Brad Lomenick Chapel – March 8, 2023
By Diego Duarte
Diego Duarte is a Junior at Christian High School, an editor-in-chief of Christian High School’s newspaper, The Genesis, and the founding chairman of its current Young Americans for Freedom Chapter.
Brad Lomenick, founder of BLINC, and author of the ‘Catalyst Leader’ and ‘H3 Leadership’ spoke to Christian High students about what is needed to be a great leader. To start, he gave some background into his life. He spoke how in 1995, he was working at a guest ranch and the owner there gave him advice that how his life in his 20s would establish how his life would become into his 70s. Then, he introduced his main question to students of what they want people to say about them after they die.
Flashing forward in his life, he talked about how he leads an organization and young interns always ask him about how to be a great leader. He would tell them that to be a great leader it was vital for them to stay humble, be hungry, and always hustle. He then went on to further explain in-depth these three attributes.
In explaining what he meant about being humble, humility is about making others part of the story. The most humble leaders are able to understand their environment and be self-aware of themselves and most importantly, understand the way God has wired them.
Then, he tuned in on what he called as “working on your why” and what was the Lord calling someone to do. Humble leaders are dialed in on their calling and talents, undergirded by God’s story. He proceeded to give an example of him finding out his own why from when he was young. He told how he was a part of a rap group in Oklahoma and they rapped about the amounts of trash and littering plaguing the state at a Senate hearing. He had a lot of passion but very little strength and though his group’s career rap career didn’t work out, many other opportunities had opened up to him within his life. He encouraged students to say yes to opportunities that open up to them. Brad Lomenick’s “why” was to collect and gather influencers. Finally, when you know your “why,” you walk with confidence.
The second leadership attribute he explored was the aspect of a leader’s hunger for learning and improving within his life. He informed the audience that a leader always believed there’s more for him and room for improvement and a leader will be the one to walk into a room and take notes on what’s around him and what people are saying. Everywhere they go is a classroom. Curiosity and question-asking is a short cut for this because curiosity gives oneself credibility.
He gave example of this of a time when he was invited to the White House for breakfast in the East Room. While this was going on, he was sitting next to his hero in life. Since no one knew who he was, he remembered that asking good questions furthered one’s credibility. He asked his hero questions and his hero then introduced him to his friends due to finding him interesting because of his questions. Asking questions got him further than he ever imagined. One last thing he added was that you should honor people with good questions and actually listen to them. This way those in your life feel appreciated.
The final major attribute he focused on was the ‘hustle’ and drive a leader should have. To set some ground rules on what he meant by ‘hustle’ he shared that the Biblical perspective on hustle is that you’re willing to set a standard based on excellence. Following Jesus means you’ll follow Him onto the next excellence of life and will not leave you living in mediocrity. But most importantly, one must also be faithful to God and exactly where they are in life.
To give an example of this he spoke again about his job as a cowboy at the guest ranch. He had to be faithful in his job even if it meant doing seemingly juvenile tasks. For being faithful with little will turn into faithfulness with much.
A minor attribute of a leader he also mentioned when closing off his message was about a leader always embodying hope. For if you give a little hope to somebody it’ll make a huge difference. To give hope is to become an injector of courage. To be a great leader you’ll inject courage into others. And anyone can do this because everyone has an influence on somebody.
He then ended his chapel with a Q&A, allowing students to put to use the valuableness of asking somebody questions. Through this, Brad Lomenick equipped students with the knowledge needed in order to be a great leader among their peers and within their community.
