Book Review: The Catalyst Leader

The Catalyst Leader by Brad Lomenick is one of those books that I would have probably saved time to only highlight the items I didn’t want to remember.  If you look at my Kindle copy…there is something highlighted on almost every page.  Awesome leadership nuggets throughout!  I really appreciated Brad’s willingness to be transparent about some of the areas where he has totally bombed…while also sharing some of the things that have worked really well for him.  Leadership can be a really messy process, but he was authentic in sharing the process and that makes this book a valuable resource for anyone who leads anything.

I have pasted several things below, but would definitely encourage you to purchase a copy of this one for yourself and anyone else you know that desires to lead others in a way that honors the Lord.

• discover God’s unique calling on your life
•  embrace your true identity and share it with others
•  develop an insatiable hunger for a vibrant relationship with God
• chase after a level of excellence that will stretch you and astonish others
• learn to push through fear and take risks
• root yourself in unchanging principles rather than shifting circumstances
• create and cast a compelling vision for the future
• build bridges with others for the purpose of learning and cooperating.
• I learned how to lead a team and inspire others by creating an environment of constant personal development.
• The path to influence has been truncated as many leaders today are circumventing the usual channels to realize their callings earlier. Many have platforms that exceed their wisdom, experience, or maturity.
• Ambition must be grounded in wisdom. Inspiration must be pursued with integrity. Dreams must be built with boundaries. And passions need the steady hand of principles to guide them.
• When you live your life knowing the mission and calling and voice of God in your soul and you know where that compass is driving you forward, you will become a rare commodity in a world searching for direction. —ERWIN MCMANUS
• Every Christian has two callings in life: a spiritual one to salvation and also a vocational calling. Life is too short to miss either one. Your two callings are separate but inseparable. The first informs the way you’ll live out your second calling. The realization of what Christ has done for us produces a compulsion to live for Him. When we talk about one’s “calling,” we’re speaking about the vocational kind that answers this question: “I’ve decided to follow God, but how does He want me to use my gifts and passions?”
• Without knowledge of one’s calling, leading well is impossible.
• Our sense of calling should be like an unfolding epic adventure. —CHRISTINE CAINE
• God wants us to use our gifts and passions, and He’s placed them in plain sight.
• Create accountability in your leadership style and a system that will force you to make quick adjustments when you lose your way, and give team members permission to speak freely and challenge you.
• 1. What are your passions and gifts? At the intersection of these two elements, you’ll find your purpose in life. 2. What would you work on or want to do for free? That is usually a good sign of what God has designed you to do. 3. What energized you when you were a child? Does it still animate you? Knowing your calling is often directly connected to childhood passions and gifts. 4. If you could do anything and take a pay cut, what would that be? You may have to blow up your financial goals in order to pursue your true calling. 5. What barriers are preventing you from pursuing your true calling? Can you begin removing those? 6. If you aren’t engaging your gifts and talents where you find yourself now, could you make changes in your current role to better engage those? Don’t rule out the possibility that where you are is where you need to be.
• Being a catalyst leader means you are working to identify, understand, and pursue God’s unique call on your life with passion and patience. And once you locate that calling, guard it as a precious treasure.
• Be yourself. Authenticity trumps cool every time. —CRAIG GROESCHEL
• Chris Seay helps emcee Catalyst events and leads Ecclesia Church in Houston. He recently challenged our speakers and band members at Catalyst events to make sure they hung out in the lobby, prayed with attendees, and avoided spending all their time in the green room. He told us, “The more ladder rungs you climb within an organization, and the more power you have access to, the more chance of being inaccessible and protected. Once you climb a rung on the ladder, the harder it is for you to come down. It’s much harder to move down a notch on the ladder after going up. So be very careful how high you go on the untouchable ladder, because coming down hurts way more than going up.”
• Leaders who are willing to share honestly about their own struggles immediately gain influence.
• Practice self-awareness
• Question yourself
• Move from self-promotion to storytelling
• Resist the urge to create a digital alter ego
• Learn to laugh at yourself
• Build a support network
• Be interested over interesting
• God’s presence is all that matters. If we are connected to Him we will bear much fruit. Everything is dependent on Him. —FRANCIS CHAN
• I began to see my relationship with God less as an accessory to my life and more as a central part of my identity. My faith began to define the decisions I made, the way I treated others, and the type of leader I wanted to become.
• Being a change maker means realizing that commitment to God and passion for following Jesus cannot be compartmentalized.
• What are you truly passionate about? What are some things you can do for days without tiring?
• Your internal passion determines external reach. Your heart will shape the actions of your hands.
• We could easily focus more on the head and not the heart, but we choose to give time to both.
• Being a capable leader doesn’t mean being big. Or being expensive. It’s being excellent.
• We want our event notebooks, brochures, flyers, and curriculum to be done well. This doesn’t just mean ensuring a consistent design with a high-quality look and feel. We also want to make sure our materials have been properly edited and contain captivating material.
• Our high standards at Catalyst require both a high level of quality and a high level of action.
• No one ever said leadership is easy. Your job as a leader is to make the difficult decisions and carry more responsibility. Embrace it.
• If what you are doing is important, you will encounter resistance. If what you are doing isn’t important, it will be easy. —DONALD MILLER, AUTHOR
• Whatever you are, be a good one. —ABRAHAM LINCOLN
• One way to increase your organization’s capability is to reduce sideways energy.
• A single act of courage is often the tipping point for extraordinary change. —ANDY STANLEY
• “Live a courageous life that someone else would want to take notes on.”
• I think this generation, they more or less want to be defined by their love for Jesus Christ and, importantly, they are doing something. . . . Many are doubting that this generation can deliver us. I’ve got faith in this generation.
• Courage calls us to confront and push, even when everything inside of us beckons us away from it.
• Leading with character is the standard for every decision we make and the foundation for how we interact with one another and with our community of leaders. We will not compromise this.
• humble yourself enough to focus on others.
• The greater your position, the more at risk you are for compromising this principle. Power is one of the great corruptors of would-be leaders. It’s intoxicating. In his classic leadership book In the Name of Jesus, Henri Nouwen writes that the reason power is such a strong corrupter is “it seems easier to be God rather than to love God, easier to control people than to love people, easier to own life than to love life.” Remember that your character and integrity is built over time in the insignificant moments when you think no one is watching. Nurture a spirit of humility as you seek to lead and you’ll get results you previously thought impossible.
• Humble leaders are willing to pass on the credit but absorb the criticism, push others higher while making themselves lower, and put the desires of the team ahead of their own.
• Leaders lead from who they are on the inside. And that is why the God who made us is so eager to remake us on the inside. —GARY HAUGEN
• We plant sod where God wants to plant seed. He’s more interested in growing our character than having us look finished. —BOB GOFF
• I, too, struggle with land mines in my life. Achievement is my idol, and I often catch myself deriving worth from my accomplishments.
• If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader. —JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, SIXTH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
• While managers are tending the grass, leaders are peering over the hill.
• Refuse to do anything less than collaborate with people as you lead. Pull other people’s leadership into play. —NANCY ORTBERG
• The next best thing to being wise oneself is to live in a circle of those who are. —C. S. LEWIS
• “Technology is a tool. And it’s only great when it makes us more human. Being human means doing good things. [Twitter] should foster approachability and a better world, and help in doing good. Twitter at its best connects people instantly to the things that matter most.”