Leading From Alignment

After 3+ months of crisis after crisis, leaders are frazzled and exhausted. Some leaders want to stop leading and start selling ice cream instead. We are seeing the floodgates burst, and a huge uptick in calls to Converge Coaching from leaders who are on the edge of burnout or already there. Today’s pod will explore three behaviors that will help you put more fuel in your emotional tank.

Today we’re delighted to again welcome Jenni Catron to the Leading From Alignment Podcast. Jenni is a leadership coach, author and speaker. Her passion is to lead well and to inspire, equip and encourage others to do the same. Today’s pod is Part 2 of our interview with Jenni, dealing with the subject of The 4 Dimensions of Extraordinary Leadership. This is a can’t miss podcast!

Over the next couple of weeks on the Leading From Alignment Podcast, we have the privilege of talking with leadership coach, author, and speaker Jenni Catron. In addition to her role as Founder and CEO of The 4Sight Group, Jenni speaks at conferences and churches nationwide and has written several books including The 4 Dimensions of Extraordinary Leadership – which she’ll be talking with us about...

For many leaders, the idea of needing a mentor signals weakness. The crazy idea that somehow if I admit the need for help, I’m not a strong leader. Nothing could be further from the truth. On today’s pod, we’ll unpack three major benefits a mentor or a coach brings to your leadership life

We can serve God and others better when we’re physically fit. Today’s pod focuses on three key areas that contribute to it: exercise, nutrition, and sleep Leadership is difficult. It requires energy over sustained periods of time, it requires the ability to make tough decisions. Energy and decisiveness can be directly linked to our level of physical fitness.

If you’re out of sync with Jesus, the leadership journey is exponentially more difficult. We can do a lot of good things as a leader and still forget the most important thing . . . love for God. In today’s pod, we’ll unpack four ideas that will deepen our hunger for God, and help us get a better grasp on why we should care.

What happens when things get back to “normal?” When the COVID-19 shelter-in-place restrictions are lifted, what will the churches and businesses we lead look like? What do we need to bring forward from this experience in terms of how we lead in the future? If we go back to business as usual, we’ll have wasted a great opportunity. Today’s pod, part two of a two-part series, will unpack three key fo...

What happens when things get back to “normal?” When the COVID-19 shelter-in-place restrictions are lifted, what will church look like? What do we need to bring forward from this experience into our leading once we can gather again? Today’s pod will explore three powerful takeaways for leaders in this challenging season.

This week on the Leading From Alignment Podcast, we once again have the privilege of talking with Doug Clay, General Superintendent of the Assemblies of God. We’re excited to share with you Part 2 of Doug’s thoughts on leading during quarantine and leading in a post-quarantine world.

This week on the Leading From Alignment Podcast, we have the privilege of talking with Doug Clay, General Superintendent of the Assemblies of God. We’re excited to share with you Doug’s thoughts on leading during quarantine and leading in a post-quarantine world.

Every relationship carries some degree of risk. Isolating ourselves carries risk as well—maybe even more risk. God has wired us for deep friendship. Leadership doesn’t immunize us from our need for honest, meaningful, and replenishing relationships. With these challenges in mind, today’s podcast will explore seven friendship hacks leaders can use to improve the relational currency in their life.

The coronavirus has unleashed an amazing amount of stress into a leader’s world. It’s isolated many of us from friends and family. As with any challenging season of life, we tend to learn and grow a lot . . . if we take time to reflect and internalize what God is teaching us. Today’s pod will explore four lessons we’ve learned during this unprecedented time in our nation. We hope you find each one...

The amount of white space in our calendar (or a lack thereof) is a pretty accurate predictor of the amount of emotional fuel we have in our tank. If our schedule contains long stretches with no white space, it’s likely we’re running on emotional fumes, regardless of what our adrenaline and cortisol hormones may be telling us. If we want to lead better, lead longer, and enjoy it more, we need margi...

Today’s pod explores another building block that helps us build emotional resilience: Refueling Emotionally. If you observe Jesus’ life, you discover He was never stressed out (except for Gethsemane). One reason why? He had this refueling thing figured out.

Difficult people go to church. Difficult people who go to church can cause a great deal of harm to a leader. Today’s pod, Protect Yourself from Abuse, will give you three safeguards you can use to protect yourself from abusive people who attend the church you serve and lead.

We live in an angry world. Anger is a human emotion common to us all. In previous pods, we’ve established that pastors experience a significant rate of depression . . . and I wonder if one reason is because we’re afraid to be honest about our anger. We mistakenly believe pastors “shouldn’t” get angry, and for them to express anger is immature. One thing many leaders don’t know don’t know about ang...

It’s possible to be serving in the center of your God-given calling and still crash into a wall of anxiety and/or major depression. Being a pastor or ministry leader or missionary has its great points, Being used by God to influence others is fun! But being a ministry leader has it’s not so great points too. And if we fail to take a thoughtful approach to what God’s called us to do… we can get int...

Many leaders struggle with the demon of insecurity. (I’m using the word “demon” metaphorically, not literally.) King Saul was the crown prince of this particular character flaw. Chosen by God to be Israel’s first king, Saul had good looks, leadership skills, flashes of spirituality . . . but he was painfully insecure. And his insecure tendencies led to a string of bad decisions. Fast forward to th...

If you’re a leader in any capacity, I’m guessing you have more opportunities than you have time or energy. If you’re in a caregiver role, I suspect you have more invitations to care for people than you have calendar space to do so. It’s so easy to get lost in the day-to-day execution of our work we fail to periodically take a step back and consider this challenging question: Am I only doing what o...

Nothing good ever comes from a ministry devoted to pleasing people ~ Chuck Swindol When I think about my first fifteen years of pastoral ministry, so much of it was tinged with a subconscious desire for people to like me. I craved approval without realizing it. Today’s podcast will look at some sure-fire signs indicating you’re stuck in people-pleasing mode, and offer a few ideas about how to get...

A Barna 2017 Study of 14,000 Protestant Lead Pastors in U.S. revealed that 37% of lead pastors are at medium to high risk of burnout. Here’s the thing about burnout – getting healed up from it is not like flipping a switch. It takes longer to recover than you imagine. So . . . how can you know if burnout is near? How can you prevent it? Today’s pod explores five key contributors to burnout, and th...

In pod 19, we considered what lead pastors need from their staff. Today in Episode 20 of Leading From Alignment, we’re flipping the script and exploring what associate staff members need from their lead pastor. Essentially, the staff needs their lead to answer five questions for them: Why, where, what, when, and how. Clear answers to these five questions will help a lead pastor get more out their...

Nobody knows what it’s like to be a lead pastor unless they’ve been a lead pastor. Today’s pod is the result of our combined 30+ years as lead pastors, as well as 6 years of church consulting and 15 years as mentors to pastors. Between all of those inputs – five consistent themes emerge regarding what a lead pastor seems to need from an associate: Integrity, humility, hunger, interpersonal skills,...

Near the end of every calendar year, I take time to write down the two or three most important things I learned during the year. Then I spend time reflecting on those items, because I want to remember them. Practice them. Live life differently because of them. Well . . . 2019 is in the books. And I find myself reflecting on another year of learning. Today’s pod is extremely personal. It includes t...

If you want to lead well for a long time—you have to figure out how to handle difficult conversations. When it comes to tough conversations, some leaders tend to bully, while others tend to wimp out. Health lies somewhere between the two. How do we find the sweet spot between these two extremes? Today’s pod focuses on six practical ideas around how to navigate these tough conversations.