Monday, February 15, 2010

Leaders keeping on learning

In the book, Supervision in the Helping Professions, the authors discuss the need to continue to learn and flourish in your work environment. Since this relates to National Mission's ongoing concern for the health of ministers and leaders in the church, I thought I'd add here a couple of lists they include in their chapter on the topic (notes in brackets are mine).

Firstly, in relation to being effective at work:


1. Be in love with learning. Stay at your learning edge and have a learning project.

2. Be clear about your learning style and keep expanding it. [Knowing your learning style helps you be sure that you're learning at your own pace, not at the pace of others.]

3. Attend to your emotional well-being.

4. Increase your capacity to relate to and engage with others. [They suggest going outside your comfort zone of people you relate to easily.]

5. Attend to your physical well-being - diet, exercise, sleep, breaks. [Days off!]

6. Have a personal or spiritual practice. [For Christian leaders, this means not neglecting those spiritual disciplines - they're often one of the first things to fall off this sort of a list.]

7. Find a group of good co-learners/fellow travellers. [People who encourage you - people who can mentor you.]

The second list will appear in a separate post.

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