Home Grown Leaders

Home Grown Leaders gives an approach for developing Christian leaders whether they be small group leaders, supervisors of multiple small groups, or pastors. It relies on both a biblical foundation and contemporary leadership theory. This book is currently being used to inform leadership trainers in many different parts of the world.

Today's enterprises face a profound leadership crisis - and the speed of business has far outstripped conventional executive development systems. In Grow Your Own Leaders, three world-renowned experts introduce an entirely new approach for identifying tomorrow's leaders within your own organization, accelerating their development, and deploying them immediately, to address new challenges wherever they emerge.

From executives complaining that their teams don’t contribute ideas to employees giving up because their input isn’t valued--company culture is the culprit. Courageous Cultures provides a road map to build a high-performance, high-engagement culture around sharing ideas, solving problems, and rewarding contributions from all levels. Many leaders are convinced they have an open environment that encourages employees to speak up and are shocked when they learn that employees are holding back. Employees have ideas and want to be heard. Leadership wants to hear them. Too often, however, employees and leaders both feel that no one cares about making things better. The disconnect typically only widens over time, with both sides becoming more firmly entrenched in their viewpoints. Becoming a courageous culture means building teams of microinnovators, problem solvers, and customer advocates working together. In our world of rapid change, a courageous culture is your competitive advantage. It ensures that your company is “sticky” for both customers and employees. In Courageous Cultures, you’ll learn practical tools that help you: Learn the difference between microinnovators, problem solvers, and customer advocates and how they work together. See how the latest research conducted by the authors confirms why organizations struggle when it comes to creating strong cultures where employees are encouraged to contribute their best thinking. Learn proven models and tools that leaders can apply throughout all levels of the organization, to reengage and motivate employees. Understand best practices from companies around the world and learn how to apply these strategies and techniques in your own organization. This book provides you with the practical tools to uncover, leverage, and scale the best ideas from every level of your organization.

Successful leaders don't rest on the laurels. Leadership must be a living process, and life means growth. "Great Leaders Grow" shows leaders and aspiring leaders precisely which areas to focus on so they can remain effective throughout their lives.

Who decides what your church (local or denominational) will look like twenty-five or thirty years from now? How can you ensure that your church will continue to fulfill its God-given purpose in the next generation? What can be done now to reverse negative trends in ministry such as pastoral burnout? Much of the answer to these questions about pastors and other local church leaders is tied to the training they receive. Training Spirit-Filled Local Church Leaders for the Twenty-First Century encourages all stakeholders in ministry training--educators, pastors and other local church leaders, church members, and those who sense God is calling them to ministry--to prayerfully consider the foundational issues that determine the effectiveness and relevance of a ministry training program. These foundational issues are: -What is the local church, really? -What is spiritual leadership? -What is ministry training? -What is the role of the Holy Spirit in all this? -What did effective training look like in the past, and what might it look like in the twenty-first century?

First Published in 2003. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

One of America’s most accomplished landscaping professionals reveals his methods for cultivating greatness. Nowadays, greatness tends to be measured by shortest or longest times, highest heights, medals won, honors given. But as Aristotle taught us, greatness is what we can do every day, without recognition or reward, for the satisfaction that comes from meeting the challenge, creating a team, and overcoming the odds. Under Jeff McManus’s leadership as Director of Landscape Services, the Ole Miss campus has won professional awards—and been cited by Newsweek and Princeton Review as America’s “most beautiful campus.” In Growing Weeders into Leaders, he relates the principles behind his team’s success. It is an entertaining and thoughtful look into the hearts and the workday lives of ordinary people who tapped into their inner greatness in pursuit of a vision. Creating one of America’s most beautiful college campuses at the University of Mississippi did not happen overnight and, inside these pages, McManus describes the joys, the defeats, the brilliant problem-solving and the best laid plans that are proven worthless . . . until the bigger picture appears. This is the bigger picture as viewed from the ground level—taking you through the practical applications of empowering people to experience not only what it means to grow outstanding landscapes, but also to grow greatness in themselves and encourage it in others. “A straightforward approach to problem-solving and methods to grow individuals into a team.” —Susanne Woodell, CGM Historic Gardens Manager, Biltmore

This book describes how an organization can create a culture in which leaders are routinely and systematically developed, resulting in a surplus of leaders, and details how to nurture leaders throughout the organization, from the front lines to the executive ranks.