10:22 mark
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"Leadership is...The leader must know,
must know that he knows,
and must be able to make it abundantly clear to those about him
that he knows."
-Clarence B. Randall, quoted (approvingly!) by John Maxwell, "The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership"
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Sally Helgesen: Author, Speaker and Leadership Consultant
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women, artists, outsiders and introverts: strong church leadership
Being a woman can feel like weakness. When you are a woman, your own body teaches you your limits. From the time you're small, there is always someone bigger, with a stronger body and a deeper voice. And as you grow, you learn how little control you have over your own body, from a sometimes painful, often embarrassing inconvenience that will visit you every month to the strange season of having a person growing inside of you for 9 months. When the little bundle makes its appearance, your body goes from creator of life to sustainer of life. All kinds of new systems kick into gear. It's a miraculous process but one completely beyond your control. As you go from mother to grandmother, your body begins to change again, throwing you into a state of confusion as the steady cycles you have grown accustomed to become syncopated and erratic and then finally stop altogether.
If being a woman teaches humility and collaboration, isn't it a strength to be a woman?
Inhabiting this ever-changing form forces you to acknowledge (even celebrate) your limits and to sense your responsibility to and reliance upon the broader community.
So if being a woman teaches humility and collaboration, isn't it a strength to be a woman?
In the church, these are leadership skills.
Being an artist can feel like weakness. If you're an artist, you are spurred on by an unending search for truth and beauty. You can have your breath stolen by the smallest, seemingly insignificant thing and be unfit for anything else but crying or singing or writing about it for the rest of the day. And once you've found that tiny sign of hope, you must make sense of it. And so you make things to process and express it, trying to capture all the feeling and meaning for others through the limited media of notes and words and paint. You step into a creative process that is sometimes cruel and raw, a little too close for comfort. Then, with shaking hands, you put that outpouring of your soul into a public form and hope that someone understands.
If creative people know how to find truth and beauty, even when it's hidden in brokenn
ess, if they're comfortable with mystery, failure, and vulnerability, isn't it a strength to be an artist?
In the church, these are leadership skills.
Being an outsider can feel like weakness. Being on the outside means always having that vague sense that you didn't get the inside joke. You feel like a child again as you have to learn things that are obvious and basic to everyone else. But over time you compensate. You learn not only to speak but to listen in other languages. You become self-aware as those things which were once transparent about yourself (back when everyone around you was the same as you) are suddenly glaringly visible. For the first time you feel the weight of the lens of your own culture, your own assumptions, and eventually, you learn how to switch glasses.
If being displaced helps us relate to the ways God's people have always been the sojourners, isn't it meaningful to be displaced?
If outsiders know how to be flexible and self-aware, to communicate in a relevant way in many contexts, isn't it a strength to be an outsider?
In the church, these are leadership skills.
Being an introvert can feel like weakness. Thinking of the perfect answer a day after the question makes you feel dumb, even though your belated but perfectly-worded response is more insightful than the one given by the quick-thinker in the room. Needing to recover from extended periods with people draws labels like "anti-social," even though you may have great social skills. Longing for depth and complexity and silence makes you feel like a precious egg-head in a world hungry for sound bites and noise.
If introverts know how to listen, and are unafraid of silence, depth, and authenticity, isn't it a strength to be an introvert?
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Women guests shared:
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-leadership lesson, memory, story
-women in leadership: gifts, perspective, unfair
-group Q and R/encouragement/prayer
-optional: leadership definition, what i wish I knew then/life lesson
