Holding Back/Moving Forward Exercise

After church on Sunday we had a "Sunday Team" meeting.  Josh had asked Robby Hipp to come and be a part of the meeting.  Robby has had some recent training and experiences in leadership building and there were some "exercises" that we wanted to do.

One of the exercise we did was to go around the group and share briefly and from the gut what we thought was holding back that person and what we thought was moving the person forward in life/ministry, etc.  The exercise ends with us giving the same evaluation of ourselves.  This was a tough exercise because we were not suppose to have an emotionally charged evaluation and we were to receive the feedback without reading too much into it.  It was to be an honest evaluation.

There were some things that stood out to me after going through the exercise and listening to some comments from people about what they thought about the exercise.  The first thing I noticed was with regards to what was holding the person back.  Most of the comments were that they already knew what these things were and now it was now confirmed by other people's perception.  I know this was true for me - the things people said were holding me back I had an idea and the things that were moving me forward were encouraging to hear.  The other thing that stood out was that it was hard not to try and qualify the "negative" thing we just told our friend.  Yet other thing that stood out was it was tough not to get emotional about the feedback.  I do think that most of us believed it was a timely exercise to accomplish and were encouraged by it.

Speaking of encourage - Josh had actually spoke about that very idea at church that morning.  It was a timely message because of what we did after church and I also know people who came that morning were reminded and challenged to be more encouraging in their lives.  I actually even "benefited" from the message because I had someone come up to me after the gathering to encourage me and thank me for a job well done.  I was blessed by that.  It is funny how these things come together, going from a gathering where we heard about being an encourager to a team meeting where we had a chance to practice.

What's your story?  Are you being held back by something or someone or are you moving forward?  Give this simple exercise a try and see what it can do for you.