how much more there is to be done to give women the equal access of their male counterparts and it can be a trigger. As someone who’s spent much of her career here, I’ve developed practices that have helped me to thrive in my leadership as the only woman at the table. Here are 5 tips that I've picked up along that I want to share with you!

The first time someone asked me if I was going to go into ministry, I literally laughed out loud and confidently shook my head and said, “no.” I had just spoken to my home congregation of 5,000 over two days and three services having just come home from spending time visiting our sister church in rural Tanzania. In fact, the first time I spoke to an audience that wasn’t in a classroom setting (aka that wasn’t part of a school assignment) was while I was in that rural Tanzanian village. I was 21 and had an interpreter next to me translating my message into Swahili. I couldn’t have articulated it then, but I now know that I didn’t think I would be a good fit for ministry because truthfully, I didn’t see examples of women like myself in leadership roles.

As people, products, and services move around the world at increasingly faster rates, there’s a greater demand than ever for effective global leaders. As with anything in leadership, being and becoming a global leader is a process, not a destination. Like leadership in general, effective global leaders are made not born. So, what makes a global leader effective? And how do leaders become global leaders?

We were grabbing dinner at the local open-air restaurant on a hot Tanzanian night. My Swedish friend across the table wondered aloud why the waiter had left her bottle top on our table after having opened her coke, wasn’t that rude? While a smile on his face, our Tanzanian friend nicely rested the bottle top back over the opening of her coke bottle and replied, “because now you can cover your coke and keep the bugs out.” Touché.

As the cultural managers of their churches, there are three timeless and placeless attributes of leaders who successfully foster cultures in which people eagerly participate in the ideation, development, and implementation of new ideas. Part 3 of this 4-part series covered the first two: risk-taking and trust-building.

In the first part of this 4-part series, we looked at why millions of people worldwide are leaving our churches and Christianity as they know it, but also how Jesus eliminated all the barriers to the Gospel. In the second part, we looked at the role church leaders play in fostering innovative church cultures that provide significant positive change in people’s lives. And the three timeless and placeless attributes of leaders who successfully foster cultures in which people eagerly participate in the ideation, development, and implementation of new ideas!

In Part 1 of this 4-Part series, we looked at why millions of people worldwide are leaving our churches and Christianity as they know it. We also saw how Jesus eliminated all the barriers to the Gospel and that the same needs to be said of our churches today. So what role do church leaders play in fostering innovative church cultures that provide significant positive change in people’s lives?

As Christ-followers, we dream of being part of a Gospel movement that not only transforms people’s lives but the world around us. And yet, the world over, ministries are shrinking, and church attendance is declining. From the inside looking out, it appears that there are more time-consuming, inferior activities than ever creating overloaded schedules and leaving us increasingly frustrated with the demands of contemporary culture.

How it is that some organizations have diverse leadership teams while others seem to only have leaders who look, act, and talk the same? I once heard an executive leader of a 25,000-person organization located in a very diverse metro area in the U.S. say that while they believed in women in leadership, they couldn’t find any qualified enough in their organization. Somehow, I highly doubt that to be entirely true.

Making a difference in the world isn’t just a passion for many people, it’s becoming the pursuit of more organizations and businesses. More businesses and organizations than ever before are becoming socially conscious as more and more people demand it, inside and outside their organizations, the world over.

What does failure do to you? Does it stop you in your tracks, make you walk back 2 steps, or invite you to lean in and learn? When things don’t turn out the way we expect, and we ‘fail,’ if we turn this inward and believe that we are therefore a failure, we ultimately hold ourselves back from everything we were created to be and do in our generation. And we certainly will never embrace ‘failures’ as the necessary element of sustained success that they are.

Let’s get a little nerdy today and dive into servant leadership. I’ve heard too many off the wall things said about it that I know many of you will appreciate some clarity. Servant leadership is not a preference thing like ice cream or cookies, it is a specific leadership model with specific behaviors associated with it. I’ve literally had to refrain myself from running up to a stage to take the mic when hearing servant leadership being encouraged as a means for keeping people from leaving a particular organization. It couldn’t have been further from the essence of servant leadership, which is all about serving others for their sake, not the organization’s (in fact, a servant leader would encourage someone to leave if their current assignment wasn’t the best fit for them). So, let’s dive in.

How much are ill-equipped team members costing you? Are you overwhelmed and frustrated by constantly needing to find and train new people? As a leader, it can be hard to know where to prioritize your time and resources. You want to be leading a team with high morale, people who are committed to the mission, and you’re not constantly stuck filling vacancies (let alone having to motivate people all the time). But how do you know if you’re investing in the right things?

Does it feel like things fall apart when that one person isn’t there? Or do you have plenty of people that can fill-in? Do you know if the strength of your leadership bench is costing you?

Conflict, do you have a love or hate relationship with it? For most people, it depends on the families they grew up in and how conflict was viewed. If you’re from the Midwest (or Bold North as I prefer), you likely grew up in a culture where passive-aggressive responses reign and conflict is swept under the rug. The reality though is that conflict is essential for growth, personally and professionally. Let me demystify conflict for you and dare I say, even encourage you to promote it?

From chaotic schedules to needing to swoop in to “save the day” to rogue goals and strategies by others, one culprit is behind them all: values. Whether a soloprenuer or leading a non-profit or Fortune 500, when the values in use are not clear, neither is anything else.

Our dreams for our organizations, products, and services go long into the future. Whether or not we get there depends in large part on what we do with feedback. Being around for the long haul means we must, as my dad would say, continually meet or exceed our customers’ expectations. The last thing we want to do is over-promise and under-deliver. Nothing is more aggravating to customers than feeling like they were not told the whole truth (be it about costs, timelines, quality, etc.).