A community is only as strong as the strength of its leaders! Wednesday November 8, 20 leaders met on the campus of Colorado Christian University to participate in the first “Lakewood Leadership Lunch.” Lakewood Connects and Thrivent Financial partnered to create the event which merged faith, education, government, nonprofit and business leaders for the purpose of growing the leadership capital in the city of Lakewood.

The event featured presentation clips from the 2016 Willow Creek Leadership conference called, “Leadership Summit.” Our first clip was a 7 minute dose of challenge from Willow Creek senior pastor Bill Hybels. He challenged that the “passion level“ of the leader sets the passion pace of their organization. He reminded us that it is no one’s responsibility to fill the “passion bucket” of the leader, other than that leader. So…what am I doing to keep my passion bucket full?

The second presentation was by bestselling author and researcher Dr. Travis Bradberry. His book called; “Emotional Intelligence 2.0” challenges us to understand the difference between IQ, Personality and EQ, or “Emotional Intelligence.” Where IQ and Personality are set our emotional intelligence can grow, morph and improve thus directly impacting our success and leadership effectiveness. We can change for the better and this presentation and subsequent discussions sharpened our resolve and set the pathway for these steps in our lives.

Finally, we were taught by the world leadership equipping leader John C. Maxwell. Maxwell aimed us at “The One Thing to Get Right.” Leaders add value to people. This call was convicting and motivating and his stories perfectly illustrated how vital and important adding value is. Leaders change people for the better and that change is THE key for positively transforming our world.

Attending the event were leaders from the largest Chamber of Commerce organization in Jefferson, County, a former Lakewood mayor, a leader of a government supporting foundation, nonprofit organization leaders and many other kinds of leaders all working together to build up one another’s leadership strengths and confidence. Fact is many of these leaders would have disagreed strongly with one another about many specific topics…but in this venue they all grew closer to one another and closer to their highest leadership potential.

Lakewood Connects is working in many ways to connect leaders to leaders and leaders to the possible community initiatives that will never be realized until we work on these problems together!