2011 Leadership Collective - Wrap Up

Warning - long post about the Leadership Collective. Skip, read on, and/or take what you want. I was involved on a planning team for GRACE's annual leadership gathering. Here's a summary.

::: Context
- Grace gathers leaders every January for a leadership gathering. Past years have set the precedent for viewing some of the Willow Creek Leader Summit videos. This year, we wanted to move away from that and instead, try to make the gathering a little more interactive.
- We also wanted to get some Grace 'ordinary' people to share their story.
- One of Seth Godin's TED talks came up in the brainstorming phase and the ideas of tribes, breaking the status quo and connecting all resonated with the planning team.
- We visited this breaking the status quo idea by changing the event. Obvious to some?
- Did not want to have it in our large worship center.
- Wanted to unconsciously communicate that anyone, in theory, could put something like this together - it was okay for it to be raw or informal or organic.
- Felt need was that some leaders at Grace don't think they are' leaders' even though they are leading and have influence.
- Other driving concepts included unconferences [The Idea Camp, Humana] and TED talks [for the 18 minutes talks.]
- There was a DJ there - wanted music to set the mood instead of empty air.
- Engaged a photographer to shoot the event. Can't wait to see the images...
- About 195 people on Fri night and about 150 on Saturday. Lots and lots of young leaders - probably 50% under 30. Lots of older leaders as well - seemed like the 30-50 age range was missing.
- Cultural context of a suburban megachurch. Highly affluent, high achievers, lots of engineers, fed govt and etc.

::: Schedule
Friday night
- Open
- Worship
- Seth Godin
- Moses and the Status Quo - Ryan Richardson
- Mixer - commonalities
- Break
- The unpanel - 6 different speakers from within Grace, who spoke for 5 minutes at a time about a status quo they wanted to break and how they did it. Ministries included Adventure Service Club, girls Grace Adventure, Grace Adventures Day Camp, Medical missions teams, Metrokidz, and Young Adult ministries.

Sat
- Open
- Worship
- Mixer - leading by age
- Team Building - Dale Swinburne*
- Ministry team time
- Mark Norman - Discontent, Tribes, Deeper, Younger

::: Bits and Pieces
+ Ryan Richardson - Moses
- we can only change the status quo when we release our fears
+ Matt Maloy* - wanted to include weirdos [an includer at heart]
+ Dan Hedgecock - [speaking about engaging younger generations] our success is probably in our obsolescence
+ Dale Swinburne - high performance teams
- mediocre teams happen by accident
- leading a team to accomplish something is only half of the picture - the other half is leading your team - you are changing them too
+ Mark Norman
- Discontent, Tribes, Deeper, Younger
- the trinity is an example of a tribe - an intense community
- Psalm 145:4 is a hinge between generations

::: Finally
As you can imagine, a ton of people were involved in this. Everything from coordinating child care, office and admin type of stuff, venue setup, the worship band, snacks, and clean up and tear down, everyone's efforts mattered. Debriefing the event, which includes feedback forms, later next week.

I'm not an event planner, per se, and would have never imagined to be involved in this kind of thing. But effective leaders are able to gather people around them and make a platform for the like-minded to connect.

* Matt and Dale serve on the Board of Directors for The Ember Cast.