You Are (or become) Who You Hang Out With

by vernsanders on May 17, 2011

This #4 in a series of posts that might be called “Tales from a Life,” and this one in particular is related to this one, in general terms, and especially this one. Everything you read here has either happened to me, or occurred to me as a result of serving in some sort of music ministry position. I suppose this series of posts could also be called “Change Happens…Deal With It.”

This may be another one of those “duh” posts, but, in my experience, people tend to forget the concept from time to time, so let this be a gentle reminder.

I spent a lot of time repeating this when my daughter was trying to decide what college to attend, but the principle can be applied to what conferences you choose, the people you make time for, or your favorite biker bar coffee shop.

In my experience…and it is my opinion…people who aspire to leadership need to be available to, and willing to listen to, as many people as want to be available to you. It is a two way street:

  • as in tennis or rock bands, you always want to be with people who are better than you when it comes to a skill set you seek to improve upon
  • as in politics or social welfare, you always want to be with people who are less fortunate than you so that you can identify problems and/or issues, and find a way to address them in order to improve the lives of those who may not be able to help themselves
  • and, as always in leadership, you accomplish both of the above by building a network of people of value

In leadership, this is where the rubber meets the road. Do you only “do” for those you like, or who are like you? Or do you “do” for everyone, within the limitations of your abilities and skill set? And do you “do” for yourself by managing your schedule so that you are not continually drained by “doing”?

How you answer those three questions will say a lot about how you will talked about when you are gone…

What do you think? Please leave a comment and/or give me a piece of your mind…

Ipod shuffle status: 2993 (Looking for a Reason – Little Big Town)  of 7875

Get my EBook The Choir in Modern Worship

twitter-logo

fb-logo

Previous post:

Next post: