How big is the wake behind your "boat?" Do you cut through the waters of life without leaving a mark, or do the waves of your wake reverberate in people long after you are gone? The 5 "C's" of Leadership Capacity are qualities that translate into the breadth and depth of a leader's influence: aka. the wake behind "your boat."

Character-deep leaders understand the relationship between character and competency. While character may be the key to influence, they have also learned to rely on their competencies much like a master-mechanic relies on tools.

There are five consistent attributes critical to a leader’s life-long development. The extent to which a man or woman has cultivated all five is the measure by which they will find the influence of their life growing exponentially.

What were your books of the year? My runner's up for book of the year honors are: Tribes by Seth Godin; and Emotionally Healthy Spirituality by Pete Scazzero.

At the end of the day we thought our Christian life would be more than this—-somehow larger, more significant, more vivid, more glorious. But driving to church on Sunday often feels a bit like the movie, Ground Hog Day,

Gandalf…Dumbledore…Yoda… fictional icons of wisdom and in the minds of many the epitome of the perfect mentors. The only thing is, they aren’t real. They are part of the fiction that actually inhibits mentoring.

I have a theory: courage is the sinew that connects our thinking to our behavior. It's not good intentions that get things done, it is courage. We can talk the right talk, we can understand key ideas, and we can have all manner of good ideas, but without courage we won't act on them.

In a culture where habitual drivenness is the water we swim in, there is an invisible pull to say yes to more. However, impact is directly related to focus and focus is about doing fewer things not more. Impact is not the result of doing a lot more.