Merry Christmas church leader…perhaps by now you are in to your 3rd, 4th, or 11th Christmas Eve service at your church. The greenroom eats have all been picked over. You ran out of Facebook and Twitter posts during the last service.
Here’s a thought: consider making a calendar reminder for the 27th or 28th to do some work on you for 2017. Don’t wait until the first day back – January 3rd – to decide how to improve in 2017. By that day you’ll be off and running. The demands of that week and a new year will be on you.
Your development is on you. No one is going to force you to get better in leadership, a craft, a personal discipline, or relationships.
If you had a painful employee review (or a good one) this past year pull it out and take a look at it. How much of that is true is about you? Where do you need to get better? Is a lack of skill inducing stress and waking you up at night? Are you yelling at your kids more this year than last because there’s a disappointment in your ministry?
Your employer, and your job is not your problem. Well I can’t speak for you – allow me to say it this way: my boss and my employer has never been my problem, but I've always had a me problem.
For me another book, blog, tweet, or conference is always nice to have, but I’ve found that coaching is the key. I wrote about it here. If your employer won’t pay for one you may have to. I know that I did and it was one of the best work related decisions I have ever made.
Pull some truth-tellers around you and get a plan together. Who knows…some of them may be right across the green room from you even tonight.