The Leadership Course Experiment | Jim Gordon
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14 Nov The Leadership Course Experiment

Posted at 18:16h in Blog, Influence, Leadership by Jim

A few months ago, a team of us designed a 9-week leadership course with an in-class component and a guest-speaker component. During the in-class time we focused on Andy Stanley’s book, Next Generation Leader, and followed with our Speakers’ Forum that featured a 45 minute presentation by one of the 9 community leaders we lined up to speak on leadership. Our Speakers’ Forum featured leaders representing four distinct areas of culture: business, religion, politics, and education.

Our motivation was to provide a way we might stimulate greater personal interest in leadership among people we knew, and also to increase the leadership quotient in our wider community at large.

Course participants ranged from teenagers to retirees. There were CEOs, factory workers, health care professionals, high school students, business owners, and youth workers. We all share a common denominator: a desire to increase our influence and effectiveness through leadership development, regardless of our age or occupation.

The feedback we’ve received is positive and very encouraging!

With over 35 people signed up for our course, I was very happy with the participation, the planning team, the speakers, and with all of the outcomes. The truth is, though, this was an experiment, and I had no way of knowing what would happen!

My Personal Take-Aways:

  • If my motivation is to add value to others and help them in an authentic, practical manner, how can I go wrong by trying?
  • Assemble a team of others with a common vision to distribute the load, and enhance the product you want to deliver. Team members add more than I could ever deliver to the overall product: and it’s more fun! 
  • When people realize my true motivation is to help others (and not to make a dollar), they often will respond in kind. People you could never otherwise afford to use might decide to volunteer their services also because they believe in your efforts!
  • Leaders go first! Just try something to help people and make a difference!