Getting involved.

Community is something that requires effort and commitment. A community is a group of individuals that are grouped around a common trait or cause. Commonly when people think about community we think about the neighborhood that we live in. Community is often formed because of our geographical location.

I think there is another type of community that is formed from common passions, hobbies, and interests. This is community with connections, and community with a purpose.

When you think about it there are lots of communities around us. Churches, schools, organizations, book clubs, it goes on and on. All of those communities exist to build connections with people, they have a goal in mind. If you are in a book club you have the goal of reading through books and then critically analyzing and evaluating them to get the most out of what the author had to say. A school is a community, you or your children go to for the purpose of learning and building relationships with fellow peers. The teachers are committed to teaching and the students are (or should be) committed to learning.

When people are committed to their community and get involved in their community, they will be able to accomplish those goals. Take the book club example again. You want to start a book club and you end up getting 50 people to come. Before the meeting though, everyone was supposed to read the first chapter in the chosen book. Its the big day of the first meeting and you are really excited! You have the chapter read, notes all over the margins, and you even read other articles about the book. You gave your 100% into this because you are passionate about it. So, everyone shows up and you ask what they thought about the chapter, and all you get are blank stares from everyone…no one read the chapter! Now you can’t talk with anyone about it, the whole book club is pointless.

Maybe you have been in a group or organization like that, where one person is committed but the rest are not. Its rough. Everyone, or at least the majority has to be involved for the group to succeed.

Community is successful when people are involved. When you have a group, organization, church, or school that has people but no one cares or gets involved, all  you have is a gathering of people. Get involved in your community, and if there isn’t a community that is based around your passions, interests, or hobbies, then start one!

Get involved with the people around you, build relationships, start communities, help your friends out. We will realize that one day our entire city will be a community centered on building communities and relationships with others.

A leader who empowers.

Think about someone who you think is a leader, and how do they lead?

What do you think of those who are leaders for you?

Do people empower you to get work done, to achieve your goals and the companies goals? People strive more when they are given responsibility and the tools to accomplish things. We want to have purpose and meaning to what we do. It is finding that purpose even in the most mundane of tasks that makes leaders.

As human beings we need to be allowed the opportunity to take the reigns, push ahead, forge the direction, and carry the responsibility of performing the tasks before us well. I believe there is an innate part of us that when given responsibility, wants to step up and accomplish those goals and tasks. When we grab hold of that responsibility and that desire to achieve these goals, we will increase our chances of success ten fold, improve moral, and grow yourself and the others around you. Though we may not always achieve success, the chances of success are so much greater than if we don’t grab hold of the reigns and the responsibility.

Leaders have the responsibility of providing their employees, volunteers, or whoever with the tools and means necessary to reach those goals. Empower people to give you one mile and you might find that they will go two miles. Help everyone to reach their greatest potential by empowering them to achieve new heights and reach goals that will grow not only the company or organization, but also themselves.

Passionately leading.

Passion.

Are you passionate about something?

To be a leader, you have to be passionate about something. Passion creates the necessary goal that gives you the direction that you need. Once the passion and the direction have been set by you, people can then follow.

Stay true to your passion.

A passion is something that you are almost obsessive about. It brings focus, drive, energy, and purpose. Build your business, blog, speeches, etc. around what you are passionate about. You will feed off of the energy and drive that you passion brings to encourage others to be more passionate.

Passion is infectious.

Everyone knows that its easier to laugh when other people laugh, and when one person starts laughing usually everyone else starts laughing. Passion has the same effect. When you are passionate about something, you begin spreading the message or your passion to others who then become passionate about the same thing and then spread it to their network.

Passion needs to be real.

It needs to be true. Everybody can tell when someone is faking a speech or is trying to show that they are more passionate than they really are. Don’t go after something just because you think its cool. Go after your passion even if that is talking about the different kinds of paper in the world. If you are real and true to your passion people will see that and will become one of your followers or you will encourage them to be a leader in whatever their passion is.

What it takes.

Integrity.

It is absolutely crucial to being a leader. Leaders are tasked with the responsibility of guiding people and directing them to where they should go, whether it be in business, the community, families, church, or wherever.

As a leader people rely on you and trust you to lead them down the correct path and to protect them. A leader of integrity keeps that trust from his or her followers and will not allow anything to lead them off the path that was set.

For a leader to lead others well he first has to lead himself well. A leader knows the importance of not compromising and understands that if he does compromise on his beliefs and the beliefs of the people he his leading, he is hurting not only himself, but the people he is leading also.

Integrity is never forsaking your beliefs and the beliefs of the people that you are leading. Never compromise and never lead by skill. Lead by character and integrity. People will follow because they trust you to respect them.

It won’t always be easy, and you won’t always succeed 100%. But persevere through adversity and no matter how much you want to compromise…don’t. The minute that we lose sight of protecting our own integrity and character is the minute that we lose sight of protecting and directing and leading those following.

A leader of integrity understands that he or she will make mistakes. They don’t try to hide them, or gloss over them, but rather they admit them and accept the consequences of their mistake. This builds trust.

Integrity doesn’t mean always being perfect. It means that no matter what you will do the right thing, even if doing the right thing is admitting that you did the wrong thing.

“A life lived with integrity – even if it lacks the trappings of fame and fortune is a shinning star in whose light others may follow in the years to come.” – Denis Waitley

What does it take to be a leader?

Chick-fil-A Leadercast is going on today and sadly I am not there. Maybe next year!

For those of you who don’t know what the Chick-fil-A Leadercast is, its a conference where some of the greatest leaders gather to give advice and presentations on how to be effective leaders.

Some of the speakers were John Maxwell, Jim Collins, Chip Heath, Jim Goodnight, and many more!

By following the progress of the Leadercast through blogs and posts about it, it has gotten me thinking about a question.

What does it really take to be a successful leader?

I would love to hear some of your thoughts. We are all leaders to one degree or another and I think for us to be successful in life we need to hone in on our leadership skills.

What do you think?

Are you using social media?

The title is a pretty obvious question isn’t it? Pretty much everyone uses social media, and if you are actually reading this blog, you of course are on it right now!

So, why even ask?

Because there is a difference between “using” social media and “being on” social media.

Everybody is “on” Facebook, but are you “using” Facebook?

Small businesses everywhere need to be on as many avenues of social media that they can be.

Facebook, Twitter, Texting, Blogs, Flickr, etc…

Now, I say all of this not meaning that you use social media to try to make as much money as you can off of it. That is the absolute wrong way to go about doing it.

Can you make money off of it? Yes. Is that the point? No.

Social media is an extension of yourself. It is an extension of your company into the world so that you can interact with your friends and fans.

Don’t use social media for yourself.

Let your fans interact on it and talk to you. It’s for building relationships, carrying on conversations, providing feedback, and most importantly customer service. The only type of promoting that should take place in social media is something that will be of a benefit to your friends and fans.

Even with this blog, the purpose is to not promote Chick-fil-A, but rather to talk with you about the community, give tips and insights that we have learned, talk to you about what you want to talk about and not ever shove promotions down your throat trying to force you to give us money.

That’s not what Chick-fil-A is about and that’s not what social media is about.

Social media is about reaching out and building relationships.

It doesn’t matter whether you are a small business or someone who only has Facebook, everyone can use it to reach out to friends and create a community.

Comment below and let me know how you are using social media. Are you taking your passion and building a community around it?

Getting the word out.

Talk.

Fundraisers will never succeed if the word doesn’t get out about the organization and what it stands for.

It is a very daunting task to try and go out and talk to EVERYONE about your organization to work to get them to support you.

So, don’t talk to everyone, talk to your audience.

Your audience consists of people who are inclined to give to your organization, and would follow your organization on a regular basis.* People in your audience are people who can connect with your organization and find reasons to want to follow you on a daily basis and help out with your organization.

Don’t look to raise money…raise people.

Go out and talk to people to find connections between them and your organization. If you do, people will naturally give.

Once you have found the connection with that person and you have established the relationship with them, then you can begin promoting your events to them.

You must build an audience before promoting your event.

* Fried, Jason & Hansson, David. Rework.