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GLS 2017 Day One – Bill Hybels Session Notes

This year, I’m attending The Global Leadership Summit from the satellite location at my home church in Avon, IN.  Once again, I’m sharing my notes from this excellent event here on my blog.  So, tune in for the next 2 days and catch the notes from each of the speakers.

It’s my hope that these notes will not only add value to you as a leader, but also give you some practical ideas to share the notes with your team.  Lastly, head over to my Facebook page to join in on the conversation and let’s share our favorite quotes and take-aways there!

The Global Leadership Summit is a two-day event telecast LIVE in HD from Willow’s campus near Chicago every August to hundreds of locations in North America. Throughout the fall, Summit events take place at an additional 675+ sites in 125 countries and 59 languages.

Founder and Senior Pastor, Willow Creek Community Church

Bill Hybels is senior pastor of Willow Creek Community Church, a church of more than 25,000 people across eight Chicago-area congregations. He founded The Global Leadership Summit with a commitment to develop and mentor leaders worldwide, now impacting 400,000+ leaders in 128+ countries. Hybels is the best-selling author of more than 20 books, including his video curriculum, Leading From Here to There: 5 Essential Skills.

  • 400,000 people attend the Global Leadership Summit now
  • We want to stretch your minds, grow your hearts, and invest in your leadership development
  • The stakes of leadership are sky high
  • Our troubled world is demanding a better brand of leadership
  • We believe that you are not here by accident
  • You have been prayed for
  • Armed with enough humility, leaders can learn from anyone
  • We hold sincere respect for those who choose to worship differently than we do or not at all
  • The Cubs win proves that there is a God
  • My leadership journey started when I was 10 because a teacher planted a seed
  • Almost everyone can describe when they first thought of themselves as a leader
  • Who do you owe the most for calling leadership out of you in your early years?
  • Who believed in you before anyone else?
  • Who told you “You can handle this.”?
  • We owe debts to those people
  • All leaders must plant leadership seeds in the lives of others that we see leadership talent in
  • Somebody believed in us more than we believed in ourselves
  • In the next 7 days, I challenge all of you to think about those who believed in you and encourage you to write them or call them and express your gratitude
  • Challenge #2 – Renew our covenant to take the extra 2 minutes to notice and encourage young leaders
  • We’re living in an era of racial, ethnic, and religious divides
  • We live in an era of disrespect for women
  • One must wonder where this increase in disrespect will take us
  • Incivility has far more than just soft costs involved in it
  • 25% of disrespected employees take it out on the customers
  • How do we lead in an era of runaway disrespect and divisiveness?
  • It starts with me
  • How I ask people under my influence to behave, matters
  • We do not get to choose who we respect
  • Leaders must change their position if new data comes their way…and apologize, if necessary
  • Leaders should have a written code of respect for their organization
  • Book recommendation – “Mastering Civility”
  • When was the last time you reflected about your convictions about respecting others?
  • I want to challenge ever leader to step up to this challenge – convene a meeting that starts a conversation that leads to a clearly written civility code
  • Succession planning starts with – Who?, When?, and How?
  • Who will choose the successor?   Who will make the final decision?
  • Getting to clarity on “When?” will drive the whole transition process
  • How will the process be led?  Will the Board lead or the leader?
  • Planning -> Internal Candidates -> External Candidates -> Transition
  • If the Board rushes the planning phase, it’s a termination plan, not a succession plan
  • Internal successors have a higher success rate than external candidates
  • Having a well thought through plan really, really, really helps
  • All the planning and prayer takes grit
  • We kept our succession planning bathed in prayer and tried to keep politics out of it
  • Our process has probably been too long
  • When a success process drags on too long, it takes a toll on the vision of the organization
  • We all underestimated the emotional toll this process would take on the senior leadership
  • We made one process mistake – things became disconnected from me, as the leader
  • Proverbs 11:14 is a focus scripture during succession planning
  • It’s almost impossible to transition an entire organization perfectly
  • Our God is so smart and so kind that he writes a customized future for each of us and invites us gently into it
  • We should trust God’s story writing abilities
  • I learned that God had a better story for me than I could have scripted for myself
  • God is an equal opportunity story writer
  • I haven’t done a good job of helping people understand when God is writing an ending to their current story
  • Might it be possible for some of you that God may be writing an ending to your current season?
  • Endings matter too – and they may matter way more than I’ve given them credit
  • Be open to God writing an ending to your current season and read Dr. Henry Cloud’s book – “Necessary Endings”
  • Leaders thrive on challenges
  • Spend 15 minutes every morning in a chair you love to sit in and read and reflect on your life and who you’re becoming
  • My deep concern for leaders is the absence of reflection time
  • 100% of leaders who have had a crash admit to having no reflection time in their lives
  • The world needs your leadership
  • Business leaders – make this year the year of a grander vision – the year that you not only improve your product, but also select a local humanitarian organization and support them in their endeavors to serve those around them
  • Does your company have a grander vision of any kind?  What are you waiting for?
  • Measure the health of your organizations culture and make changes to make it healthy
  • Everyone wins when the leader gets better
  • Develop a personal, year-round leadership development plan
  • Are you leading on the home front as well as you’re leading at work?