What’s your plan for your life?

Are you aware of how much influence you have?

Do you have a plan to develop your influence? To use it well?

Someone has observed that no one ever drifts to a higher level. Drift is always “south.”

Moving to a higher level requires careful, intentional planning and effort. So, what’s your plan to get better at how you use your influence?

You might not think you have much influence or that the little bit of influence you have doesn’t matter.

I couldn’t disagree more. Perhaps the most influential people in the world are parents.

School teachers are a close second. Coaches, counsellors, nurses, foremen, mechanics, financial planners, realtors all have enormous influence.

Everyone has influence and how you use yours matters.

One of my growing convictions is that when leaders (people with influence) get better, everyone wins.

Workplace environments become healthier, office politics get cleaner, City Hall becomes more effective, Emergency Services become more efficient, churches become more engaging and families function with more purpose. Everyone wins! So, I have to ask: “What’s your plan to get better?”

We have plans to take care of almost everything in our life, from our teeth to our tires, but it’s a rare individual who has a plan to carefully nurture their influence.

May I suggest you schedule a coffee with someone who’s leadership you admire and ask them to share two or three of their most important learnings about leadership and influence.

Go online or to a bookstore and take advantage of the enormous amount of outstanding leadership reading available.

Three authors I highly endorse are John Maxwell, Patrick Lencioni and Joseph Grenny.

They are all high character, professional and incredibly engaging.

Register for the Global Leadership Summit being held in Kelowna this week, Oct. 19-20.

Speakers such as Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook; Marcus Buckingham, best-selling author who spent 30 years with Gallup; Lazlo Bock, VP of Google; Angela Duckworth, author of Grit; Andy Stanley, Bill Hybels.

Those and other world class speakers will all be investing in the development of your influence via large screen presentations.

The website kelownagls.ca is a link to the event and to tickets.

It’s a Summit on Leadership with a Christian foundation and is transferable to absolutely anyone interested in becoming a better leader.

One of the greatest leaders in world history, St. Paul, wrote one time that his goal was to forget what is behind and strain toward what is ahead.

His use of the word strain included an intentional, focused effort.

That’s what I need, an intentional surge forward to leverage my influence well.

I hope to see you in the leadership section of the bookstore or at the Global Leadership Summit.

Maybe we can work on improving our influence together.

Tim Schroeder is a pastor at Trinity Baptist Church.