Los Angeles’ Mosaic Church Senior Pastor Erwin McManus was a featured speaker at this year’s international Global Leadership Summit (GLS), and he inspired listeners and drove some to tears with his testimony about overcoming cancer. McManus encouraged GLS participants to be faithful and confident that they will succeed—regardless of challenges—because God is always on their side.

“Faith does not make life easier,” McManus said. “It makes you stronger.”

He further advised everyone to, “Live each day as if it’s the last day of your life.
“Faith is on the other side of your fear,” McManus said, and “your greatness is on the other side of your pain.”

Presented by the Willow Creek Association (WCA), August 8-9, the two-day faith-based summit is designed to help individuals improve their leadership skills, to impact their communities, by providing immediately actionable steps along with fresh and inspiring perspectives, from some of the world’s most accomplished business and faith leaders. The summit was simulcast live to more than 600 U.S.host sites and to more than 135 countries, from Willow’s campus near Chicago, in South Barrington, IL.

The WCA mission is to “Create world-class leadership development tools and services to energize Christians and mobilize churches globally.”

For the first time, the GLS was simulcast in the High Desert, in the city of Victorville.
Throughout the conference, more than two dozen extraordinary leaders shared personal stories of their failures and successes and how to recover from failure.

Speaker after speaker described what distinguishes leaders from others and how to succeed in business. Tantamount among qualities of good leaders is that they love people. Presenters said that to succeed as a leader, you must love people and make others feel appreciated as well as cared for.

Apple’s retail Senior Vice President Angela Ahrendts said that she starts each day with prayer, seeking God’s direction. She suggests leaders trust their intuition when making decisions.

Addressing another important subject, diversity, lecturers stressed the need to have diversity on boards of directors, and to respect and embrace everyone’s differences.
Speakers also highlighted the value of mistakes, saying that mistakes are great learning tools. Mistakes teach you what didn’t work; you have an opportunity to discover how to correct them, and you may discover better ways to operate or serve as a result.

This year’s other prominent GLS speakers included billionaire philanthropist, Econet Group Chairman Strive Masiyiwa who is credited with bringing cell phone technology to numerous African countries; best-selling author and The Potter’s House Pastor T.D. Jakes; best-selling author and Coach John C. Maxwell; WhiteSpace at Work CEO Juliet Funt; author and justice advocate Pastor Danielle Strickland;  Morgan Stanley Managing Director, Senior Client Advisor Carla Harris; entrepreneur and Best-Selling Author Rasmus Ankersen;  best-selling author and Cultural Intelligence Center President David Livermore, Ph.D.; Triad Consulting Group Founder Sheila Heen; social entrepreneur and Quali Health CEO Dr. Nthabiseng Legoete; optimist and New York Times Best-Selling Author Simon Sinek, and Life Church Senior Pastor Craig Groeschel.

Sage advice and quotable quotes from 2018 Global
Leadership Summit

• Ask God to send you the right people, and ask God to do for you what you can’t do for yourself.—Maxwell
• Your people must believe in you.—Masiyiwa
• Great leaders use their power to empower others. Jesus was the greatest leader.—Strickland
• Great leaders anticipate rather than react.—Groeschel
  Be a leader who people love to follow, and when the leader gets better, everyone gets better.—Groeschel
• There are two things that all leaders have in common: They see more than others see, and they see things before others see them.—Maxwell
• Dream so big that people around you will say, ‘that vision is above your ability and only God can do it.’—Maxwell
• If you have a vision that everyone buys into, you need a bigger vision.—Jakes
• Be honest, fearless, and always be your authentic self.—Harris
• Speak up even if you are the only one in the room with a particular thought or idea…For
• He did not give (us) a spirit of fear!—Harris
• When you see a problem, train yourself to think “opportunity.”—Groeschel
• Mistakes provide the greatest opportunity to grow and to learn.–Danny Meyer
• Most leaders could learn more from their mistakes if they weren’t so busy denying them.—Groeschel
• Create an environment where people want to contribute…where team members feel free to think and share out-of-the-box ideas.—Harris
• What if we saw each other the way God sees us? (She explained that God sees us as fallible yet still worthy of love.)—Heen
• Success turns luck into genius.—Ankersen
• Treat success with the same skepticism with which you treat failure.—Ankersen
• Analyze the “why” and “how” of successes and failures and don’t wait too long to correct mistakes.—Ankersen
• Cultural differences are important to note and understand.—Livermore
• Use a diverse group of leaders to discuss issues.—Heen
• To help with difficult conversations, discuss what each party thinks the problem is and how each has contributed to the problem.—Heen
• Be transparent and open to influence.—Heen
• Don’t forget why you started (your business).—Legoete
• Challenges don’t mean that the dream is not working.—Legoete
• Be relentless and unwavering pursuing where you are trying to go with your business; but not in how you go. Be flexible about how you get there. .—Legoete
• One place where people often falter is when we think that visions from God come without challenges. They don’t….Challenges some time help us move
  forward.—Legoete
• To assess your progress, ask yourself whether you are doing what you set out to do.—Legoete
• Never give up—Maxwell

For more information about the GLS, you may go to globalleadership.org.

About Sheryl Lynne Thomas-Perkins:
Over the past 35 years, my writings have been published in USA TODAY, The Los Angeles Times, The Victorville Daily Press, the L.A. Watts Times, the Atlanta Tribune, the Atlanta Daily World, and numerous other publications. I am a beloved wife and daughter, faithful friend, and co-caretaker of a feisty Miniature Pinscher.