I used to head up a Christian volunteer organization where I directed about 20 different people. I had never had any experience in leading an organization, and I really had no idea what to do, so I enrolled in a leadership training course, and was I ever glad that I did.
The class only lasted two days, and it was not more than a couple of hours on both of those days, but I learned techniques on how to deal with different types of people, how to gain respect and loyalty from the people I was leading, and how to effectively balance assertiveness with flexibility.
One of the first things we were taught in the leadership training course was to never ask someone to do something that you would not be willing to do yourself. Consequently, when one of the aspects of the ministry I headed up was to do home visits, I volunteered to do the first one myself, and I immediately noticed the relief in the other members.
Another thing we learned was the people we were leading were looking to us to be confident and know what to do in different situations. This proved to be difficult for me, because we had never had this particular organization at our church, and to be honest, none of us really knew what we were doing.
I circumvented this issue by calling on the larger council that created our individual conference at our church when I encountered such situations, and quickly learned the ins and outs.
The leadership training course also taught us to listen to everybody in our organization, whether it was a business or something else, and make sure their voice was heard and respected. It also stressed the necessity of making sure that everybody had something to do, especially in volunteer organizations, and that everybody felt appreciated through positive reinforcement.
Because of what we learned in the leadership training course, I made it a point to thank everyone personally at the end of each meeting, to call attention to hard work by various volunteers, and to send letters of appreciation to everyone in our conference.
What I soon discovered was that I had earned a tremendous amount of loyalty from the members of the ministry. I remember once when our priest came into the conference room where we were holding our meeting and asked if we could do something for Christmas, every head in the room turned to me. That was quite gratifying.
I really enjoyed heading up that ministry, and I still keep in contact with all of the members to this day. I don't think I would have been nearly as effective a leader, however, if it had not been for that leadership training course I took and the valuable tools I learned along the way.