Barnabas File

"Leaders, you can have control, or you can have growth, but you can’t have both.”   This statement at the 2021 Global Leadership Summit by Craig Groeschel, senior pastor of Life.Church, was my key takeaway.  If you want to be in complete control of everything, then you are limiting the possibilities for growth in your organization and in your life.   Being in control of anything or anyone is really a myth.  You guide and discipline your children, but ultimately, they go on to live their lives for themselves.  You can employ and coach people in your organization, but you can never motivate or control every action that they take.  You can create and launch an organization, but if you attempt to micromanage it, you limit its growth.   Growth comes from creating a healthy environment and then letting its components thrive.  Perhaps gardening is the best metaphor to use.  You prepare the soil, select and place the pla...

If you assume that Kim Cameron’s book is about making people happy at work, you are shortchanging this contribution to leadership literature.     Cameron’s thesis is this:     All human beings flourish in the presence of light or of positive energy. This is called the heliotropic effect.     The kind of positive energy that usually accounts for the flourishing of individuals and organizations is called relational energy.    In this book, Cameron explains how relational energy is created and enhanced through the demonstration of virtuous actions by leaders.   Those familiar with leadership literature will find a great deal of commonality with the work of others such as Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee in Resonant Leadership but Cameron offers another model for leaders to consider.  His contemporaneous engagement with the pandemic makes his writing especially fresh and engaging.  He reminds us, “In order to effectively mana...