Iain Hesketh

Learning skills to invest in others?

The Coaching Academy has seen leaders across Elim equipped, empowered and developed in their gifting. Having completed the training programme, Iain Hesketh reflects on how it has impacted his ministry.

I love the renewed emphasis on life-long learning within our Elim Movement! It seems like if you don’t invest in yourself in some way then you’re the anomaly.

I love the flexibility that our Movement gives to us in our pursuit of development and growth.

With so many quality conferences, courses and learning communities – not to mention the plethora of books, articles and video content available – there really is no reason not to keep learning.

While it’s good to learn from people beyond our Movement, the addition of Learning Academies means that today we have quality learning opportunities from within our Movement.

John Maxwell says that ‘leadership is influence’. And you’ll know that as a leader you hold a huge amount of influence in the lives of the people you lead.

The Coaching Academy is a brilliant way to learn valuable skills for investing in others, and equips participants with valuable skills to understand how to invest in others in such a way as to bring the very best out of them.

We can find ourselves acting as counsellors, spiritual directors, mentors and coaches to help people grow as disciples of Jesus. For all our leadership effort and influence, surely this has to be the end goal – helping people mature in Christlikeness!

We’re not simply leading people somewhere, but more importantly to someone.

The only way to stop ourselves from going stale is to be intentional in our learning. If we stop learning we will eventually lose the right to lead. This might not necessarily be in title but in function.

If you have not attended a training academy yet then The Coaching Academy would be a great place to start. I’ve benefited from the investment of time and resources and I’m sure you would too.

Wouldn’t it be awesome if as many of us as possible were equipped to bring out the best in our peers, whether in a formal way or not!

For leaders with responsibility for any minister in training, knowing how to draw out the very things that God has placed in them is a vital skill. As Bill Hybels says, “Everyone wins when a leader gets better.”

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