Have you ever found yourself in a leadership situation where you were leading a group to accomplish a task, but people were not completing their work in the way that you wanted, and it was driving you crazy?
Maybe you started to feel like you needed to do it all yourself because the mission was too important for things to be messed up. Can you relate?
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Maybe you’ve been in a situation where you look around at other leaders and they are hitting their goals and you start thinking, “why can’t I seem to get where they are? “why didn’t I get that promotion?”, or “how is her business growing faster than mine?”
It’s likely you have felt one or both of these things, and today’s guest Shannon Popkin is going to reveal to us two major challenges that can destroy or negatively impact our leadership: comparison and control. She is going to share with us what we can do to reverse these issues and respond differently to these challenges.
She also shares some unique perspectives on how inferiority and superiority can produce comparison and how these play out in our organizations. She brings some tough love to us around how we can deal with disagreements and different perspectives, which is super relevant in the time we are living right now. Shannon also shares with us the difference between uniformity and unity.
This episode is sponsored by Confident Conversations.Confident Conversations is a mini-course designed to help you initiate and lead hard conversations as a Christian woman… even if you struggle with confrontation, aren’t sure what to say, and want to avoid hurting people in the process. Find out more and grab this mini-course here: http://confidentconversations.co/
Key Points:
- Shannon’s life and leadership [4:30]
- Shannon’s Leadership journey [7:00]
- Some of the lessons she has learned on her journey [11:20]
- Shannon’s mentors and how they impacted her [14:40]
- When she she realized she had a message to share, and what it was [22:40]
- What made her want to talk about comparison [27:00]
- Her books Comparison Girl and Control girl, and which categories we fit into [31:40]
- How comparison can impact or destroy our leadership [37:15]
- Superiority, unity, and uniformity [47:20]
- Advice to a woman who wants to grow in her leadership [50:45]
- Leaders are learners [58:45]
Key Quotes:
“We can put a leader in a role, but the natural leader just rises to the surface.”
“Humility and leading as a servant has so much greater potential for the spiritual outcomes that we are hoping for.”
“When we compare we start retreating and pulling back instead of using all the beautiful gifts that God has given us.”
“The response to control is surrender, and the response to comparison is humility.”
“Greatness in the kingdom is all about humbling myself and emptying myself, serving, and lifting others up.”
“We cannot express disgust without also expressing a sense of superiority and condescending pride.”
“Just do the thing that God has put in front of you right here, right now, and do it with all God has given you.”
“Spiritual fruit grows different, it grows slower and longer, and we will not be able to see until heaven where the spiritual fruit has taken root.”
Connect with Shannon:
Bestselling author and speaker, Shannon Popkin is passionate about inviting women to open their Bibles, drink deeply of God’s story, and live like it’s true. Shannon’s books include Comparison Girl, Control Girl, and Influence and she’s been featured on FamilyLife Today, Revive Our Hearts, and Proverbs 31.
Shannon is from west Michigan and is happy to be sharing life with Ken, who makes her laugh every day. Together they have the joy of watching their three young-adult children become the amazing people God created them to be. They also love hanging out with their two adorable shih tzus, who (unlike the kids) have no plans of moving out.
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