We are reading through Discipled Leader: Inspiration from a Fortune 500 Executive for Transforming Your Workplace by Pursuing Christ by Preston Poore.
Discipled Leader provides struggling, stuck, or merely surviving Christian business leaders with a framework to grow their influence through becoming a redemptive (i.e., change for the better), Christlike presence in the workplace and living a more fulfilling life.
Chapter 1: Seek
- I discovered that the surest way to realize my leadership potential was to become a follower of Jesus—not just on Sunday or at home but twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
- By disciple I mean someone who passionately pursues an intimate fellowship with Jesus, seeking his presence, will, wisdom, and guidance in every facet of life—family, work, school, and community.
- Becoming who you are meant to be as a Christian leader does not begin with focusing on leadership. Your calling toward better leadership is a calling toward deeper discipleship. That’s how you become a discipled leader.
- Discipled leaders seek God when making decisions.
- The key to not just good, but great decision-making, is to seek God. A discipled leader soaks in God’s Word and asks for wisdom (James 1:5).
- In all our decisions, especially in the workplace, we should be putting our faith into action.
- To make wise decisions as both leaders and disciples of Christ, we need to root ourselves in God’s character, values, and promises as revealed in Scripture.
- As a disciple, invest time with God. As a leader, seek God when making decisions.
Chapter 2: Love
- How you serve others can define who you are as a disciple of Christ.
- Jesus’s example demonstrates that sacrifice is the heart of leadership. Jesus modeled the way for you to be a sacrificial leader.
- Leaders lead by serving, and service requires sacrifice.
- Through loving and serving others, understanding the costs of sacrifice, and continuing to do good, you will emulate Jesus’s example and become a sacrificial leader. But if you sacrifice without love, your leadership is worthless.
Chapter Three: Believe
- The central question of confidence for the discipled leader is … “Are you trusting God or yourself?”
- When we are assured of God’s salvation in our lives, then we know we can trust him with everything else in our everyday experience.
- Genuine assurance of salvation in Christ naturally leads to a steadfast peace in every other area of life.
- When you place your confidence in God and his purposes instead of working in your own strength, he will fit you into a work much bigger and more meaningful than you imagined.
- People can tell if you have confidence, and if you don’t, they will not follow you. If you do, they will see you as competent, and they will trust and follow you.
- Discipled leaders learn to elevate God rather than themselves.
- Cultivating God-confidence gives you the courage to do things outside your comfort zone.
- The key to unlocking your potential is to make the choice to reach toward it. Be intentional.
Chapter Four: Confess
- When you become a disciple with integrity, you can become a leader others will follow because of your honesty.
- Discipled leaders must have integrity before God before they can have integrity before others. If discipled leaders are right with God, they can operate from moral authority.
- Discipled leaders are honest to the core and know that integrity is a foundational characteristic of successful leadership.
- We must work hard to pursue truth no matter the cost. We must be leaders with integrity.
- Leaders must be willing to be held accountable and to hold others accountable.
- Encourage honesty and constructive criticism, and make sure team members are not punished or bullied for calling out issues and mistakes.
- Being a leader with integrity does not just happen. You cannot will yourself to do the right thing at the right time all the time. Integrity flows from a heart and mind at peace with God.
- It is essential for leaders to lead with integrity. If you are the one responsible for building a strong team or a strong company, your peers and employees need to know they can trust you.
- Be willing to admit when you are wrong. Take the position of a servant. Think less about yourself and your goals and more about how to help others.
- No one wants to follow a leader they can’t trust. But if you are a leader who is honest—with others, with God, and with yourself—you can transform your team, your workplace, and the world around you.
Chapter 5: Talk
- Our role is to glorify God—to point to what he has done, give him the credit, and bring honor to his name.
- Worry, anxiety, and stress can be overcome by trusting God and turning everything over to him in prayer. As you rely on him and his grace, God will fill you with his peace and enable you to persevere through any storm.
- People need to know that their work matters and is valued and appreciated. Recognize their efforts, publicly and privately.
Chapter Six: Flee
- God uses all things—even hardships and temptations—for the good of those who love him (Rom. 8:28). Over the course of your lifetime, God molds you into Christ’s likeness.
- The biblical stories of King David and Joseph provide stellar examples. One shows what not to do when faced with temptation while the other shows what to do.
- As a Christian leader, you must surround yourself with other believers who will regularly ask you tough questions about your life.
- Since temptation is a frequent challenge for discipled leaders—as for all Christians—it is critical that we know how to handle temptations successfully.
- Leaders should expect to be criticized. Not all criticism is valid, but most criticism contains a grain of truth.
- As a leader, you know that it only takes a moment to do great harm. Take seriously this fact.
Chapter 7: Stand
- Courage is acting in the presence of fear. You must have the courage to fight.
- While you fight, always remember this empowering truth: you are fighting as a result of victory, not to achieve victory.
- The war has already been won. It is from this victory and through God’s power that you fight.
- God will win the war, but we still have to fight the daily battle.
- Discipled leaders overcome fear through faith. They understand that fear or faith will rule their hearts and minds depending on which one they feed the most.
Chapter 8: Choose
- My identity is not in my own strength but in being a child of God.
- Joy is the delight that results from being in right relationship with God.
- Remaining in Christ every moment, surrendering your life to him, and obeying him out of love are essential to an abundant, joyful Christian life.
- We will experience utter joy in life when we are completely devoted to Jesus, daily yielding our will and desires to him as he transforms us from the inside out.
- No matter the circumstance, God can provide the inner strength to endure the hardships that come our way. The deep joy given by the Lord is independent of the trials or struggles that we face.
- When a discipled leader delights his or her team or individual contributors, this will in turn cause them to delight in their work and delight their customers.
- Get to know your people—their interests, families, friends, needs, hopes, dreams, and fears. Take a genuine interest in them and make them feel valued.
- Once a failure has happened, a problem is solved, or an adversity is overcome, take the time to look back, learn, and grow.
- Encouraging others is a choice you make, and it flows out of a joyful heart.
- Treat people well because someday they may forget what you said or did but will remember how you made them feel.
Chapter 9: Yield
- The challenges you face are opportunities to learn and grow. What counts is how you respond. It is a choice.
- Discipled leaders have a growth mindset—the belief that they can learn, grow, and get better through developing their talents, strengths, skills, and abilities.
- The exchanged life does not guarantee that God will fix your problems, but it promises that he will use such challenges for your sanctification and will give you the strength to be victorious despite them.
- The exchanged life is not easy, but it is the only one worth living.
- As a disciple, exchange your life. As a leader, live and learn.