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When you’re trying to accomplish a task it’s natural to want to search for the quickest way to get it done. But what if that’s not the best way? In this episode Greg and I discuss why rejecting shortcuts and persevering through struggles will make you a better leader, and also allow you to help your team get better as well. Join us for some powerful motivation to kick off the new year!
[0:23] The shortest distance between two points is ____?
[1:04] Why do we want things done so quickly?
[2:36] When difficulty makes us slow down, our natural inclination is to bail.
[3:40] Sometimes slowing down enriches our lives.
[5:22] Leaders have to prepare their team for upcoming hardships, and be willing to fight through them with the team.
[7:12] Greg discusses how going the extra mile separates you from the crowd.
[8:29] Failure informs your success.
[9:27] Greg and I discuss our personal experiences with “shortcut culture” in today’s society.
[16:02] Greg shares a story from his time coaching football that illustrates how a leader can push the team farther.
[18:43] We share action points for leaders to implement this new year.
[22:35] A leadership coach will help you improve and be better equipped to lead your team.
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Listen to the audio-only version of this podcast by clicking on the player below, or scroll down to watch the video.
It’s no secret that the holiday season becomes extremely busy for us at work and in our personal lives. If we are too busy, we can miss out on the joy of this season. On this episode, Greg and I discuss ways that leaders can help their teammates not just survive but thrive during the holidays.
[0:36] Leaders help their teammates find and set healthy boundaries.
[2:49] A good starting point is simply acknowledging the stress that we or others are feeling.
[4:01] Can we intentionally scale-back some things at work during busy seasons?
[5:06] Leaders also need to talk with their teammates about their personal responsibilities.
[8:43] Leaders need to make sure they are modeling all that they are telling our teams.
[11:02] Stephen Covey had some wise words for us about priorities.
[14:07] Be proactive about some of the strong emotions some of your teammates may be experiencing.
[18:01] Leadership has to be about the people!
[20:33] Here are your leadership takeaways.
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Gratitude is a great separator for leaders—it gives them a better vantage point from which to lead people and increases their effectiveness as a catalyst for organizational change.
In short, a grateful leader is a great leader.
Check out the full conversation Greg and I had on The Craig and Greg podcast episode We are Grateful.
And you may be interested in a whole series of posts and video where I talked about the psychological, physiological, emotional, and relational benefits of making gratitude our focus. The series was called Be Thankful.
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We are grateful for you! Greg and I love talking about leadership, and it’s a great joy that you tune in to listen. In this episode we discuss why an attitude of gratefulness is so important for leaders year-round, not just around the holidays.
[0:17] We are so grateful for you!
[1:25] What is it about gratitude that make someone a great leader?
[4:28] Grateful leaders have greater influence with people around them.
[8:14] It’s easier to build consensus on our teams when we have a thankful paradigm.
[10:52] Thankful correlates with graceful. This is such an attractive quality for leaders.
[14:10] Greg asks me elaborate on how gratitude ties into my book Shepherd Leadership.
[16:09] How does a grateful mindset help us get through the tough times?
[18:56] Happiness is not the same as joy. Joy is much deeper and serves us as leaders much better because happiness can be gone really quickly.
[23:16] We give you some “homework” that will help you grow your gratitude.
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One of my friend Greg’s passions is helping business owners with the final step of their journey—succession of the organization. It was this passion that drove him to write his new book The Business Baton. In today’s episode Greg and I discuss the new book, and Greg lays out his philosophy for a smooth succession process.
[0:15] Greg has written a new book called The Business Baton.
[0:53] Greg opened his book with a chapter that surprised me.
[1:51] What makes a person ill-prepared to hand off the baton in their organization?
[3:26] The questions Greg asks to make sure a business is really ready to hand off the baton.
[6:34] Greg’s book has a lot of statistics and case studies to help guide readers who are considering handing off the baton.
[8:18] In Greg’s new book he continued a trend he started in his previous book Sage Advice.
[10:07] Sometimes a succession navigator has to push for some emotional choices to help you get your business across the finish line.
[12:21] Greg discusses the readiness, formation, increase, selection, and succession steps needed to get to a place where a business is ready to sell.
[17:02] I really appreciated the voices of other business leaders that Greg included in the book.
[17:31] The end of The Business Baton reminds exiting leaders to lead well.
[19:45] Greg gives his final thoughts on writing this book and the role of a succession navigator in the process.
[24:03] Visit Maximize Leadership to learn more about how Greg can help you as a succession navigator.
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As the saying goes, all good things must come to an end. You might be motivated by a feeling of limitation where you are, excited by a new opportunity, ready to retire and soak up some sun, or many other reasons. Whatever your reasons are, Greg and I would like to give you practical advice to apply when you’re considering moving on.
[0:15] Is it time?
[1:42] Greg goes negative first! Don’t make a move because of “greener grass.”
[2:54] Some better questions to ask about moving on.
[5:30] I always asks, “Why did you start here?” before asking, “Should you leave here?”
[8:01] Greg and I wonder about the value of getting “outside advice” when considering a move.
[10:40] We need to weigh both emotion and logic when thinking about the timing of a move.
[13:26] We can have regrets about leaving and we can have regrets about staying too long. A navigator can help you think through your options.
[18:40] Sometimes an owner is not ready to sell but a leader inside is ready to buy. How do we walk through this?
[21:16] Here’s the key takeaway on the timing of moving on.
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Leaders need to give others confidence to try something new. We need to help people get moving so that we can coach what they are doing. For more great leadership insights, check out The Craig and Greg Show.
I have lots of new content every week, which you can check out on my YouTube channel.
A couple of thought-worthy quotes for pastors. First from David Mathis: “Pastors, observe that in and of itself, mocking is no clear reflection of the faithfulness or fruitfulness of preaching Christ. Wise preachers do not take mocking as an indicator of failure, nor as an indicator of success. Twice in Athens some mock Paul, which may seem like a failure compared to his homiletic triumphs elsewhere. However, others say, ‘We will hear you again.’ And then, in the end: ‘some men joined him and believed’ [Acts 17:32-34]. … How foolish it would be to distract ourselves with the mockers. Or to call special attention to the mocking as some great badge of our own faithfulness. Rather, we have the example of Paul at Mars Hill, who, so far as we can tell, wholly overlooks, with a holy disregard, these mockers and concerns himself instead with those asking honest questions.”
…and then one from John Piper: “Preaching is a happy business. Because even if the text is a hard word that devastates the hearers, the preacher connects the hard word with the gracious word and the hopeful word, and he catches them as they fall. So, in the end, all preaching is a happy business.
“A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.” —Dwight D. Eisenhower
“For condemnation to work, we must say to God what the devil has said to us and believe it. If I want to stand before God with excuses that make what He said to me void, I’ll have to quote the devil to God. Does that sound like a good thing to do? God’s will for me is not to condemn me, but to liberate me from everything that holds me back from being what He created me to be through an ongoing relationship. To accomplish that, I need to do the opposite of what I used to do when I walked in condemnation. Instead of quoting to God what the devil is saying, I quote to the devil what God has said.” —Jim Wiegand, in Recruiting To Releasing
Another great story from the “Here We Stand” series of biographies of notable people during the Reformation. “An attendant asked [King Henry VIII] whom he wished to have at his bedside. The king asked for Thomas [Cranmer]. By the time Cranmer arrived, King Henry was unable to speak. Foxe tells the story. ‘Then the archbishop, exhorting him to put his trust in Christ, and to call upon His mercy, desired him though he could not speak, yet to give some token with his eyes or with his hand, that he trusted in the Lord. Then the king, holding him with his hand, did wring his hand in his as hard as he could (Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, 748).’ The scene sweetly punctuates the most important friendship in the English Reformation. Whatever King Henry believed when he squeezed Cranmer’s hand that day, God used the bond between them to break England free from Roman Catholicism and to recover the one true gospel.”
The ICR reports, “Genesis claims that people in the pre-Flood world routinely attained 900-year lifespans. The best-known example is Methuselah, who had the longest recorded lifespan of 969 years (Genesis 5:27). Skeptics dismiss these great ages as fanciful legends, but recent fossil data are providing unexpected, albeit indirect, corroboration of the Bible’s testimony.” Check out this full report.
“In my experience, each failure contains the seeds of your next success—if you are willing to learn from it.” —Paul Allen, cofounder of Microsoft
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It’s good to be good, but good is never great. As leaders we have to consciously work to avoid the trap of good. Join Greg and me as we discuss how to make your good better, and your better best.
[1:09] What happens to our leadership if we become satisfied?
[2:10] Striving for perfection is also a terrible trap for leaders.
[4:12] What happens if leaders settle for merely “satisfied”?
[5:40] How to send the message to your team that we’re going to keep raising the standard.
[8:17] Some people are looking for excuses to remain complacent.
[9:59] At some point, leaders will have to take a risk to raise the standard.
[10:49] Why do people want to cut corners? How do we avoid this trap?
[13:19] How do we get motivated to go farther?
[15:45] A couple of great examples of leaders who pulled people to excel.
[17:36] We have to keep working or it’s going to be more work!
[19:10] A quote from Charles Sorenson that is insightful.
Check out this episode and subscribe on YouTube so you can watch all of the upcoming episodes. You can also listen to our podcast on Spotify and Apple.
When a teammate seems to choke in a pressure-packed situation, good coaches help them learn from their mistake and get right back into the game. This is how leaders help their teammates go from choke to clutch. Check out the full conversation Greg and I had about this.
I have lots of new content every week, which you can check out on my YouTube channel.
“Most of us who aspire to be tops in our fields don’t really consider the amount of work required to stay tops.” —Althea Gibson, tennis great
“There is only one way forward when vindication is delayed: total forgiveness. And I can give you a motivation to forgive totally greater than any other that could be conceived: you do it for an audience of One. Yes. That’s it. That is how you do it! Total forgiveness comes easily when you realize you are doing it for God and the glory of Jesus Christ!” —R.T. Kendall
ICR reports: “Millions of years of erosion should have toppled all the beautiful sandstone arches out West, yet many hundreds remain.” But following the biblical timeline of Creation and the Flood makes it unsurprising that the arches are still standing.
“A coach is someone who can give correction without causing resentment.” —John Wooden
October is the month Protestants remember the start of the Reformation. The folks at Desiring God have a wonderful resource available by email every day during October called Here We Stand. Each day you will receive an email with a mini-biography of a key character in the Reformation. I am thoroughly enjoying these each day. Sign up here.
None of us are self-made. God created us on purpose and for a purpose. He gave us the gifts we need to accomplish that purpose. We will only find our fulfillment in life in stewarding those God-given gifts and opportunities in ways that glorify God. Not only fulfillment here, but then eternal satisfaction when we hear our Savior say, “Well done, good and faithful servant! Enter into your Master’s happiness!”
Having too many items listed as “priorities” on your To Do list can actually paralyze you. You have keep your list manageable to keep your leadership effective. Check out the full conversation Greg and I had on setting goals and making changes. This is also an important aspect of maintaining good mental health.
I have lots of new content every week, which you can check out on my YouTube channel.
According to Leslie T. Lyall, the secret of Hudson Taylor’s life and ministry could be summed up in four simple propositions: “There is a living God. He has spoken in His Word. He means what he says. And He is willing and able to perform what He has promised.”
“Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.” —G. Michael Hopf
In lamenting the rise of worldliness in our churches, John Piper said, “About forty years ago, David Wells wrote a book called No Place for Truth, which made the case that in the American church, God rests far too lightly on the people of God. He doesn’t have weight. It was the same heart cry from Dr. Wells as from J.B. Phillips. God is marginal. God has little weight in our worship services and little weight in our lives. He’s taken lightly. He’s simply one among many factors rather than the all-consuming factor, and I have thought that if I were to write a book today with a similar burden, it might have this title: Your Christ Is Too Cheap, Your Heaven Is Too Distant, Your Earth Is Too Big.”
The Institute for Creation Research reported, “In July of 2024, Science magazine confidently reported, ‘The last ancestor shared by all living organisms was a microbe that lived 4.2 billion years ago, had a fairly large genome encoding some 2600 proteins, enjoyed a diet of hydrogen gas and carbon dioxide, and harbored a rudimentary immune system for fighting off viral invaders.’ That’s quite a statement that details an unknown creature living somewhere on this planet 4.2 billion years ago.” Of course, this is an unobservable, unprovable claim, but that’s part and parcel of the evolutionists’ claims.
“What we do on some great occasion will probably depend on what we already are; and what we are will be the result of previous years of self-discipline.” —H.P. Liddon, nineteenth-century theologian
Lenny Esposito has a great podcast for Christian apologists called the Come Let Us Reason podcast. On a recent episode, Lenny used a passage in the Book of Jeremiah to talk about the inspiration of Scripture.
“God will work when He pleases, how He pleases, and by what means He pleases. He is not bound to keep our time, but He will perform His word, honor our faith, and reward them that diligently seek Him.” —Matthew Henry
As the first Christian church dealt with a serious complaint that could have split the church internally, there are a number of leadership gifts that are in play to provide a wise solution. Most of these leadership gifts get overlooked by the casual observer, but they are all absolutely indispensable. This is new exclusive content I regularly share with my Patreon supporters. Would you prayerfully consider supporting this ministry?
When you’re trying to accomplish a task it’s natural to want to search for the quickest way to get it done. But what if that’s not the best way? In this episode Greg and I discuss why rejecting shortcuts and persevering through struggles will make you a better leader, and also allow you to help your team get better as well. Join us for some powerful motivation to kick off the new year!
Craig T. Owens 