Leading in the Storm

By Doug Franklin November 30, 2010

For many of us, much of our leadership is done in a storm or quite simply, stressful situations. We have never been able to climb out in front of problems and obstacles and so most of our leadership is done while under extreme pressure. We don’t do our best work under pressure and so we tend to to be mediocre leaders and we hate it.  So how do you lead in a storm and at the same time try and get ahead of your problems?

1. Prioritize
Make a list of the three most important issues you must tackle for your organization to thrive. This will mean leaving some problems behind, which could be hard for many of you and the reason why you never break out of storms. Take them on one at a time, making sure you have committed leaders positioned before you move to the next priority. Your goal is not to go back and work on an issue again, it’s to leave good people in place who will make sure any new problems are dealt with in a healthy manner.

2. Build Leaders
Create a culture of leadership development. Don’t wait until you have the “right people” because you never will. To get out of a storm you need leaders. It’s the one common denominator of every Christian leader in a storm: they don’t have enough leaders.

3. Cast a New Vision
For some organizations, storm living is the norm. Some leaders actually like moving from fire to fire putting them out. The only problem is this burns out everyone else. Paint the picture for your team of life without storms. Share with them the priorities, invite them to lead and break the current culture of storm living.