Barnabas File

As is my annual custom, I attended a satellite presentation of the Global Leadership Summit last week.   My primary reason to attend is to be introduced to new speakers in the field of leadership development and be exposed to some cutting-edge ideas in the field.    About a third of the participants are church leaders, one-third business leaders, and the rest are not-for-profit leaders, educators, and others.  The mix is ministry meets marketplace, and it is done well. The Summit still originates in South Barrington, Illinois, from the facilities of Willow Creek Church, but there is a bit of distance between the church and the Network since accusations arose about former church pastor Bill Hybels who was also a key player in the Willow Creek Association, now rebranded as the Global Leadership Network. Although the Summit was broadcast to hundreds of sites across the United States with about 135,000 participants (and will be re-packaged and translate...

No, we are not talking Tennessee Basketball here, but the Global Leadership Summit sponsored by the Willow Creek Association.  The conference is held live in South Barrington, Illinois, each year and broadcast to 590 locations across the United States. It is also repackaged and presented in over 125 countries around the world.  I have often said that Willow Creek, the parent congregation, knows how to do big church better than anybody else.  One reason is Bill Hybels, the pastor, who can get a bit emotional at times, but is willing to address social issues (like AIDS, racial relations, and the refugee crisis), is clearly a lifelong learner, and is remarkably transparent about his struggles and those of his congregation.  Once again, the Summit has brought together a great line-up of speakers—leadership gurus, business leaders, ministry entrepreneurs, and preachers—to challenge and inform.  Hybels himself is one of those people....

You would think by now that we would have learned to play well together, but until we do, there will be place for books like the latest from Patrick Lencioni.   The Ideal Team Player follows Lencioni’s usual approach.   He tells a fable or story about the principles he wants to present and then provides additional information and applications of the model. This time he tells the story of Jeff Shanley who suddenly finds himself at the head of a large construction company founded by his uncle.  As he solidifies the leadership team already in place, attempts to deal with troublesome employees, and add new team members, he and his team learn what (according to Lencioni) makes the ideal team player. In his classic book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team , Patrick Lencioni laid out an approach for tackling the group behaviors that destroy teamwork. Here he turns his focus to the individual, revealing the three indispensable virtues of an ideal team p...