It's Tuesday at 2:00pm! (PST Time: I live and work from Southern California)
I just spent a few days in Quito, Ecuador this weekend, participating in a project we're running called "The Lean Start Enterpreneur Project". We (Extreme Response) brought together some strategic partners (Hope Ventures & Pan de Vida) along with our Quito Program Staff to sponsor the first half of this Entrepreneur Project. The goal of the project is to help to break the generational cycle of poverty for a group of about 35 women by providing them training and support to launch their own businesses, creating ongoing income and helping them to change their lives. It's a great project!
This weekend we launched this project, but we didn't invite any of these women to attend. This might seem backwards, but this weekend was about training mentors to coach these women. You see, in January, these women will come to learn how to launch their own businesses, but it's not enough to simply provide them training. We need to provide the mentoring and coaching as well, otherwise many of these women will fail.
This past weekend, we assembled a group of 23 men and women, many of them business professionals and organizational leaders. This group was taught "how to coach", and they they had the opportunity to be trained in the material that the women will be trained with in January.
The success rate of this program will increase greatly because of the investment of time, resources and training into these mentors. These trained mentors will then walk closely with these women to help them create sustainable business models to break that cycle of poverty.
I'll let you know more about this project as we approach the January event. We hope to multiply this model of training in other countries as well because it works.
Here's the challenge for you today:
If you had an opportunity to teach a group of people around a given topic, would you do that, or would you choose to invest into a smaller group of leaders, teaching them how to teach others?
Many times, if you're like me, you choose to do the teaching. You like the stage. You like the feedback from the participants and you enjoy the energy from being directly involved in helping people to grow in their knowledge and experience.
What I have learned is that you more powerful investment is into the lives of others that can then teach and train others.
I want to spend a couple of weeks talking about this. It's the theme of coaching, multiplication, leverage and growth.
I would enjoy hearing from some of you your personal experiences around this.
* How have you been challenged in the area of "equipping others" verses "doing it yourself"?
* What have been some lessons you've learned from this?
* What have been the results from learning this?
Share your thoughts and let's learn from each other.
"Pass on what you heard from me - the whole congregation saying Amen! - to reliable leaders who are competent to teach others." 2 Timothy 2:2 (Message)
"A coach is someone who tells you what you don't want to hear, who has you see what you don't want to see, so you can be who you have always known you could be." Tom Landry
"A life coach does for the rest of your life what a personal trainer does for your health and fitness."
Elaine MacDonald
"I absolutely believe that people, unless coached, never reach their maximum capabilities." Bob Nardelli
