By: Shela Sullivan on February 14, 2024
In the book, [1] “Leader-smithing, Revealing The Trade Secrets of Leadership,” Eve Poole uses the metaphor of blacksmithing to explore leadership, suggesting that leaders can be shaped and perfected like metal. To me, it meant people can be trained, shaped and transformed potentially to take on leadership positions. Poole validates my assumption in her book.…
By: Diane Tuttle on February 14, 2024
I felt as though I was at home when reading Leadersmithing by Eve Poole[1]. The concepts in the book easily relate to the profession I have been practicing for the last 24 years. The concepts, language, and exercises were familiar. We use variations of many of the exercises in our leadership in-service training classes. In…
By: Jennifer Eckert on February 14, 2024
In her book, Leader-Smithing, author Eve Poole uses quirky wit and humor to put a new spin on the idea of leadership as a craft to build muscle memory or templates [1] for how to handle things through real-time on-the-job training. While the topic of leadership is non-novel, Poole labels it a movement bearing responsibility…
By: Todd E Henley on February 14, 2024
MY NPO “Critical thinking is the art of analyzing and evaluating thought processes with a view to improving them.”1 Three results of a well-cultivated critical thinker: She raises vital questions and problems, formulating them clearly and precisely She thinks open mindedly within alternative systems of thought She is scrupulously careful not to misrepresent or distort…
By: Jenny Dooley on February 14, 2024
Better Together I like solving problems. Unless they’re mathematical! Those problems are best managed by someone more qualified. Actually, there are quite a few problems which I do not have the expertise to tackle and it would be foolish and potentially dangerous to attempt to do so on my own. However, that does not relieve…
By: Graham English on February 14, 2024
“Leadersmithing” by Eve Poole follows a refreshingly practical approach to leader development. I didn’t grow up in the church. I became a follower of Jesus when I was 19. After sensing a call to ministry a few years later my wife, Wendy, and I moved our family from Vancouver to Regina to attend Bible…
By: Mathieu Yuill on February 14, 2024
I had a conversation the other day with a friend of mine who had just been promoted to the position of principle in an elementary school (in my area, that means Kindergarten to grade 8). She had previously served as a vice-principle and before that a teacher in various elementary grades. Only a week in…
By: Adam Cheney on February 14, 2024
Ca. Richard Smith is a no-nonsense kind of fire captain. He is tough but fair. The kind of fire captain who will take his crew out at 2am to drill if there was some sort of mishap on a 911 call earlier that day. His crew was straightlaced, polished and always striving to be the…
By: Debbie Owen on February 14, 2024
My violin teacher threw a pencil at me. I grabbed it in mid-air. “Nope. You caught it. Try to catch it.” I was confused. “But I did catch it,” I protested. “I want you to TRY to catch it,” she repeated. She threw the pencil at me again. It twisted through the air as it…
By: Pam Lau on February 13, 2024
“The Tendency to avoid problems is the primary basis of all human illness.”[1] M. Scott Peck I started this doctoral program with many questions. One particular question on my mind was, what, if anything, about the way I lead with my voice today needs to change for me to be my most vulnerable, courageous self…
By: Glyn Barrett on February 13, 2024
I spent much longer reading Leadersmithing by Eve Poole than I had initially planned. Not that I was not intrigued by the book’s title, but that my time commitments were severely restricted due to travel, sermon preparation, leadership teaching sessions, and Conference attendance. However, once I began my elementary and inspectional reading, I had to…
By: Kim Sanford on February 13, 2024
Parenting. There is perhaps no better example of living life on autopilot, trudging along in survival mode, foolishly trying the same solutions to problems but hoping for miraculously different results. I guess we’ve all been there. I certainly saw parenting problems on every single page of Joseph Bentley’s book Exploring Wicked Problems: What They Are…
By: Esther Edwards on February 12, 2024
“Wicked problems are ill-defined, ambiguous, complicated, interconnected situations packed with potential conflict.”[1] For many years, our church housed those without a home for one week each year. This began in our city after three people died of hypothermia in 2005. A church decided to open its doors and soon they had more people seeking shelter…
By: Kally Elliott on February 12, 2024
In their book, Exploring Wicked Problems, What they Are and Why They Are Important, Joseph Bentley and Michael Toth explain the difference between “wicked problems,” those that are “complex, messy and unpredictable” and “tame problems,” those that have solutions and can be solved.[1] Using climate change or global warming as an example for a wicked…
By: Ryan Thorson on February 12, 2024
The older I get the more I realize how smart my parents were. So much of what they did, and didn’t do, as parents, shaped and formed me into the person I am today. While they will admit, and I have come to realize, they are not perfect, but the positive role models of love,…
By: Tim Clark on February 12, 2024
I like setting up chairs. At our church I’ll sometimes go into a room that’s being prepared and help set up the chairs. Our operations team must think I’m a little bit obsessive about how those chairs get set up for meetings, but the truth is, I just enjoy doing it (I tell them that,…
By: John Fehlen on February 12, 2024
The dream of the 90’s is alive in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. In 1993, Bill Murray starred in the fantasy comedy Groundhog Day. It became one of the highest grossing films of 1993, and went on to be considered one of the greatest films of the 1990’s and one of the greatest comedy movies ever. I personal…
By: Travis Vaughn on February 12, 2024
In the course of four weeks, I had three conversations with three pastor-types that revolved around a common issue, yet with three different perspectives. The issue involves a crisis of leadership (e.g., pastoral and church planting leadership). It’s a wicked problem – “complex, messy, and unpredictable.”[1] It’s a problem that involves “ill-defined, ambiguous, complicated, interconnected…
By: Jeff Styer on February 12, 2024
Dr. Eve Poole in her book Leadersmthing: Revealing the Trade Secrets of Leadership provides readers with a list of seventeen Critical Incidents. These are based on asking “board-level leaders: What do you now know as a leader that you wish you had known ten years ago?[1] I looked over the list to determine what areas…
By: Jennifer Vernam on February 12, 2024
“Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of saying that the Kingdom always lies beyond us.[1]” Sometimes, when I meet people from other countries and they learn that I am an American, working in Change Management in the Healthcare Industry, I think I notice subtle nonverbal cues, like wry, knowing smiles or maybe…
