If you don't connect, you cannot achieve success. When your team cannot hear you, they cannot follow you. They need to see, hear, speak, touch, and experience you as a leader. Send them notes. Listen when they speak. Let them know when they have touched you. Let them see that leaders can stop and speak, listen, feel, and touch. Let them see that leaders are human too.

Let ...

Far too often, ministry volunteers receive only a skeletal training before they are released to work. For certain roles (making coffee and directing traffic), on-the-job training is more than sufficient. For pastoral care and other people-oriented ministries, there's simply too much at stake. Over the years, my husband and I have learned how to both prepare our volunteers ...

When I was in corporate America, my company's leaders would use fear as an incentive to get the young consultants to work hard. I had attended an orientation session with the top graduates from Harvard, Stanford, Cornell, and MIT, which meant I was surrounded by people who were used to succeeding. The pressure to perform and the pressure to outperform myself stressed me out. ...

During college, Rachel Quan's spiritual journey was shaped by the book Celebration of Discipline, Richard J. Foster's formative work on the spiritual life. Today Quan serves Renovaré USA—founded by Foster in 1988—as its executive director, bringing with her a wealth of experience from a rich career in church, parachurch, nonprofit, and business leadership. GFL recently spoke ...

Shunda shares the pastorate of a mid-size church in upstate New York. Her responsibilities span preaching, the youth group, evangelism, and community activism. A multi-talented single woman (she sings, plays guitar, writes, and even paints from time to time), Shunda works unending hours.

Maybe it's because she loves her sheep. Maybe it's because people contact her, ...

The Internet is ablaze with discussions surrounding Sheryl Sandberg's national bestseller, Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead. Early in the book she addresses age-old conversations surrounding women and their choices concerning work and their relationships. She writes, "I was twenty-four and convinced that marriage was the first—and necessary—step to a happy and productive ...

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When we feel fear, God understands, because he's the one who made us that way. In many ways, that first response is involuntary. He designed our minds that way so we could react quickly in dangerous situations without being slowed down by the rational thought process, which takes much longer.

Surprise: fear is not a sin—it's a gift.

All throughout Scripture God ...

In John C. Maxwell's book Developing the Leader Within You, he explains that the majority of people believe being a leader is a position or title. Most often we strive for a title or status and believe that once we achieve the particular status, we become leaders. He goes on to challenge readers by asking what type of leaders they are. Hitler was a leader. Jim Jones was also ...

Why I picked up this book:

I read Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In for several reasons: 1) I had seen Sheryl's TED Talk on why there are so few women leading and resonated with her message and style. 2) As the COO of Facebook, Sheryl consistently makes the "lists." You know, like the Forbes and TIME "most powerful" and "most influential" lists they create each year. 3) There still ...