Live Blog: 2015 Leadership Summit – 56 Leadership Quotes From Bill Hybels Opening Session

In an effort to add value to pastors and church leaders, INJOY Stewardship Solutions has dispatched me to attend the Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit.  During the next three days, I will be bringing the top leadership lessons from the incredible faculty the WCA has assembled.

As a special gift to everyone reading these posts, INJOY Stewardship is offering a complimentary downloadable Ebook Discipling Financial Leaders.  Click Here to Download this Free Resource! 

As is customary, the Summit opened with the incomparable senior pastor of Willow Creek Community Church Bill Hybels.  Bill spoke on the topic The Intangibles Of Leadership.

The following are 56 Leadership Lessons And Quotes From Bill Hybels incredible Opening Session from the Global Leadership Summit:

1. We define leadership as moving people from here to there.
2. Leadership is not about presiding over something, protecting a position or pontificating about how smart you are.
3. Leadership is all about movement.
4. 10% of you are thinking about quitting whatever you are leading right now.
5. The highest value at the Leadership Summit is humility.
6. Armed with enough humility can learn from anyone.
7. Leaders at the highest levels of effective have more subtle, advanced leadership traits than their peers.
8. One of the greatest predictors of success is grit.
9. Grit is the passion and Perseverance over the long haul.
10. Gritty people play hurt.
11. Gritty people don’t quit, ever.
12. Gritty people believe they can overcome whatever obstacle stands in their way.
13. Those will ample amounts of it will achieve more than those without it regardless of intellect.
14. The archenemy of grit is ease.
15. Grit development demands difficulty.
16. Grit grows every time you prove to yourself you can overcome an obstacle.
17. You must assign yourself very difficult tasks and will yourself to achieving them.
18. Elite leaders have learned overcoming physical challenges is developing grit.
19. Don’t just deliver the required result. Over-deliver and over-deliver every time.
20. When senior leadership demonstrates grittiness…teammates and volunteers notice and develop an appetite for grit themselves.
21. Gritty organizations are unstoppable.
22. When you read about a huge mess in an organization, you can bet a lot of it is driven by low self-awareness.
23. The definition of a blind spot is something someone thinks they do well but everyone knows is unture.
24. Every leader has 3.4 blind spots.
25. The danger with blind spots is you really have no idea they exist.
26. Your direct supervisor has the best insight into your blind spots.
27. Self-awareness is a very big deal. Knowing how your past is messing with the decisions you are making today is crucial information.
28. Growing in self-awareness demands feedback from others. Honest feedback.
29. Everybody will win when you grow in self-awareness.
30. Resourceful people are quick learners. They are endlessly curious about how things work.
31. Organizations that grow resourcefulness among their senior leadership teams grow 25% more than their competitors.
32. The Wright brothers studied birds for years.
33. Resourceful people figure it out.
34. So much of your success in coming years is dependent on your resourcefulness.
35. The primary way to discover resourcefulness is to put yourself in positions that are confusing and being forced to figure it out.
36. Self-sacrificing love is at the very core of leadership.
37. Vision is not the core of the core of leadership.
38. Self-sacrificing love always has been and always will be at the very core of leadership.
39. Love never leaves a heart the way it found it. Love changes people.
40. Love melts people and molds people into tightly nit communities that feel more like families than work groups.
41. We live in a day of celebrity leaders with narcissistic blood flowing through their veins.
42. At the root of all of this is an absent of self-sacrificing love.
43. Everyone takes their cues from the senior leader.
44. Do workers feel personal concern coming from their managers?
45. Love never fails. Love changes the order of things.
46. Don’t hesitate a single moment in showing genuine concern and love to your teammates.
47. The quality of your loving will set the tone for the whole organization.
48. There’s the What. The How. The Why.
49. Almost all leaders know The What. Everyone knows The How.
50. The huge disconnect is The Why.
51. Leaders in tomorrow’s world will have to build the case for The Why in everyone’s job.
52. What moves you and drives you as a leader to get better and better every year?
53. If God’s perfect, you have a gap. God sees your gap.
54. My white-hot Why is never going to be money. My white-hot Why is going to be changed lives.
55. Leadership matters in every industry.
56. It matters in life and it certainly matters in death.

Bonus: Bill gave 8 characteristics of Global Leadership Summit leaders.

1. Leaders of Vision
2. Leaders of Passion
3. Leaders of Love
4. Leaders Committed To Ongoing Growth
5. Leaders Who Can Handle Complexity
6. Leaders From Every Segment Of Society
7. Leaders Who Embrace Diversity
8. Leaders For The Long Haul

Up next is Jim Collins.  And if you have not already, don’t forget to click the image below for your free resource from INJOY Stewardship Solutions.