By: Jenny Dooley on February 20, 2024
Rare Leadership: 4 Uncommon Habits for Increasing Trust, Joy, and Engagement in the People You Lead, by Marcus Warner and Jim Wilder is a timely read. I’ve been researching a variety of models as I begin designing platforms to develop relational connections for ministry leaders with the goal of supporting their social-emotional and spiritual well-being.…
By: Glyn Barrett on February 20, 2024
“A Failure of Nerve Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix” by Edwin H Friedman is compelling, especially the comparisons between the old and new world orientations, summarised at the end of chapter one[1]. The author’s juxtaposition of the two worlds provides an accurate analogy for the goal of a leader when guiding an…
By: Travis Vaughn on February 19, 2024
In Rare Leadership, Marcus Warner and Jim Wilder point to the brain’s “fast track system” as that part of the brain which “controls how we regulate emotions, how we remember who we are, who our people are, and how it is like us to act (that is, acting like the self God gave us).”[1] The…
By: Kally Elliott on February 19, 2024
Taylor Swift for president 2024! Hear me out. T-Swift is a RARE leader. And, as the mother of a twelve-year-old daughter who is hungry for women role models, I endorse my daughter’s obsession with Taylor Swift. According to authors, Marcus Warner and Jim Wilder, a RARE leader has “emotional intelligence” or EQ. Their thesis in…
By: Jennifer Vernam on February 19, 2024
Interestingly, in their first book Rare Leadership: 4 Uncommon Habits for Increasing Trust, Joy, and Engagement in the People You Lead,[1] Marcus Warner and Jim Wilder state that RARE leaders need to combat the tendency to be ‘sandbox leaders’; in other words, leaders who deal with conflict like children would in a playground situation- reactively,…
By: Tim Clark on February 19, 2024
I honestly couldn’t tell you how many hours of church leadership conferences and trainings I’ve listened to live, and online…. and on DVD, CD, and, yes, even cassette tapes. I do know that for nearly 40 years I’ve had thousands of hours of exposure to the best church leaders alive. However, I can tell you…
By: Kim Sanford on February 19, 2024
I first heard the term EQ or Emotional Intelligence about 15 years ago. I was hooked from the start. The deeper I went into learning about EQ the more it changed my perspective in myriad ways. It’s no surprise, then, that emotional health and maturity is a cornerstone of my NPO project. It also seems…
By: John Fehlen on February 19, 2024
Today, as I write this blog, I recall Dr. Jason Clark mentioning a book that he is in the process of writing about pain and leadership. On the Zoom call, I said, somewhat in jest, yet also quite seriously, “Hustle up on writing that book Dr. Clark because I need it for my NPO.” I…
By: Jeff Styer on February 19, 2024
Life is all about perspective, how each person sees and understands something. Have you read or heard the Indian parable about the six blind men and the elephant? James Baldwin retells the story, The Blind Men and the Elephant. In the short story he describes six blind men’s encounter with an elephant. As each blind…
By: Noel Liemam on February 18, 2024
About three years ago, I had an uncle (I will call him Steve) that I knew very well that had a stroke. Since then, he decided to confine himself to his home even though he could be mobile with the aid of his wheelchair. His wife is now staying home taking care of him full-time.…
By: Joel Zantingh on February 16, 2024
Two years ago, I started consulting with churches and mission organizations. The one church asked me to become their Interim Pastor, but my gut instinct told me I could simply offer to be their Transitional Coach for 10 hours a week, and rely on the gifted staff team they had, and get them just as…
By: Akwese on February 16, 2024
There are many ways to view leadership, and various types, models, methods, and frameworks have been created to help us explore our understanding of it. When it comes to developing a theology of leadership, it seems as though what’s often being explored is the model of servant leadership or some variation of it. Jesus…
By: Dinka Utomo on February 15, 2024
We must struggle toward choosing one plan over another, not because it is the right one, but because it is the best one we can come up with -Joseph Bentley and Michael Toth- Cases of domestic violence in our country have shown an increasing number in recent years. In 2023 data, around 18,138 women…
By: Scott Dickie on February 15, 2024
Personal Truth #1: The content of this booked helped me. Personal Truth #2: The helpful content could have been communicated in 5-7 pages. As a result of the two truths above, I find writing a review of Exploring Wicked Problems (1) by Bentley and Toth a bit of a problem—thankfully a tame one and not…
By: Julie O'Hara on February 15, 2024
We began the dive just in time to catch some slack water between the tides. It wasn’t very long before my buddy approached and knelt right in front of me in the cold, green water. Behind him, the kelp leaned and swayed in the increasing current. He looked me in the eye and made a…
By: Erica Briggs on February 15, 2024
On Thursday, February 8th, 2024 a mother called the crisis line to report that her 12-year-old son was destroying personal property and exhibiting aggressive behavior towards members of the household. The operator told her to call the police. When officers arrived, the child walked off the property and away from the scene. Since he was…
By: Russell Chun on February 15, 2024
складні проблеми – Wicked Problems (in Ukrainian) Introduction Part 1 GoodSports Ukraine Part 2 Immigration Epilogue Introduction Joseph Bentley and Michael Toth, Exploring Wicked Problem: What They are and Why They are Important.[1] Casts a simple framework over a world filled with problems. The use of the term WICKED (like the witch?) brings initial confusion…
By: Adam Harris on February 15, 2024
It’s not often that my graduate work overlaps with my 7th grader’s homework, but it did this week! While helping my oldest make sense of his English assignment I could see a pretty clear connection between this week’s reading, Exploring Wicked Problems, and my son’s reading material. He had to find main ideas and supporting…
By: Chad Warren on February 15, 2024
It was early morning, hours before sunrise, when we realized we had forgotten a box of supplies in the office just a few miles away. We were setting up for an outreach event a few miles from our church office, and Dawson, our newest and youngest team member, volunteered to drive back and get…
By: Chris Blackman on February 15, 2024
When I was 3 years old, my family was coming home from a vacation in Portland, OR, to Los Angeles. As we approached Bakersfield, a city about 90 miles from Los Angeles, my dad was pulling off the highway so we could rest. Sadly, a semi-truck was behind us, and the driver was drunk. He…
