Habitudes

Last Wednesday night, I kicked off one of our Classes at LifePoint we are offering called Habitudes. Habitudes is a 4 book study written by Tim Elmore who leads a great organization called Growing Leaders. Habitudes is one of my favorite leadership studies I have ever come across and continue to use it in my leadership and leadership teaching. Habitudes takes images from everyday life, connects a leadership and Biblical principle that begins to form attitudes, habits and language for personal and organizational leadership.

We kicked off week 1 by looking at “The Iceberg”. The Iceberg represents our leadership. The 10% above the water is your skill. The 90% below the water is your character. It’s what’s below the surface that sinks the ship.

Of course, the history lesson of the Titanic rises large as an example of this principle. The crew of the Titanic focused more on what they could see than what they could not see. As leaders, we often (and dangerously) focus on what others and we see instead of focusing on what we can’t see…our character. As leaders, the largest component of our life and leadership is our character. I love how Elmore describes our character as the sum total of our self-discipline, core values, sense of identity and emotional security. A great passage that connects to this principle is Luke 6:43-45. In this passage, Christ puts a priority of our “being over doing.” Some great Biblical characters the week 1 class pointed out are Jonah, David and Solomon.

I have already had great feedback already and I am excited about this fall and the Habitudes class. If you were there or are coming, I would love to hear about how you are living the Iceberg out in your circles of influence or this has been helpful to you. How can we continue to make this a great study for you?

If you are around LifePoint, please join our conversation on Wednesday nights. If you aren’t local, I would encourage you to pick-up a copy of Habitudes as a great study for your own leadership or with your team.