Leadership lessons, connected with faith and wisdom.

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Podcast Season 3, Episode 5: Lessons on Leadership from the Little Things in Life (Learning From the Mess)

Life is full of examples that teach us lessons. That’s why stories and illustrations make learning so much more effective. When a story can be used to illustrate or demonstrate a valuable lesson, the story makes it much more understandable, relatable, and memorable. With that in mind, I want to take some time to do just that – share examples of circumstances and stories experienced in everyday life which illustrate leadership lessons that we can learn and apply. This is one of those examples, and it teaches us some things that we can learn from making messes.

Here is the link to the podcast.

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Lessons on Leadership from the Little Things in Life: Learning From the Mess

Life is full of examples that teach us lessons. That’s why stories and illustrations make learning so much more effective. When a story can be used to illustrate or demonstrate a valuable lesson, the story makes it much more understandable, relatable, and memorable. With that in mind, I want to take some time to do just that – share examples of circumstances and stories experienced in everyday life which illustrate leadership lessons that we can learn and apply. This is one of those examples, and it teaches us some things that we can learn from making messes.

When my granddaughter was a year and a half old, she would make messes everywhere. Specifically, she would dump all of her toys out on the floor. For example, she would point to the Duplo building blocks because she wanted to play with them, and when I would hand her the bag, she would immediately dump it upside down. Duplos everywhere! Then she would try to start putting them together to build something, and would get frustrated because they weren’t going together the way that she wanted them to, and then she would hand some to me, asking me to help put them together. I would let her struggle a little bit, and then I would step in and help build something for her, and she would get all excited. It wouldn’t take very long before she would lose interest in what she was playing with and would want to go play with something else, leaving behind a mess that needed to be cleaned up. But everything that she was doing with those toys was part of her learning and development. 

The same is true for all people, so I see in this illustration at least four things that are important for the growth and development of people around us. You may find more lessons that are valuable for you, but these four jump out to me pretty quickly.

  1. When people are learning something new, they will inevitably make messes. Yes, there will be things that you can do to mitigate how much of a mess is made, but just the fact that it is new, and that they have limited experience and knowledge about it (that’s what makes it new!), will result in messes being made as part of the learning process. Make it safe for those messes to happen.
  2. There will be struggle, and the struggle is also an important part of the learning process. It is in the struggle that they will gain experience, learn what works and what doesn’t work, build their strength, and learn valuable lessons, like perseverance.
  3. They will probably need help somewhere along the way. However, you have the power to make it safe for them to ask questions, ask for help, and learn from the experience. If you shut them down, or make them feel stupid or like a failure, or react with only negative consequences, they will not ask for help, and will likely not learn what you need them to learn.
  4. Finally, there will likely be some cleanup that you will have to do. That comes with making messes. Of course you want people to learn how to clean up their own messes, but because they are just learning, the mess can be overwhelming to them, and they need your help. So teach them what to do to clean up or make things right again, but also help them do it.

People are flawed, learning is a necessary and natural process, and messes will be made. The lessons we can learn for leadership from a little thing in life, like my granddaughter dumping toys all over the floor, are valuable for your leadership. Understand and accept that people will mess up when they are learning. Remember that struggle is necessary for growth. Make it safe for people to ask for help, and encourage them to do so. And be prepared to do some cleanup. Basic lessons from a simple experience, yet incredibly important!

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Podcast Season 3, Episode 4: Lessons on Leadership from the Little Things in Life (Eating an Elephant)

Life is full of examples that teach us lessons. That’s why stories and illustrations make learning so much more effective. When a story can be used to illustrate or demonstrate a valuable lesson, the story makes it much more understandable, relatable, and memorable. With that in mind, I want to take some time to do just that – share examples of circumstances and stories experienced in everyday life which illustrate leadership lessons that we can learn and apply. This is one of those examples, and it is a lesson that came from difficulty.

Here is the link to the podcast.

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Lessons on Leadership from the Little Things in Life: Eating an Elephant

Life is full of examples that teach us lessons. That’s why stories and illustrations make learning so much more effective. When a story can be used to illustrate or demonstrate a valuable lesson, the story makes it much more understandable, relatable, and memorable. With that in mind, I want to take some time to do just that – share examples of circumstances and stories experienced in everyday life which illustrate leadership lessons that we can learn and apply.

I said previously that learning happens all the time and that opportunities to learn are all around us. One of the implications of that is that those lessons come from both everyday experiences and from life’s challenges. Life is full of wonderful, normal, and difficult experiences and events, and all of them bring lessons from which we can learn. This is one of those lessons that came from difficulty.

My wife and I had lived in our home for almost 10 years, but this home was different than others that we had lived in because we believed it would be our last home. Over those 10 years, we had done a lot to make it our dream home. But then God changed the direction of our life, and we had to list our home for sale and move. Part of me resisted this change because I didn’t want to leave this home. Part of me struggled with the uncertainty that it brought because, although God had stretched my faith with experiences of uncertainty in the past, in our years in that home, I had grown complacent in my faith, so this experience caused me to struggle much more than the challenging experiences that had affected me in the past.

Because of those things, I began to struggle with feelings of anxiety and being overwhelmed. I had to pack up our home, but I kept putting it off. Of course, that only increased the anxiety, because it caused me to get further behind and have more to do, even as I was resisting. I had started moving some things out of the house and a storage unit, but I kept looking at what I still had left to do, and the time I had left to do it, and was finding it difficult to move forward. In that moment, I had to make a decision to force myself to act in spite of my feelings, and take the next step anyway. And then I had to keep doing that over and over again, one step at a time. In the end, after everything was packed and stored, and we were on to our next adventure, I could see God’s presence in the whole process, and knew that He was moving us for a purpose and was teaching me along the way.

So, what is the little lesson to learn from this life experience? Among other things, it is a reminder that when you are called to do something, it takes effort, self-discipline, and commitment to move forward with what you have to do, especially when you are battling against yourself. Like the old proverb that pointed out that the way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time, when you are faced with a task and your emotions and anxieties are making it difficult, you only need to do the next step. Then, keep doing the next step after that. What matters is that you keep going. It’s the idea of “facts over feelings,” of exercising the discipline of doing what you have to do even when you don’t feel like it. It’s taking responsibility for what needs to be done and doing it.

The leadership lesson from this little thing in life is simply to do the task you have to do even when you don’t feel like it. It’s a necessary part of your responsibility as a leader (and as an adult!), and eventually your feelings will follow (meaning, you will feel good about getting it done once it is over). Eat that elephant one bite at a time.

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Lessons on Leadership from the Little Things in Life: Learning Happens All the Time

Life is full of examples that teach us lessons. That’s why stories and illustrations make learning so much more effective. When a story can be used to illustrate or demonstrate a valuable lesson, the story makes it much more understandable, relatable, and memorable. With that in mind, I want to take some time to do just that – share examples of circumstances and stories experienced in everyday life which illustrate leadership lessons that we can learn and apply. This is one of those examples, and it reminds us that opportunities to learn are everywhere.

Sometimes the little lessons are right in front of us are but not necessarily always in something that we are doing or something that happens. Sometimes those lessons are simply in something we read or hear. One of those for me came from reading the Bible.

My wife and I are in the habit of reading a chapter in the Bible together every night. When we were in Deuteronomy and got to chapter 6, I read a passage that I was very familiar with, one that I had used often in an educational context. That passage was Deuteronomy chapter 6, verses 6 through 9, which says:

“And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”

In a classroom setting, and in the application of biblical truth to teaching and learning, I always used this passage to point out integration, modeling, and both formal and informal instruction as essential to good teaching. Integration is the idea that biblical truth ought to be woven into everything. Modeling is the idea that the application and content of learning should be lived out and demonstrated. Including both formal and informal instruction is the idea that teaching and learning is planned and structured, but also spontaneous and relevant.

However, as I was reading this passage with my wife, what struck me this time was a life application lesson. The lesson was this: you are always learning. Or, at least, opportunities to learn are always in front of you. It’s your choice whether or not you learn from them, but they are always there. It might be in something you’re reading (which often happens with me). It might be in something you’re listening to or watching. It might be someone who is a mentor or model for you, a public figure that you admire, or even someone who is being a bad example. It might be something that you were experiencing in your own life, whether big or small. But the opportunities to learn are always there.

When I was in college and did a summer sales experience, Zig Zigler led a workshop in one of the training activities, and I remember him saying, “20 years from now, you will be the same person you are today except for the people you meet and the books you read.“ The truth is, you will be changed as you walk through life and experiences, but you get to decide if that change is for your good or not. If you choose to learn from what you experience every day, you will grow throughout your life. So the lesson on leadership from a little thing in life that I learned by just reading a chapter in my Bible is the reminder that I always have the opportunity to learn and grow if I choose to see it and take it, because opportunities to learn happen all day long and are everywhere around you.

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Podcast Season 3, Episode 2: Lessons on Leadership from the Little Things in Life (First, Get the Whole Story)

Life is full of examples that teach us lessons. That’s why stories and illustrations make learning so much more effective. When a story can be used to illustrate or demonstrate a valuable lesson, the story makes it much more understandable, relatable, and memorable. With that in mind, I want to take some time to do just that – share examples of circumstances and stories experienced in everyday life which illustrate leadership lessons that we can learn and apply. This is one of those examples, and it reminds us of the importance of getting the whole story.

Here is the link to the podcast.

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Lessons on Leadership from the Little Things in Life: First, Get the Whole Story

Life is full of examples that teach us lessons. That’s why stories and illustrations make learning so much more effective. When a story can be used to illustrate or demonstrate a valuable lesson, the story makes it much more understandable, relatable, and memorable. With that in mind, I want to take some time to do just that – share examples of circumstances and stories experienced in everyday life which illustrate leadership lessons that we can learn and apply. This is one of those stories.

It was a normal day and I was driving in normal traffic. The light turned red up ahead, so I stopped and was waiting at the stoplight behind a long line of cars. There wasn’t any kind of urgency on my part, and I wasn’t trying to get somewhere by a particular time, but when the light turned green and nobody seemed to be going, I started to get a little frustrated. I started having those thoughts in my head like, “Oh come on, why isn’t anyone going, get moving people!“ But then I saw and heard an emergency vehicle approaching the intersection, one that I had not been able to see and hear from where I was in the line of cars. There was a reason why no one was moving, but because of my vantage point, I was not initially aware of that reason, and I allowed it to affect my attitude and my response. Immediately, I realized that the lack of movement was justified, and the problem was simply that I did not have all the information.

The next thing that came to my mind was the recognition that this was a tremendous example for life and leadership. God always has a plan and a purpose, but we don’t always see what he is doing, nor do we see the end intended down the road. We can be quick to react and jump to conclusions without knowing the whole story, and when that happens, it can affect our mood and our behavior, and can cause damage or lead to poor decision-making.

It made me think of Proverbs 18:13, which says, “He who answers the matter before he hears it, it is folly and shame to him.” I first wrote this verse down to keep on my desk when I was doing marriage and family counseling years ago, as a reminder to listen to both sides of the story and to try to get the whole picture before preparing a plan. Then I used the same verse for years in my roles in education with student issues, parent issues, and employee issues, again to remind me to try to hear the whole story before jumping to conclusions and making a decision. I have been guilty of responding too quickly before I knew the information that I needed to know, and it has never gone well. Just like sitting at that traffic light, jumping to a conclusion in my own mind about what was happening before I knew all the information caused me to have the wrong conclusion, which in turn affected my response and behavior.

So, the lesson on leadership that was illustrated in this little life event is the importance of pausing to get the whole story before jumping to a conclusion. First, find out what happened (and if it involves people, be sure to hear all sides) and then determine what your next steps need to be. And always be humble enough to allow for the fact that God may be doing something for a reason, and He just wants you to trust Him without getting ahead of His plan. The lesson on leadership from this little thing in life? First, get the whole story.

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Podcast Season 3, Episode 1: Lessons on Leadership from the Little Things in Life (An Introduction)

Life is full of examples that teach us lessons. That’s why stories and illustrations make learning so much more effective. When a story can be used to illustrate or demonstrate a valuable lesson, the story makes it much more understandable, relatable, and memorable. With that in mind, I want to take some time to do just that – share examples of circumstances and stories experienced in everyday life which illustrate leadership lessons that we can learn and apply. Today we begin with this introduction to the series.

Here is the link to the podcast.

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Lessons on Leadership from the Little Things in Life: Introduction

Life is full of examples that teach us lessons. That’s why stories and illustrations make learning so much more effective. When a story can be used to illustrate or demonstrate a valuable lesson, the story makes it much more understandable, relatable, and memorable. With that in mind, I want to take some time to do just that – share examples of circumstances and stories experienced in everyday life which illustrate leadership lessons that we can learn and apply.

The idea behind this came when I was sitting in my car at a stoplight in traffic, and something happened that initially caused me a little frustration. But then I realized in the moment that there was a lesson I could learn that was being illustrated by the circumstances. That prompted further realization that this was not the first time that had happened, that I had learned a lesson about something from the example of a circumstance I was experiencing. It may have been a lesson about life, or parenting, or relationships, or leadership, but regardless, it was a valuable lesson being illustrated.

If you believe, as I do, that all things are created with design and purpose by God, which implies intentional interactions and relationship between things, it should come as no surprise that we can learn lessons from the examples of those interactions and circumstances. The reason I can say that is because our universe is created with design, and is not random. That design means that there are processes and patterns that are consistent and knowable, and that are representative of similar patterns, processes, and ideas in other circumstances. God himself demonstrates this frequently in the Bible, when he uses examples of stories from characters to teach a lesson, or even uses examples from creation to teach a lesson. For example, Jesus frequently referenced Old Testament stories and passages when he was teaching a lesson, and used living creatures (like the sparrow) and plants (like flowers or a fig tree) to illustrate something important.

In a similar way, this series will be about using examples of experiences and circumstances to identify a comparable lesson that can be used in life and in leadership. I hope you can learn from these examples, but more than that, I hope that you can begin to see examples of lessons in your own life circumstances and events. Because there are lots of lessons that we can learn from the little things in life.

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Year 2 in Review

A little less than two years ago, I embarked on a new (and scary) journey. For the needs of my family, I had stepped away from 30 years of ministry in Christian education, with 24 of those years as a principal or superintendent/head of school. I wasn’t retiring, but my personal family circumstances necessitated making a change so that I could be at home every day. So, I stepped down from my position at the place where I had served for 8 years as the Head of School to start a new journey using my experience and abilities to serve God and develop people. And that led first to this venture at www.LeadershipEzra.com. At the same time, God was gracious in providing work to teach an online graduate course on leadership and an undergraduate online course on education, and to mentor doctoral students in their dissertation and research project work. What made all of this scary was that I was starting something completely new in my life, while still needing to provide for my family, with no idea of what the outcome would be. Along the way in the process, I accumulated what I began to call “Joshua Stones,” those unique and specific events that were clear evidence of God at work that would stack up to be my memorial marker to remind me of God’s divine presence and leading in my steps. In the end, where God primarily directed and placed me was in working for two different universities, one with a focus of responsibility on education and the other on organizational leadership.

My desire with the website, though, was that God would use Leadership Ezra in a much greater way to grow others in their leadership. The initial idea for this had come about out of a lot of prayer, and in that process, what the Lord had made clear to me was that I needed to connect faith, wisdom, and leadership in a way that would help other followers of Jesus grow in their leadership and make an impact. That original dream of an idea turned into three things: the self-publication of a book on Amazon (Leadership Ezra), the creation of the Leadership Ezra website, and the initiation of a corresponding podcast, streaming on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. The overarching theme became “Faith. Wisdom. Leadership.: Connecting biblical truth with wisdom for leadership.” As an added bonus, I included a weekly feature on the website called “Quote Your Dad,” where I simply shared wisdom-filled quotes that I would often hear from my dad.

In year two of both the website and the podcast, I shared three series. The first was called “Who’s in Charge Here?” and it was a review of the ideas I covered in my book, Leadership Ezra. Over 15 episodes I talked about the big idea of the book, and then the main idea of each chapter. The second series was called “The Five Be-Attitudes of Better Leadership.” In this 22-part series, I talked about five groups of attributes that are essential to good leadership, and these groups were: Be Genuine, Be Relational, Be Trustworthy, Be Knowledgeable, and Be Excellent. The third and final series of the year (and one that I may continue in the future) was called “The Character of Leadership.” This series was focused on identifying a character trait representative of a biblical character, and learning from it.

So now, I am heading into year three. As always, what’s in store for the next year is in God’s hands, but my current plan is for a year-long series called “Lessons on Leadership from the Little Things in Life,” where I will be sharing a typical, everyday experience or life event, and connecting it to a leadership lesson. Beyond that, what I would hope for is that God would bless this work and put it in front of more people who would benefit from what He has given me to share. So, if you have read the book, followed the website, or listened to the podcast, and have found any of those to be good for your leadership, would you tell at least three other people? With your help, I believe that God can use these resources to better equip leaders who will make an impact for His Kingdom.

Thank you for following and listening! On to the next year!

God Bless,

Jeff McMaster

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