Dr Brené Brown’s insights have the power to be life changing because she articulates and deciphers some of our most damaging obstacles with clarity that we can understand. This is how we start positive transformation.
After you watch the video, tell me what had the biggest impression on you.
Find more at Brené Brown’s website.
My recommendations of Books by Brené
Today, I’m synching up with the Deeper Leader blog over the question:
What new beginnings will there be for you or your team?
Well! I just started my second 9 week class in my Masters of Arts in Christian Leadership. (It’s sort of like a power-packed Christian MBA)
This weekend we met for class (the rest of the learning happens online).
The time was packed with insights and new material, all of which will be so helpful not just with getting to know my fellow-learners, but in every environment I am leading in and will lead in.
The course centers on leadership theories and involves a lot of searching and self-awareness, learning of one’s strengths, temperaments, and personal leadership styles. Sometimes this is encouraging, but other times the process reveals blind spots, wounds, and flaws.
I’ve realized that a wounded but healed leader is the easiest for me to trust.
The insights we gain from knowing ourself and others better works like getting bionic limbs just before we climb a mountain. Things that were confusing, personalities that seemed perplexing, and the power for gifts and talents laser into focus.
Here are a few of the books I’m learning from that I’ve really been enjoying. (Two Big thumbs up!)
Another test I took for the course has to do with using a social and emotional competency inventory tool (ESCI). Social and emotional intelligence is too rare a commodity in bosses, in case you haven’t heard. :)
Plus, I did the Myers-Briggs Test. (I’m an EN(F/T)P, almost split F&T)
Have you ever taken the Myers-Briggs test? (If so, what are your letters?)
Have you taken the Strength Finder test (it comes with the book)?
I highly recommend it! You will be blessed and so will those you influence!
I got the great privilege to sit under the wise teaching of Dr Barbara Krasner yesterday. (Contextual therapy and a family systems-centered healing perspective.)
With 48 years of experience as a therapist and scholar can you imagine the depths of her knowledge and understanding? But, probably not.
Every sentence was 9 months pregnant with power and meaning. Each concept could be a textbook of its own. Wisdom. Truly.
Gleanings
One of the things that struck me was that she said the first 10 sessions of therapy is almost wasted. People come with certain expectations or barriers every time they first begin therapy, which delays healing.
• Often we simply just want the other person “fixed”.
• We are too ready and able to blame or judge, which the Dr says has zero value.
• We also hope for magic. They assume she will have powers and skills to quickly produce healing and normalcy for them.
She says that she sees her vocation not as a person who has the answers, or simple fixes, but as one can help others see resources they can use to help themselves. Resources they are unaware of or haven’t considered. Communication resources, options, starting points. She helps them look “under rocks to see what they’ve missed, to see what’s working, even if it’s the most basic thing. They may not realize that hope is a choice for them.
Communication and Transactions
Krasner says it’s important to “simultaneously translate” what a person is saying and what they are intending to say. What is heard is often misunderstood and one’s upbringing plays into how we hear others poorly.
• Understanding the context of the message and the person is critical for coming to points of healing and trust.
The biggest reason people divorce?
• They cannot disagree and still stay connected.
(This is true for other kinds of troubled relationships also.)
The most important things we can teach our children?
• Forgiveness (With grounding in loving-kindess: Hesed love.)
I’m reading Leonard Sweet’s book “I am a Follower”.
It turns leadership on its head, which feels a bit ironical to have it as a textbook this 9 weeks in my Master of Arts in Christian Leadership course. But, then again, I didn’t expect to learn leadership ordinarily. We’re working from the ground up here. We aren’t learning to be bosses, we’re learning to be like Jesus, and influence others in the fashion of God’s Kingdom, not man’s (courtesy of the Sermon on the Mount, I might add)
It’s a challenging message for us.
Here are some noteworthy bits I’ve gleaned:
1. Jesus wasn’t looking for leaders…he was looking for followers. Instead of worrying about finding and keeping followers, we follow him.
2. The seduction to apply a secular business model has infected churches but has been a remarkable failure. Spiritual depth doesn’t come from this model. (Willow Creek’s self-assessment is an honest but damning example.)
3. God’s strength is made perfect in human weakness, and this will be illogical in a worldly model. God’s power is how we do well.
4. God will prune us, for our own good, so we may be more fruitful and glorify him more.
5. Strategy and planning common in many church models today can superseded the focus on the work of the Holy Spirit.
6. There is a going myth the technology and innovation are answers to our leadership and church problems.
7. God calls us to do something bigger than ourselves.
8. The Church’s obsession with leadership reflects our cultures values which usually center in ego and self-interest.
I will follow up with more from this intriguing and entertaining book. The man does not shy away from plays on word.
(Sign up in the sidebar to get the followup to this post.)
Here’s a humorous and poignant lenten reflection from the irrepressible Prof Doug Jackson
excerpt:
The Lazaruses are a happy family – one of the few that Scripture gives us – and their happiness forms a complex choreography. There’s Martha Stewart of Bethany, very active and Baptist, worrying that the unleavened bread won’t rise and carving radishes into the shape of Torah scrolls. There’s the liturgical Lazarus, playing the gracious host, his very presence a passive but massive proof of the power of his guest. And there’s Mary, an early-day Pentecostal who simply will not learn propriety, performing over-the-top acts of quasi-erotic worship that bust the budget and embarrass the guests.
