Characteristics of Leadership

Please Note

The original video includes a German Interpretation, but the transcript contains only the English

The characteristics of leadership. Now, because I used the word characteristic in my title, I decided to take that letter C, which is the first letter of characteristic. And I came up with a whole lot of other words that begin with a C. So, if you speak English, you will understand why I’ve chosen all these Cs.

If you speak German, forget what I just said, it doesn’t apply to you. If you really want to understand this message well, stop thinking like a German and think in English. It’s okay, we’ve got an interpreter to help you understand.

You’re just not going to appreciate the power of the Cs. You see, I’m going to preach today on the Cs of leadership. You’ll see as we go.

Okay, let’s start by looking at what is absolutely necessary, the essentials for leadership. Now, what I’m going to share today about leadership is not necessarily spiritual. In other words, the principles I’m going to share can apply to any leader, whether he’s a Christian or not.

Now, as we go through this whole seminar, we’ll be introducing the things that apply specifically to Christian leaders. But in this first section where we’re dealing with the foundational principles of leadership, we’re just speaking about leadership by itself. Again, I want to look at four important essential principles for leadership.

Sorry, make that five. See, I didn’t look at my notes properly. Okay, number one.

The first C in English. Every leader should have a call. See, now this word call is a problem word.

Because everybody has a different idea in their mind when we speak about a calling. And I found out that you German people have made it even more complicated by having more than one word for it. So I’m going to keep it simple today.

I’m going to help you understand the calling without thinking in technical terms. And for each of these five principles, I’m going to give you a picture. So when I finish preaching, and you think back on what I’ve preached about a week later, whereas normally you won’t remember a thing the preacher said, you will remember the pictures I’m going to give you today.

Now here’s a picture that you should understand. I want you to think of a telephone. You can choose any telephone you like.

Could be one of those old-fashioned ones with a dial. Or it could be a modern cell phone. So pick your picture.

And in your mind, I want you to see a picture of a telephone. Why did I pick a telephone? Because a telephone is a thing that you get a call on. And you pick it up and you say, hello.

And there it is. Somebody’s calling you. Hopefully it’s not your wife again.

Saying, why aren’t you home? Perhaps it’s the president. Giving you a personal call. But whoever it is that’s going to call you, it’s somebody important.

OK, here is what I mean by calling. It was not your idea. It was somebody else’s idea for you to be a leader.

One day you got this phone call. Hello, is that Les Cross? I would like you to be a leader. It was somebody else’s idea.

It was like an idea from someone else. Again, in a Christian context, usually it’s the Lord that makes the call. But it may have been another leader in the church.

And usually, even if the Lord has called you, that call will come through another person. Somebody saw the capability in you. Somebody who was already a leader made a decision.

And they decided to give you some of what they had. Now we’ve covered this already in some of the other messages that I’ve preached on leadership. I preached one that was called, who put you in charge? And we’re including that as part of the series.

So you can get the tape and watch it. I’m not going to explain this calling in much more detail then. All I want you to remember is that to become a leader, somebody else called you.

Somebody invited you. And offered you an opportunity to become a leader. Now you have only one responsibility concerning the call.

You are responsible to obey. You don’t have to sit down and come up with this idea by yourself. No great leader ever sat down and said, I don’t know what, I think I’ll become a leader.

Nobody was born a leader. Leadership always comes with a call. Don’t forget your telephone.

How did you hear the call to become a leader? If you haven’t heard that call yet. If somebody did not invite you to become a leader. Then you aren’t a leader.

You’re deceived. Let it go, give it up. Wait until you get that telephone call.

And from then starts your training as a leader. Now every person who’s ever succeeded in leadership has got that call. How that call came, you may not even remember.

So think about it. Why are you trying to be a leader? Who called you? You should know the answer to that question. And then you’ll succeed.

Okay, the second C. Is something that we call in English a core desire. What is a core? It’s something that runs right through the middle. So let me give you a picture to remember the call.

Do you like eating apples? It’s nice, you can put it in your mouth and just munch. And you munch and munch and munch until your teeth hit something. It’s something that’s running down the middle.

It’s the core. Now, unless you’re really hungry, you usually don’t eat the core. Okay, so here’s the picture I want you to keep in your mind.

This half-eaten apple. Great big bites out of it. It’s turning brown already from the air.

And there you can see these pups that are sitting there in the core. You got the picture? Core. What was the first picture? Telephone.

What’s the second picture? The core of an apple. You need a core desire. You see, if there’s no core, there’s no apple.

You might complain and say, you know, I wish the Lord made apples without a core. But I want to tell you something. If an apple doesn’t have a core, there’s no fruit either.

And if you have no core desire, you will never be a leader. You say, well, I don’t like all these complicated things. Why don’t we just make it simple? I just want to be a leader.

Just want to stand up and everybody think I’m great. I want to be able to tell everybody what to do. Well, you know, that’s a good start.

See, that’s your core. See, the reason you want to be a leader is because you want everybody to look up to you. It’s a pretty rotten core.

It’s got worms in it. But it’s a core. It’s a good start.

Now, what is your core desire? Why do you want to become a leader? You see, if you don’t have a core desire, you will never push through. The core contains the seeds. The seeds of your success are in the core.

The core is where your passion lies. That strong emotion that bubbles inside you. It makes you lie awake at night.

That makes you lose sleep. It makes you work hard. It makes you read lots of books.

Now, we’ll look at that later. You got to have something inside of you that is driving you. Something that will not rest.

A core desire. Every great leader that has ever lived has had that. If you don’t have a core desire, give it up.

You’re not a leader. You got no telephone. You got no apple.

You got nothing. You’re not a leader. Okay, so if you want to be a leader, get a cell phone.

Go buy some apples. Go and learn the principles. Okay, number three.

Another C. Every leader needs a cause. What’s a cause? A cause is something that everybody gets very excited about. Will always argue about.

Sometimes they’ll even get into a fight about it. Okay, now we need a picture for this. It’s very easy in English.

So, I’m going to try and explain it for you German folks that you can understand the picture. In English, we have an expression. We call it getting on your soapbox.

Now, I want you to see this picture. I want you to see an open place with a lot of people standing. And somebody walks there in front of everybody and he puts down a box.

A nice big wooden box, one that’s strong. And then he climbs on top of the box. And he stands there and he starts to speak to the people.

See, now this really happens. And this is where the soapbox came from. You see, people used to gather in a very specific public place.

I’m sure this may happen in different parts of the world, but there was a specific place where this started. And people were allowed to stand up in public and say what they think. Now, a lot of people would stand up and say, I think the government are stupid.

People would stand up and say, I think that women should take charge of the world. Every one of them had a cause. Somebody else would stand up and say, we need to save the sharks.

They’re killing people, but we still need to save them. They’ve got a cause. They’re going to give their lives to save the shark.

They wouldn’t just go swimming in the shark and let the shark eat them. I don’t know, they would do whatever they want and let the sharks eat them. But that’s their problem.

They have a reason to move. So if you believe something very strongly, if you have such a conviction that you want the whole world to hear it, then you take your soapbox and you climb on it. Can you see this picture? This is your third picture, the soapbox.

By the way, there’s a reason they called it a soapbox. Because those days they used to ship the soap in these big wooden boxes. And so a lot of these boxes around.

If you wanted something to stand on, just look around and find a soapbox. It didn’t cost you anything. Okay.

Do you have a soapbox? If you don’t have a soapbox, you will never be a leader. Every leader has got something that they feel very strongly about. Now, perhaps in the church, you’re fighting against the church system.

You believe that it’s time the church changes. I’m tired of these pastors standing up and making themselves into a little god. It’s time the people rise up.

Let’s throw the pastors out. Let’s give everybody a chance to lead. Well, that’s a cause, even if it’s stupid.

Because I’ll tell you what you really want to do. You don’t want to throw the pastor out. You want to take his place.

Because you’re jealous of him. Because you want the power and authority he’s got. But it’s a good starting place.

Be angry about something. It’s a good thing. The Bible didn’t say anger is sin.

We can be angry and still not sin. So get angry with the church system. Get angry with the things that are wrong.

And you may find that God tells you to go and fix it. Now, you may start out with the cause. And end up as a leader.

Perhaps you weren’t even thinking about being a leader. You just want to get up there and say what you think. And people start to agree with you.

The crowd responds with cheers. So who’s going to do this first? Well, you know what people are like. They all stand and agree with you.

And they’ll go to church on Sunday. And the pastor says, where were you last week? And the pastor says, where were you last week? And they say, I’m sorry, pastor. I won’t do it again.

Yeah, he’s born the pastor. So who’s going to start it? Let me tell you who’s going to start it. You’re going to start it.

Because nobody else is going to do it. Now, how are you going to start it? You’re going to have to become a leader. You need something that is driving you.

Every great leader had that drive, that passion. See, we got the telephone, need a call. We got the apple, you need a call desire.

We got the soapbox, you need a cause to fight for. Now you need a conviction. Well, conviction is one of those words that can have different meanings.

But usually the most common use of the word is where a person is tried in a court case. Somebody has committed a crime and they are brought on trial. And if they are found to be guilty, they are convicted of a crime.

Now, the reason I chose that picture, is because it’s a picture. You can all see it, can’t you? Some of you have been there. You’ll never forget this picture as long as you live.

You’re standing before the judge. And he says, I sentence you. If you haven’t been there, you’ve seen it in the movies.

If you’ve been through a divorce, you’ve seen some of it too. I want you to keep this picture in your mind. Okay, now what does it mean that when a person is convicted of a crime? It means that all doubt has been removed.

It has been proved that he did commit the crime. And so the word convict really means to be fully convinced. To really believe something without doubt.

Now, if you’re going to be a leader, when you are a leader, you must come to a place of really believing in those things that are driving you to become a leader. You see, let me get back to the soapbox. You’re going to stand up there and say, let’s get rid of the pastor.

You better believe that’s the truth. Otherwise, you’re never going to step out and do something about it. Now, I learned about conviction when I had a job that was selling.

Any of you who have ever had a job in sales will understand what I’m talking about. You need to have a conviction concerning the product that you are selling. You need to believe that your product is the best.

Otherwise, you won’t lead other people to buy it. See, this is the start of leadership. Selling is leadership.

You want to learn to become a leader? Go get a sales job. If you can’t lead people to buy your product, you’ll never lead people to do anything. You must believe in your product.

But you must also believe in your company. You should be bold enough to go and say, I work for the best company in the world. Now, they might be the best because they pay the highest salary.

And that’s okay. As long as you believe they’re the best. Otherwise, you’re never going to be convincing in selling.

You’re just doing it for the pay. You’re doing it so you don’t starve. You’ve got to have a conviction.

You know, I learned a long time ago when I was in selling that if I didn’t believe in what I was selling, nobody would buy it. And then, finally, you need to have a conviction. About yourself.

You need to believe in yourself. How can you have the courage to lead others if you wouldn’t even follow you? You must believe that you are the kind of person that people will follow. You must have the confidence to step out and expect people to follow you.

You need a conviction. About your product, about your company, and about yourself. You need a cell phone.

You need an apple. You need a soapbox. You need to go to court.

And finally, number five. You need courage. Well, courage.

What picture can we use for courage? I think the best picture is a soldier or a warrior. And so the picture I picked is a gladiator. You know, a gladiator has to be really brave.

Especially if you lived in the old times. Where if you went into a fight, you knew that somebody was going to die. And you want to make sure it wasn’t you.

Okay, can you picture the gladiator? Can you picture the gladiator? You see him with his sword and his armor or whatever he has. Choose a picture. In your mind.

Courage. Well, I shared about selling when I was in insurance. That is when I discovered how important courage is.

Because the first thing they taught me to do was to go knock on people’s doors. Good evening, my name is Les Crass. And I’m from ABC Insurance Company.

Door in your face. Oh, I tell you. Oh, I tell you.

Eventually you were afraid to knock on the next door. I hate you insurance salesmen. Go away and stop bothering me.

I’ve got enough insurance, thank you. Oh, those of you who’ve been in this business know what I’m talking about. You need courage.

You got to overcome the fear. Well, there are ways to overcome the fear. If you really believe in your product.

If you have a cause. You’re tired of seeing women whose husbands died and left them without any money. You’re tired of seeing children that are starving.

And the mother has to go out and work to provide for them. And burns in you. You have a cause.

See, now there were two kinds of insurance salesmen when I was in the business. There were those who went on a visit to try and make money. And there were those who went on a visit to try and meet a need.

When I started in the business, I began to speak to the leaders. The men who were making it in this business. And I remember one of them said to me.

He said it feels so good when I leave a home at night. And I know that if that man should die. His wife and children will be taken care of.

Ask somebody how I would overcome this fear. And he said to me, you need to believe in what you’re doing. He gave me a good picture, which I’ve never forgotten.

I’m going to give it to you. I remember what I used to do when I went out at night. You pull the car and you park it a few houses down.

You don’t want them to see you coming. And you come quietly to the door in case anybody notices. And then you knock on the door.

You know what this man said to me? He said, you know, when I visit a client at night, this is what I do. He said, I pull my car and face it at the house. He said, I put my lights on bright and shine in their window.

And I rev the engine so they can hear I’m here. And I slam the door so they can hear there’s a car. He said, now walk boldly to that door.

These people, I have something, I’ve got something that these people need. I’m not ashamed of it. I want them to have it.

Well, you know, this guy was doing pretty good. He was making a lot of money in insurance. But it wasn’t about the money.

He had a cause. He had courage. He had a core desire.

They had them all together. That’s what made him so successful. Now, there’s a lot of things in life that are very terrifying.

They say, top of the list. One of the things that most people fear more than death. Is standing in front of a group and speaking publicly.

Hey, don’t that make you feel good? All of you that come and stand up here and preach every Sunday. You’ve got courage. I hope you’ve also got some core desire.

I hope you have a cause. I hope you had a call. You’re becoming a leader.

Now, here’s the difficult part. Not just to stand up and say what you think. But to know that most of the people you’re speaking to.

Are going to disagree with what you say. Who’s our perfect example? The Lord Jesus. The very first public speech he ever made.

He stood up and said something nobody wanted to hear. And they’re trying to kill him. Jesus gave us a perfect example of being a leader, didn’t he? Okay, now let me ask you.

Do you have a telephone? Did somebody call you to become a leader? Do you have an apple with a core? Is there something burning inside you, a core desire? Do you have a softbox? Are you quick to jump up and tell everybody what you think? And fight for what you believe is right? Do you know what it’s like to be in court? To be convicted? To be convinced? Are you a gladiator? Ready to fight to the death? If you have these five qualities, then you’re a leader. Or certainly you’re about to become a leader. And actually, if you have them, you cannot help but become a leader.

It will take place automatically. You won’t even need to try and make any special efforts. There will be a force inside you that’s driving you into this place of leadership.

You got a clear picture? Five of them. Think about these all the time. A week from now, I want you to sit down and think, now, what were those five things again? And every time you have a problem in your leadership, every time it seems like you’re failing as a leader, or people are not following you, check your inventory.

Have you got these five things? Maybe you’ve let one of them slip. Get back and work on it. And your leadership will rise up again.

Okay, we continue with our C’s. And now we’re going to look at some of the essentials for improving your leadership. You’ve got these five things that make you a leader.

But you’re not the kind of leader you’d like to be. You want to be the best leader possible. Okay, here’s some of the things that you’re going to need.

Constantly learning. If you are a leader, you should be learning all the time. You should be collecting knowledge every single day of your life.

Because knowledge brings power. Knowledge brings authority. People will listen to somebody who knows more than them.

How are you going to collect this knowledge? Well, there’s different ways. Different people like to use different methods. Yeah, a lot of you like to read.

Many of you like to read. What are you reading? Are you reading something that gives you principles that you can use? So, you know, I like to curl up with a nice storybook. And escape into a fantasy world.

Where I can pretend everything is wonderful. Where I can pretend everything is wonderful. Who are you going to lead? You see, if you have a habit of doing this, you’re actually trying to escape responsibility.

You’re not trying to be a leader. Being a leader is stressful. And sometimes when we read these books, we want to escape the stress.

You won’t develop your leadership in this way. Unless. Unless as you read the story.

You look in the story for qualities of leadership. You find a person in that story who is a leader. You find a person in that story who is a leader.

And you watch him closely. You see what it is about him that makes people follow. What made him such a great leader? And how can you somehow copy what he did? Is it possible for you to become a leader also by doing the same things he did? Is it possible for you to become a leader also by doing the same things he did? When you read, you should always be gaining knowledge.

Even if you’re just reading a story. Every day. You should learn something new.

If I were to come to you at the end of the day. If I were to come to you at the end of the day. And ask you this question.

So what did you learn today that is new? What did you learn today that you didn’t know yesterday? Will you have an answer? It could take a while. Man, I learned so many new things today. It’s so exciting.

I can’t wait to try it out. Now if you’re that kind of person. I’ll guarantee that your leadership is growing.

I’ll guarantee that a few weeks from now you’ll be at a higher level of leadership. A few months from now more people will be following you. A few years from now you will be at far higher level of authority than you’ve ever been before.

In a few years you will be at a much higher level than you’ve ever been before. And people who knew you before, when they meet you they’ll say, what happened? You’ve changed. What did you do? You’re not the same person anymore.

You’re not anything like the person I knew. Are we just talking through years? Do you know that when the disciples went out after Jesus had left and they stood out there and preached the word with boldness people who knew them would shake their heads and they’d say, hang on, these guys are not so educated. They’d say, hang on, these guys are not so educated.

Hey, that was Peter, he was the fish, wasn’t he? Hey, he was married to my cousin. We grew up together. Now he’s standing up there, the great big apostle.

What happened? He spent three years learning. Every day Jesus taught them something new. You want to be a great leader? Learn something new every day.

Are you going to learn from reading? Then read lots of books. You can only read a book, it takes a long time to finish a book. Then you read too slow.

Or you’re reading wrong. You’re reading all the junk in the book that you don’t need. Learn to read properly.

Learn to read properly. But how do we do this? We’ve got a special lesson coming up, how to read a book. No, no, no, change that.

How to read lots of books. How to read fast. And remember what you read.

You say, well, it’s taking me too long to be a leader. You don’t read fast enough, that’s why. Now you can learn from movies too.

I’m not a book kind of person. I like to take out movies over the weekend. And fill my mind with junk.

That’s what a lot of people do. You know, the amazing thing is they remember all this junk. Yeah, I remember that movie that we saw in 1973, it was so great.

And you can describe it all to me and what happened. Isn’t that wonderful? What did you learn from it? What do you mean? What did you learn from it? Well, I didn’t watch it to learn. We wanted to chill out.

Relax and have a good time. I just watched it so that I could be entertained. You’ll never become a leader that way.

So what am I saying? If you want to be a leader, don’t watch movies. Not at all. If you like watching movies, then watch movies.

But learn. Learn from the movie. Now, here’s a challenge I’m going to give you.

And if you obey this challenge, you will never enjoy a movie again. Not in the same way. When you finish watching that movie and it says the end, switch it off.

Turn to the other people that have been there with you watching it. And ask this question. What did you learn? There may be silence the first time you try that.

I’ll tell you most of the time what you learned. You learned how to exercise bitterness. You learned how to develop sexual lust.

And you learned how to want lots of things. The three temporal values. And bitterness.

And lust. The three roots of the flesh. That’s what you learned.

So this is what you’re going to lead people into. I’m going to show you how to get revenge on people who hurt you. I’m going to show you how to seduce women.

I’m going to show you how to get rich and make a lot of money. That’s all you’re qualified to do. If that’s what you learned from the movie.

You say, but you know, these movies are not teaching movies. Sure they are. They taught you very well.

How to develop the roots of the flesh. They taught you really well. But you know, there’s other things there that you can learn.

And perhaps what you need to learn is what not to do. But if you’ll just think about it. At the end of the movie, sit back and think of what you’ve just seen.

And we make it easy in the beginning. Find one thing. One little thing.

That you learned in that movie. Either something you didn’t know before. Or now you know something better than you knew it before.

Or now you know something better than you knew it before. Now if you practice this every time you watch a movie. You’ll eventually come to the place where you will be thinking about it while you’re watching the movie.

Then you might come to the point where you think about why you’re even watching a movie. And instead of being caught up in the movie. Instead of seeing yourself as maybe one of the people in the movie.

You will learn to look at it from the outside. Now if you are with GMR when we watch a movie. You’ll hear things like this sometimes during the movie.

He has a real need for recognition. You can see it. She must have had a bad relationship with her mother.

He’s demonized. Why? Because we learn to see these things. I didn’t get a chance to get out and meet a lot of people.

I don’t know how people think. Watch the movie. You’ll see how they think.

You can learn so much about human nature just watching a movie. Hey, you can even learn to minister by watching a movie. I made a decision a long time ago.

That if I’m going to sit for an hour or two watching a movie. I don’t want that time to be wasted. My time is too important.

Now that doesn’t mean I can’t have fun. It doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy the movie. But while I’m having fun.

I’m becoming a better leader. Because I’m learning something new. And then the last way you can learn is from experience.

Every day something happens to you that you were not expecting. And most of the time it’s not nice. Life just doesn’t go the way we planned it.

Even when you do have a plan. Well, I planned to get up at 8 o’clock. And the alarm goes off at 10 and you sleep two hours longer than you planned.

That was not expected. You thought you were going to wake up early, but you didn’t. You had made a plan of what you were going to do with those two hours.

But now they’re gone. So what did you learn from this? Well, you can learn a lot of things. Number one, you should have got to bed earlier.

Yeah, you learned that it’s bad to go to bed a bit late. Well, then you’re unique because I’ve never learned that yet. You learned that you shouldn’t eat before going to sleep.

I haven’t learned that one yet either. You learned that you should have set the alarm for 8 o’clock, not for 10. Some of us have got an alarm so loud it could wake the dead.

And they would have slept for two hours while their alarm rang. So what did you learn from this? Perhaps you learned that it’s a waste of time making plans. Let the day just come how it wants.

We make our plans on the move. Yeah, you may have learned any of these things. As long as you learn something from it.

As long as you can get up, kick in the bed. Or dropping something and breaking it. Or having a fight with your husband or wife.

Why did you let me sleep until 10? You should have woken me. Oh, well, then they learned something, not you. Learn from the experiences of life.

Don’t just get bitter and twisted and say my life is a mess. I’m never going to do this right. You’re right.

You’ll never be a leader either. You might as well sleep until 12. Make a choice.

Choose to learn from the things that happen. Here’s another C that many people do not like. In fact, most people hate this one.

Unless they’re expressives. It’s the word change. Now, before you expressives get all excited.

And before you analyticals boast in the fact that you always do things the same. Or look at both sides. There is no place for resistance to change.

But neither should you change. Just for the fun of it. I’m bored with the way we’ve been doing it.

Let’s change it. If you have a winning formula, don’t change it. Have you ever seen how businesses change things? Sometimes when they shouldn’t.

I remember I grew up with a certain restaurant in the town. They made lovely cheeseburgers. You know, to this day I try and make burgers that are like their cheeseburgers.

They were always the same. And you know, I grew up and became much older. And we lived on the other end of town.

And one day we visited that restaurant. It hadn’t changed much at all. They still had the same way of parking.

And I ordered a cheeseburger. And you know what? It was exactly the way it always was. What a beautiful template.

You know, I used to travel all the way across town just to go buy the cheeseburger. You say, these people are really useless. Surely they should have changed something over the years.

They had a formula that worked. Don’t change it if it works. If it’s not broken, don’t fix it.

There are some things that should never change. The big supermarkets learned a principle a long time ago. They learned to take all the different branches and make them all look the same.

If you went to another town and went into that shop, it looked almost the same as the shop where you lived. You want the fruit and vegetables, you knew where to find them. You want toweling paper, you know which aisle it’s in.

We are creatures of habit. We like to do things the comfortable way, the way we’ve always done. Sometimes that’s bad.

But sometimes it’s good. So when I speak about change, I’m not saying that you should be changing all the time. We need to keep a balance.

Here in Mexico, they have a principle that works back to front. I don’t know where they got this idea from. They probably thought that if they leave the same thing in the same place in the shop, that people will walk past and not notice it anymore.

So every now and then they change the whole shop around. You walk into the shop expecting it to look the same. You leave the fruit to be on the left.

It’s there at the back on the right. You’ve got to search the whole shop to find it. Maybe it works for them, I don’t know.

For me, it makes me angry. I say bad things about them. I’m not perfect.

Neither are you. As a leader, however, you must be prepared to change. Because we live in changing times.

And what worked in leadership in the past may not work anymore. Here’s a typical example. I learned when I was in South Africa how South Africans think.

And I could lead them. And I came to Mexico. Maybe they’re not that intelligent, I don’t know.

They didn’t get it. I’ll do it a completely different way. Then I went to America.

And I found out that it was a foreign land. They just didn’t think like me. The principles that worked before didn’t work anymore.

They didn’t laugh at my jokes. And when I told a joke, they thought I was being serious. Well, eventually I found out how to make Americans laugh.

Before I could do that, I had to change. I found out that Americans have a different kind of English. Their grammar is different, their spelling is different.

Everything is different. You walk into a restaurant and say, can I have a glass of water, please? And they say, huh? A glass of water. Let’s just say water.

If you don’t say water, they don’t know what water is. It’s got to be water. So who’s wrong? You know, the Lord told me that since I was in their country, I was the one who was wrong.

So I had to change. I’m the one who must change. And as a leader, if you are going to lead people, there are times that you will have to change.

And then I had an even worse experience. I went to Switzerland. I was clever this time.

At least I thought I was. But they took me to Italy. I will not repeat this story.

I would just like to say that my leadership changed a lot. And it’s still changing. You want to be a leader? You must be able to change.

To relate to the people that you’re leading. Okay, we’re running out of time. I must get finished.

You must be able to collect new ideas. Keep your eyes open. Watch what people do.

You know, they don’t do things quite the same today as they did 10 years ago. When you get to my age, you don’t want people saying, well, he’s too old. He doesn’t understand us young people.

No, I can remember what it was like to be young. I was also foolish once. I tried to get out of it though.

Watch people, listen to them. Sit and think about it. Come up with some new ideas.

You know, I was a youth leader once. And I tried to run the youth meetings like church. Everybody was bored.

People stopped coming. So I started to get some new ideas. I tried something different every week.

Everybody got excited. They said, we love the youth meetings. And I kept it up for a while.

And then I got old. It’s not so easy to come up with new ideas all the time. And my leadership was not so good anymore.

If you want to keep right on the front edge as a leader, you must always be learning new ideas. So it kind of links with the change, doesn’t it? Discuss your ideas with other people. Sometimes somebody else can add to it.

And here’s an important one. Write them down. If you have to stand up before a group of people to lead them, you should have learned so many things.

You should have so many ideas waiting to be used. That you’re never stuck without anything. And then finally, make a chart.

That’s my last C. Chart. You see, we all think in pictures. We don’t think in words.

Have you ever tried writing out a little list of things that you need to do? And you stick it up there on your computer, like Manuel spoke about on Sunday. And you look at those words every day. Until eventually the paper becomes transparent.

There’s no writing on it anymore. Well, there is writing, you just don’t see it anymore. You see, we don’t remember words.

We remember pictures. So it’s no good making a list of your goals. Draw some pictures.

In fact, if you draw the picture yourself, you’ll never forget it. Every time you look at that picture and see how badly it was drawn, you’ll think, I really got to learn how to draw. But you’ll never forget what you’re trying to show.

Make yourself a chart. And that chart will be a picture of where you are going. Make a chart of where you came from.

But have something to remind you always. The responsibilities that you’re facing as a leader. About what you need to be a better leader.

And as you picture your goals and write them down, update the chart continually. Add the new pictures. Take out the ones that no longer apply.

Always know where you are and where you’re going. So, you want to be a leader? Do you have a telephone? Have you received a call? You got an apple core? Is there a core desire within you? Do you have a soapbox? Do you know what it’s like to go to court and be convicted? You got your sword? Are you ready to be a gladiator? I want you to think of these pictures and I want you to become those pictures. If you can succeed in all of that, then you have begun to become a leader.

Next time we’re going to learn a little bit more about specific kinds of leadership. And you’re going to get surprised. We’re going to teach you a few things you didn’t know.

Then at least you can apply one of these principles and you’ll learn something new every day. See you then.