Photo by Associated Press
In the sports world you can learn a lot about leadership. In particular, when you look at the top leadership of a team, you get a window into the culture that is being built. I don’t know if you have noticed, but in many winning sports programs, after a successful season, many of the assistant coaches and coordinators are all courted by other teams to be their head coach.
What is the reason for this?
It is simply the fact that there is a proven track record of winning under your leadership. If a team wins a championship and it was credited to an incredible offensive scheme, then the question becomes, “who was the offensive coordinator?”
But something we forget to ask is, “who was the coach of that coach?”
This is where sports history will give us more insights. When you look at some of the greatest coaches in sports, you will begin to notice several things:
2) Great coaches influence
3) Great coaches impart
A good example of these traits is Coach Dean Smith. It’s not only his number of wins, but if we look at the number of coaches that came out of his program and leadership, we will have to conclude that he possessed the leadership gift of inspiring, influencing and imparting.
This got me thinking about leadership culture. If an organization has a great leadership culture, then inevitable you will constantly lose people – sometimes some of your best people. No one wants a mediocre coach. Therefore, if a team continues to win that means that they have great leaders (coaches), which in turn will produce other great leaders (coaches) because of the leadership culture that is on that team. Then, most likely they would want to go out and lead.
It is my prayer that in our church we will train up many great leaders for God’s Kingdom. This means that we might have to release some people to do other things in other places. It also means that we have to create more space for people to be released to do new things in our church because not everyone will go to a new place.
No matter where people will be placed, as we talk about transformation, we have to stay focused in relentlessly building a leadership culture in our church.
