How to Coach Your Champions Corporately, Step III: Meet Personally With Each Champion Before You Gather the Group

We’re providing step-by-step instructions here on how to move from an individually focused development function to a corporate process. Along the way you’ll notice that we weave together elements of individual and corporate interaction. In today’s third step, we encounter maybe the most crucial element in the individual coaching process:

After they’ve gone through the process of Searching Scripture and before entering the corporate coaching process, you’ll want to take time to meet with each champion individually to talk through the verses they identified, and how those verses helped them understand God’s performing of that cause/Work of Mercy on them.

This is a time of shared learning for both you and the champion–a comparing of notes. As they share the insights they’ve gleaned from Scripture, you can do the same and “spur one another on towards love and good deeds.”

If their work is incomplete, challenge them to finish it in time for the next group of champions to go through this process. Don’t let them proceed on to the next step of joining the group!  In order for this process to be successful, every champion who participates needs to demonstrate their own willingness to grow through the process, and to contribute to the growth of others through being prepared to share hard-won individual insights. Searching the Scriptures is not an easy thing to do, but it is necessary to ensure that champions are growing towards full maturity and committed to helping others grow as well. Don’t let champions short-cut their way into a group in an effort to “get to the good stuff.”

In our next post, we open the door to a major part of that “good stuff,” namely, the first gathering of your champions and the launch of the corporate coaching segment of the process.

Special thanks to .W’s Jesse Medina and Memphis Leadership Foundation’s Larry Lloyd for burning the midnight oil with me to make this mini-series possible!

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How to Coach Your Champions Corporately, Step II: Assign Your Group a Month of Scripture Study on the Cause

We’re working step-by-step through how to convert your individually-focused fundraising/development function into a corporate coaching process. Ready for the second step?

Give each of these 20 to 30 champions you identified in our previous post a month-long assignment to Search The Scripture in order to determine how God performs your ministry’s cause–or “Work of Mercy”–on them, as well as what explicit guidance he gives them on how to mirror this specific form of his mercy to the world.

In collaboration with Larry Lloyd and our pals from the Memphis Leadership Foundation we’ve drawn up an example for ABC Mission, a (fictitious…we hope) homeless shelter in Memphis, and how they might go about doing this with their champions.

Just click to download the Sample Scripture Search Worksheet.

Note that the worksheet contains answers written in from a particular champion (likely Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert given the font the champion used here…)

In the sample, pay particular attention to the questions that follow each of the verses on the worksheet.  It’s extremely important to give your champions clear guidance in how to study the Scripture in relation to your particular cause/Work of Mercy. This is not free-form Bible study. It’s prayerful study designed to help your champions grow in (1) receiving God’s mercy in a particular cause area, and (2) passing that specific mercy on to others as a way of glorifying God’s name and highlighting his generosity.

And for this reason, a worksheet can only be the beginning. Use the downloadable sample above to develop your own version, and then let’s talk in our next post about your role as a coach in guiding each of the participants through the process.

Special thanks to .W’s Jesse Medina and Memphis Leadership Foundation’s Larry Lloyd for lifting the barge and toting the bale with me to make this mini-series possible!

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How to Coach Your Champions Corporately, Step I: Gather a Group Interested in Personal Growth in the Cause

We’ve spent the past week of posts talking about the why of corporate coaching of champions. Now we’re going to walk step-by-step through how this process should look from your perspective as a nonprofit “platform.”

Today, let’s take the first step:

Identify a group of 20-30 champions who are interested in growing to full maturity in the cause.

This is literally as simple as working through your contact list (note that I didn’t say “donor list,” and it’s not just because I dislike the word; it’s because you need to consider drawing more widely than that–more on this below.)

Keep in mind that you shouldn’t be trying to persuade anybody to participate in this process.  If champions join this process grudgingly, neither you or them is going to experience much growth.  Some of your closest and most committed donors will decline your offer and you may be surprised to find that some of those who you might have considered to be marginal or disinterested will jump at the opportunity.

Be indiscriminate in your invitation and even go for unlikely targets – folks like the leader of a “competing” nonprofit (if you’re both involved in the same cause, it is to your benefit that they become mature, too), or a pastor of a local church who has never been involved with your organization, or even a non-Christian.

Alright–20 to 30. Got it? Take a day or two to prayerfully assemble your list (notepad by bed works well for me in this regard), and then let’s reconnoiter for the next post in order to consider the next step.

 

Special thanks to .W’s Jesse Medina and Memphis Leadership Foundation’s Larry Lloyd for spilling blood with me to make this mini-series possible!

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