By Owen Phelps, Ph.D. Director, Yeshua Institute Do you remember having a teacher who insisted that he or she never made a mistake? I did. I’m guessing she figured she owed it to the profession or for the sake of classroom control. Whatever her reasoning – if any -- she was wrong. Dead wrong. There are some mistakes you just can’t come back from. Yes, they’re the ones you don’t admit. I wonder if my teacher ever learned that. Like yesterday I remember the day like it was yesterday. She was writing on the blackboard and she misspelled a word. As she continued to write, we b...

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When leadership discussions drift to matters of “style,” we generally put on our skeptical spectacles and try to slip quietly out of the room. Our problem is that when you try to reduce effective leadership to a “style,” you’re usually drifting into matters peripheral and ephemeral – silly, superficial stuff that’s nothing more than a veneer trying to cover up inadequate, inferior character. Not so with the results of a study conducted by LearnLoft, a leadership development company which exists to turn managers into leaders. The company studied over 40,000 organizational lead...

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By Owen Phelps, Ph.D. Director, Yeshua Institute There is quite a bit to learn about becoiming a Jesus-like S3 Leader, but when we are asked to boil it down to key principles, the list below is the one we share. Since we first published it, we've gotten several requests to send it out hither and yon -- and outlining them here struck us as a good way to kick off a new year. 1. Leadership begins on the inside – For all the talk in popular culture about “personal charisma,” projecting an “aurora of leadership” and all the externals that allegedly embody good leadership, the fact is t...

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By Owen Phelps, Ph.D. Director, Yeshua Institute As I sat in a half-filled church on Christmas Day – on Christmas Day, mind you – I asked myself: Why? Why commit ourselves to excellence? My question was in the context of why anyone involved in Catholic ministry should make or renew a vow to excellence in the face of all the discouraging signs abounding. All the empty pews are discouraging – but even more so because they do not surprise me. I’ve been in a great many churches these past several months and nearly all of them had room for at least twice as many people as they held. T...

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