Gilbert’s Coaching Tips

I have known Lorna Johnson, Regional Team Leader, The Impact Movement, for many years. She sent me an email this week telling about their Impact Leadership Institutes. These institutes prepare students for their leadership responsibilities for the fall and give them an opportunity to plan their semester start up. Lorna has a passion to instill in others the confidence that they can make a difference for Christ. That really comes out in her email.

These last two weeks, we have had our leadership training and I wanted to let you see some of what we did with our students. We did five trainings this year and they went over extremely well again this year. This was a small taste and as we broke up into the various roles and responsibilities students gleaned from one another. At one point we had a representative from each role to stand up front. When each team gave a report of their plans, if they rolled over into another’s responsibility, they had to go and stand in front of the person with that outside role. It was great for the students to pick up on the crossing into an others’ role and not trusting their team mates.

Oh, this was also very enlightening for the Liaisons to begin to really understand their role in asking the right questions, giving direction in light of criteria set by the team for the first six weeks. It was good for the six week planning for the Fall.

By the way, the Liaison communicates with their Impact coach weekly, leads prayer, and facilitates and shepherds the servant team. Other roles on their servant team deal with Evangelism/Outreach, Follow-up, Discipleship and Conference & Events.

As Lorna painted a picture of what collaborative leadership looked like, she asked these questions:

• Does everyone on the team know the mission and vision of the Impact Movement?…And how your chapter will actively work in seeing this come to pass on your campus?
• Does everyone on the Servant Team have a clearly identified role? Are they all operating in their roles?
• Are all team members aware of and familiar with all of the Impact Movement’s resources: the Passage, the Grill, Notyourmamasreligion.com, The Journey?

As we think about setting up our own student leaders for next fall, we want to consider, both, how each leader can make a significant difference and how they need to work together in teams. That way we minimize overlapping in some responsibilities and ignoring others.