"An intelligent heart acquires knowledge, and the ear of the wise seeks knowledge."
Proverbs 18:15
Most of the book summaries listed below will help you grow in understanding yourself & others. They will give you knowledge and skills to lead well. 

However, even more foundational is understanding God and your heart. As leaders, we are the first followers. Our top priority is to follow the heart of God so that others can follow our example.  We don't want people to follow us, we want them to follow God.

So how do we lead? We lead by following God.

​We lead as the first followers.​

Developing as a leader:  

A step-by-step approach
This leadership development model will guide you in developing the core competencies you need for each stage of leadership. 
(Template below.)


1. IDENTIFY which Stage of leadership you need to develop.

The stages* of leadership:
  • Lead Yourself
  • Lead Others
  • Lead Organization

Each stage builds on the previous. Even if you already have the position of Lead Others or Lead Organization, evaluate if you should focus first on Lead Yourself. This stage builds the foundation for other stages of leadership. Developing how you lead yourself will always improve your leadership. . . no matter what stage you are at. Shortcomings in leading yourself will only be magnified by a leadership position. 

The stages also form a cycle of development. As you grow as a leader, you will return to the same stages and competencies but will apply them with far greater understanding and impact.
If possible, work with a coach, mentor, or fellow leader to help you identify the best place to start and when to focus on the next stage. 

*Some models divide stage three (Lead Organization) into multiple stages to fit specific roles. For simplicity I have kept it as one stage for this model. 
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2. ​IDENTIFY which Core Competency would be most helpful to develop.

Choose the competency that is most applicable to you right now. 

Lead Yourself:
  1. Model a Godly Life
  2. Good People Skills
  3. Emotional Intelligence
  4. Manage Your Time, Energy & Priorities
  5. Become a Lifelong Learner

Lead Others:
  1. Lead in a Godly Way
  2. Understanding your Leadership Roles
  3. Clarify your Team's Priorities & Direction
  4. Develop & Empower Others
  5. Good Team Building Skills
  6. Make Decisions

Lead Organization:
  1. Persevere in Godly Leadership
  2. Visionary Thinking
  3. Good Organization Building Skills & Collaboration
  4. Lead Change
  5. Think in Systems
  6. Conflict Management & Accountability
  7. Delegate
  8. Communicate Clearly & Timely


3. EVALUATE how you need to improve in this competency. 

  • BE: How do I need to grow or change in my attitudes, behavior or character?
  • KNOW: What knowledge do I need to learn?
  • DO: What skills do I need to learn & practice?


4. READ the book listed for the competency.
(Scroll down for list)

Some competencies list more than one book, the books are prioritized in order of importance. Read at least the first book for each competency. 

Many of these books are not Christian books, but read them through the lens of the Bible. They often teach us practical ways to fulfill the command to “love one another” and to lead with a "skillful hand".


5. WRITE the following after finishing the book.

  1. Summary: 1/2 - 1 page
  2. Learning: What new or deeper awareness do you have about yourself and your leadership?
  3. Action Steps: What next steps will you take to apply what you learned? (Can include change of attitude, thoughts, behavior or actions.)

​Writing what you learn and how you are going to apply it helps the learning stick. 


6. MEET with a coach, mentor, or fellow leader to Discuss what you are learning and to Develop a plan to apply your learning. 

This step is not essential, but it will greatly enhance your awareness, learning, and application. Ideally, meet 2-4 times as you work through each book. If you want to focus more time on a Core Competency before moving on to another; research other books, resources, or practical ways to grow in that competency. For example, I found it helpful to read some books on Body Language to improve my Emotional Intelligence. For more book ideas, you can see my full list of resources HERE.

Once you are ready to move to another competency, repeat the steps. 


Lead Yourself
Core Competencies 

1. Model a Godly Life

OVERFLOWING: Ministry And Missions That Flow From The Heart

by Kyle Farran
Do you long to be useful to God and hear, "Well done, good and faithful servant"? (Matthew 25:21)

Overflowing is born out of ten years meditating on this question: Why does God use some people more than others? In our zeal to be used by God, we have a tendency to rely on doing things for God. However, when God chose to use certain individuals in the Bible, it wasn't because of their effort or abilities. God was looking at their heart.
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God still searches hearts. You can become a person that is useful to God ― not because of great things you do, but because of a heart that pleases Him. When God finds a heart that is fully His, He fills it to overflowing.

READ MORE
Other Recommended Books:
  • Desiring God
  • The Pursuit of Holiness
  • The Pursuit of God

2. Good People Skills

How to Win Friends and Influence People

By Dale Carnegie
“How to Win Friends and Influence People” has been one of my most influential books. It has completely changed my life by helping me to better understand myself and others.

How? 
I read it through this lens: How can I better understand myself and others so I can “love my neighbor as myself”? As I understand myself and others better, I can then be better prepared to give others what they most desire.

This book is worth your time. “Most people go through college and learn to read Virgil and master the mysteries of calculus without ever discovering how their own minds function.”

You don’t know what you don’t know. This book helped me discover many things I didn’t know.

READ MORE

How to Talk to Anyone

By Leil Lowndes 
Some of us are not born with an innate ability to navigate social settings with the ease of a social butterfly. Thankfully, this book and others like them can serve as a guidebook on how to improve in this area and to make it more enjoyable. As with all books I read on understanding people, I read it with this lens: How does this help me understand myself and others better so that I can fulfill Jesus’ command to love others as myself? 

This book gives some very practical tips to do just that. You probably won’t use them all, but there are many helpful hints.

READ MORE

3. Emotional Intelligence

Emotional Intelligence 2.0

By Travis Bradberry
“Emotional intelligence is your ability to recognize and understand emotions in yourself and others, and your ability to use this awareness to manage your behavior and relationships.”

IQ vs. EQ
Contrary to popular believe, IQ is not the best predictor of how people perform in work or leadership. Rather, Emotional Intelligence (EQ) is “the single biggest predictor of performance in the workplace and the strongest driver of leadership and personal excellence.” 

Unlike IQ, which is essentially fixed from birth, EQ is not fixed. We can learn and grow in our Emotional Intelligence as we understand ourselves and others better. 

READ MORE

4. Manage Your Time, Energy & Priorities

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

By Stephen Covey
“The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” is a very helpful tool to identify the key habits we must develop in our lives. Busy does not equal effective. This book has helped thousands of people to focus their energy and time in the areas that will help them leave the impact on others and the world that they desire.

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First Things First

By Stephen Covey
This book was very helpful to me in learning to prioritize. It teaches you to make the distinction between what’s “pressing” and what’s actually important, and looks at techniques for quickly and regularly identifying those which are important. We all strive to do the things that are important to us, but we’re often distracted by things that are “pressing” – things that have to be done right now that aren’t necessarily a part of the central values of our life. 

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5. Become A Lifelong Learner

Love is the Killer App

By Tim Sanders
When I began my Masters degree in Organizational Leadership, I was grateful that this was the first book my professor had me read. It enabled me to be more effective in helping others. I love to help others by sharing solutions to problems they face. However, when done in the wrong way it is easy to unintentionally come across as a know-it-all. When this happens, it doesn’t actually help the other person because they aren’t listening to you. This book challenged me to a new way of gaining and sharing knowledge with others. This book shares a few very helpful tips on how to point people to the source of knowledge so they can discover it for themselves, this way you don't come across as a know-it-all. If you love to help others, this book is a great resource.

READ MORE
Lead Others
Core Competencies 

1. Lead in a Godly Way

Top Ten Leadership Commandments

by Hans Finzel
The Top Ten Leadership Commandments is an excellent book for self reflection in leadership. It isn’t a difficult book, but it challenges you to consider your heart and the direction you lead. I would highly recommend it to anyone in any form of leadership. Whether organizationally, church or ministry...there are many applications for life. 

This summary has the key ideas, a few important quotes that I return to regularly and some of my own personal applications.
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READ MORE
Other Recommended Books:
  • LEAD

2. Understanding your Leadership Roles

Lead, Develop, Care.

By Terry Cook
Lead, Develop, Care gives a leadership framework that clarifies your roles as a leader and gives helpful tools for each role.  

Without a model, we don’t know how or when to apply different leadership principles. We don’t have a way to prioritize. We are just randomly trying leadership puzzle pieces hoping it fits the situation. A leadership model helps us answer the question: “What should I do today?”

"This model provides a framework for leadership and doesn’t ask you to discard everything else you’ve learned about leading.” Rather, everything fits under these three responsibilities: Lead, Develop, Care.

​READ MORE

3. Clarify your Team's Priorities & Direction

Leading from the Sandbox

By T. J. Addington
Leading from the Sandbox helps you develop high-impact teams focused on results, not activity. To do this leaders must have maximum clarity on the 4 sides of the sandbox:

1. Mission (Our goal)
2. Guiding principals
3. Central ministry focus (What we must do each day)
4. Preferred culture

This book has helped me identify leadership areas where I need to improve. While this is not a focus of this book, as Christian leaders it is vital to remember that character trumps everything. Who we are is more important than what we do. If our character slips, so does our ability to lead.

Character is like the rails on a train track. All of the train's ability, speed and movement is meaningless if you derail.

READ MORE

4. Develop & Empower Others

The COACH Model

By Keith Webb
“The COACH Model” defines coaching as “listening to others, asking questions to deepen thinking, allowing others to find their own solutions, and doing it all in a way that makes people feel empowered and responsible enough to take action.”

As missionaries, our goal is empowering local believers to do the work of ministry...coaching gives this opportunity. 
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READ MORE

The IDEA Coaching Pathway

By Terry B. Walling
One of the key differences between “The IDEA Pathway” and other coaching models is the blend between Coaching and Mentoring. “Coaching pulls things out. Mentoring puts things in.” When coaching others, the discussion often comes to a point when you realize that you may have some insights or observations that would be helpful for this person to hear. “The IDEA model still affirms conventional coaching wisdom, which holds that most answers are already in the coachee and it’s the coach’s job to pull them out. But the IDEA model creates space for coaches to sensitively share what they sense God doing and to offer what has been entrusted to them when the time is right.” Many of the skills learned in "The COACH Model" are used in this model but with the added component of mentoring. 

I personally use the COACH Model, but when there is a need for mentoring, I use some of the methods from this book between the Awareness and Coarse stages of COACH.

As Christians, we want to help those we coach to overcome problems. But each person’s greater need is to be sensitive to the work that God is wanting to do inside of us. Therefore, the goal is to coach the person, not the problem.

The IDEA Pathway gives an excellent way to help others grow in their walk with Christ and to develop as a leader. 

READ MORE

5. Good Team Building Skills

The Advantage

By Patrick Lencioni
What makes a Successful organization? Organizational Health. Without health, you can have great intelligence but go nowhere. “People in a healthy organization, beginning with the leaders, learn from one another, identify critical issues, and recover quickly from mistakes. Without politics and confusion getting in their way, they cycle through problems and rally around solutions much faster than their dysfunctional and political rivals do. Moreover, they create environments in which employees do the same.” 

This book helps you identify and work on four disciplines that lead towards organizational & team health.​

READ MORE

6. Make Decisions

Decisive

By Chip Heath & Dan Heath
In life we are constantly facing decisions. In leadership you will face even more decisions and many will be larger in scale. If you do not have a process to make decisions, the sheer volume of decisions will cause decision fatigue, poor decisions or indecision. This book identifies the 4 “villains” of decision making so that we can be aware of the key areas we typically make mistakes. It then gives a simple process of decision making that addresses each of the “villains”.
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READ MORE

Blink

By Malcolm Gladwell
Do you ever have a “gut feeling” about something? Maybe a decision that just “feels” wrong, but you aren’t able to articulate the reasons why? We all have, and this book explains why. 

Sometimes, we need to analyze every angle and come up with a clear and well articulated reason for our decision. Other times, we may not know the reason why a decision “feels” wrong and we need give ourself the permission to make those decisions without being paralyzed by our fear of not being able to explain ourself. This book explains how our brain functions so that you can make those decisions with more certainty. ​

READ MORE
Lead Organization
Core Competencies 

1. Persevere in Godly Leadership

Leading on Empty

By Wayne Cordeiro
Ministry is draining. Thankfully, God promises to renew us and give us strength to minister. But, as the author Wayne Cordeiro reminds us: “We don’t forget that we are Christians. We forget that we are human, and that one oversight alone can debilitate the potential of our future.” We tend to push ourselves too hard for too long, not realizing that little by little our spiritual and physical tank is running dry. 
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READ MORE
Other Recommended Books:
  • Dangerous Calling
  • Replenish

2. Visionary Thinking

Start With Why

By Simon Sinek
Do you want to lead well in your ministry, team, church or organization? This book challenges you to answer the question that matters most to lead towards the things that matter most.

“There are leaders and there are those who lead. Leaders hold a position of power or influence. Those who lead inspire us.   Whether individuals or organizations, we follow those who lead not because we have to, but because we want to. We follow those who lead not for them, but for ourselves.  This is a book for those who want to inspire others.”
                
“Great leaders…are able to inspire people to act. Those who are able to inspire give people a sense of purpose or belonging that has little to do with any external incentive or benefit to be gained.” (pg. 6)​

READ MORE
Other Recommended Books:
  • The Leadership Challenge
  • Made to Stick

3. Good Organization Building Skills & Collaboration

Primal Leadership

By Goleman, Daniel; Boyatzis, Richard; McKee, Annie
We can all think of good leaders and bad leaders. There are leaders we would love to follow and those we would not love to follow. What characteristics set the good leaders apart?

"Primal Leadership" looks at the role that emotions play in leadership. Good leaders take people’s emotions into account because people’s first response to a change or a rollout is with emotions, not intellect. If it feels bad, people won’t truly engage intellectually to give it a fair chance. Good leaders take this into account and help those they lead work through both the emotional and intellectual process of change.

Great leaders “ignite our passion and inspire the best in us. When we try to explain why they are so effective, we speak of strategy, vision, or powerful ideas. But the reality is much more primal: Great leadership works through the emotions.”​ 

Just because something is the right decision doesn’t mean you can ignore people's emotions. You can do the right thing in the wrong way. The wrong way is ignoring or being ignorant of the emotional impact of your decision. This book helps leaders to consider the emotions of others as they lead.

READ MORE

Sticky Teams

By Larry Osborne
Leading teams is hard. Each person comes with their own ideas and priorities. What can help a team move together in unison? What are some pitfalls to avoid? The author wrote this book because of his conviction that “the health and long-term effectiveness of any ministry begins with the health and unity of its primary leadership teams”. The way he aims to do this is by shoring “up the foundation of a healthy team, because even the clearest vision, greatest innovations, and most stellar programs won’t make much of an eternal (or even short-term) difference if our ministry and leadership teams are mired in the deep weeds of disunity and conflicting agendas”. 

READ MORE
Other Recommended Books:
  • Collaboration Begins With You

4. Lead Change

Leading Change

By John P Kotter
Leading change is hard. People don’t want to change unless staying the same is harder or less desirable than change. So as leaders, our role is to help change become desirable, and to help others see that staying the same is going to be harder in the long run.

​Many great ideas never take flight because they are launched in stormy weather. If change is pushed too hard, organizational or team storms can brew very instantly. This book helps leaders learn how to test the weather and prepare to launch ideas and change that will take flight, not crash at the end of the runway.

READ MORE

Canoeing the Mountains

By Tod Bolsinger
Lewis & Clark’s plan was to find a water route to the Pacific. But as Lewis stood looking at “the most terrible mountains I ever beheld”, everything changed. “He was planning on exploring the new world by boat. He was a river explorer. They planned on rowing, and they thought the hardest part was behind them...They would have to change plans, give up expectations, even reframe their entire mission. What lay before them was nothing like what was behind them.”

​When we face mountains instead of rivers, we need to be willing to adapt and forge ahead. It is a true saying that “what got us here wouldn’t take us there.”

There were no experts, no maps, no “best practices” and no sure guides who could lead them safely and successfully. The true adventure—the real discovery—was just beginning.

READ MORE

Switch

By Chip & Dan Heath
Change requires that we act differently. But people act as they do because one or more of the following is true: 1. they think it is right, 2. they don’t want to change or 3. change is too difficult. In order to help people change we must determine which area to address.

Helping others change is more than simply telling them what to do. There are ways to help others overcome the obstacles to change. Understanding the key areas involved in all change will help us make change in our personal lives, help others make change, and help teams, organizations and churches to change. ​

READ MORE

5. Think in Systems

Essentialism

By Greg McKeown
We can learn to "make one-time decisions that make a thousand future decisions so we don’t exhaust ourselves asking the same questions again and again. The way of the Essentialist means living by design, not by default. Instead of making choices reactively, the Essentialist deliberately distinguishes the vital few from the trivial many, eliminates the nonessentials, and then removes obstacles so the essential things have clear, smooth passage. In other words, Essentialism is a disciplined, systematic approach for determining where our highest point of contribution lies, then making execution of those things almost effortless."

​Our life can either be going in 1,000 directions or in a few, but we can’t do both. For most people, they would like to accomplish more meaningful things, but they don't feel they have the time or energy. It doesn’t take more energy or time to go far in one direction, it takes clarity of focus and removing the nonessentials. This book helps you do both.

READ MORE
Other Recommended Books:
  • Principles: ​Life and Work

6. Conflict Management & Accountability

Crucial Accountability 

-By Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, Al Switzler, David Maxfield

No one likes to confront. That’s why problems go unresolved, growing like an unseen cancer. We all want to obey Matthew 18, yet many times we delay confronting because it isn’t a sin issue or because of fear and uncertainty about how to confront. 

This book gives practical steps to: 

     -Know when to hold people accountable
     -Know how to hold people accountable
     -Know how to make it easier to hold people accountable (by setting clear expectations)

​If you lead in any way, this book can strengthen your ministry & relationships. 
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READ MORE

The Oz Principal

By Roger Connors, Tom Smith & Craig Hickman
Many times individuals and organizations fail to change and grow because they are “trapped in the victim cycle. This kind of thinking is “Below the Line”, it will never improve itself because it blames all the failures on something outside itself. This attitude does not see the need for itself to change.” The only way to overcome this is by truly beginning to “take accountability for our actions and being willing to confess that we may not be doing everything we could be if we truly want something to succeed.” We should always be willing to have the humility to ask ourselves and those we work with ““What else can you do” to overcome this obstacle and achieve the desired result.”​

READ MORE
Other Recommended Books:
  • Crucial Conversations

7. Delegate

Strength-based Delegation

By various authors
When many people hear the word “delegation” they may think of dumping work on someone else. While it is true that some people treat delegation this way, it is not an effective way to view delegation.

​Delegation that people love is strength-based delegation. Delegating to people’s strengths is empowering and energizing to others, develops others, gets great work done, and allows you as a leader to focus on your personal areas of strength which keeps you energized. This is not a book, but is a short collection of helpful resources to help you empower others through delegation.
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READ MORE

StrengthsFinder 2.0

By Tom Rath
StrengthsFinder 2.0 is designed to help you identify your key strengths. However, it can also be used by leaders to look for the strengths in those we lead and empower them to use them. This is important because “people who do have the opportunity to focus on their strengths every day are six times as likely to be engaged in their jobs and more than three times as likely to report having an excellent quality of life in general.”

I personally devote equal time to developing strengths and overcoming weaknesses. By identifying your strengths, you will be more aware of opportunities to use those strengths so that you can lean into your gifting. 
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8. Communicate Clearly & Timely

Talk Like TED

By Carmine Gallo
To lead well, we must communicate our heart and vision with clarity. This books helps teach you how. 

“Ideas are the currency of the twenty-first century. Some people are exceptionally good at presenting their ideas…Ideas, effectively packaged ad delivered, can change the world.”

“Talk like Ted is for anyone who wants to speak with more confidence and authority. It’s for anyone who delivers presentations, sells products and services, or leads people who need to be inspired. If you have ideas worth sharing, the techniques in this book will help you craft and deliver those ideas far more persuasively than you’ve ever imagined.”

​READ MORE

Influencing Virtual Teams

By Hassan Osman
This short book of simple tactics will help you communicate more effectively in your digital communication. 
Copyright © 2023  Kyle & Heather Farran. All rights reserved.