”Lead Where You Are” – the GLS slogan was once more, in 2013, the statement that welcomed the participants. The Summit targeted leaders from various areas of life: church, business, government, education, non-profit, family.
800 Romanian leaders, from over 180 local churches came together with 175,000 leaders from all around the world to experience the sessions of one of the biggest leadership events in the world. Worldwide, the participants came from 14,000 churches, 90+ denominations, 100+ countries and almost 45 languages.
The Global Leadership Summit came to Romania in 2008, through a partnership between BIG-Impact Foundation and Willow Creek Association. The 2013 edition of the Romanian Summit was organized in collaboration with local churches and organizations from Cluj-Napoca, Oradea, Bucharest, Craiova, Deva and Timisoara.
The participants were exposed to 2 explosive days of leadership development, learning from an impressive faculty – Bill Hybels, Liz Wiseman, Patrick Lencioni, Chris Brown, Joseph Grenny, Brené Brown, Henry Cloud and Andy Stanley.
The sessions’ content was processed with the help of local facilitators, helping the participants in the next steps towards applying the content.
Dozens of local volunteers joined the national BIG-Impact team in the creation of memorable events, at a high standard of quality and excellence.
The end of the last event did not mean the end of work for the national team, who was extensively involved in evaluations, budgets, and statistics. Currently, the team works towards preparing the plan for the 2014 Summit.
Following there are a few insights from the 2013 Summit participants:
”The Summit is highly motivational for me, because there are few such events in our community. The impact, in my opinion, is very high for someone who is open to such events. I liked what one of today’s speakers said about the link between personal and social motivation. To use a metaphor – if you plant a flower in the right kind of soil, it has the proper growth and blossoming opportunities, but if you plant it in the wrong environment, it might have difficulties surviving…”
”I expected the Summit to be special, great, but this year surpassed all my expectations. I understood that, because I desire to fulfill a project, to reach a goal, many times I use people, rather than love and celebrate them. I believe this is my take away from this year’s Summit – to invest in relationships, to celebrate people and not only use them to fulfill my vision.”
”The moment you have a family or serve in a church, I believe you have to learn what it means to be a priest, to be a leader – not a despotic leader, but a perfect servant – in your family, in your church. I believe the Summit brings some of the best tools in Romania for growth, learning, for getting closer to my brothers and sisters, to the people I work with and at last but not least, to my family.
Brené Brown struck a deep chord in me. I did not expect this and now, while traveling home, I think I will continue to process her material. All the messages had something unique, so it is almost impossible for me to say one was better than the other – they all tackle different topics and they all are above expectations. I am encouraged by the Summit and I want to encourage the organizers to never give up…”
”It is the first Summit for me and I enjoyed a lot the session about influence – that influence you want to have in the environment you are currently in. We are now starting a small group where we need a better understanding of what leadership is and this is why I am attending the Summit – I want to learn as much as I can. I liked the idea of leading with vulnerability – meaning you should not be perceived as a perfect being, but lead in such a way that people can relate to you – it is a concept rarely applied around me, that I want to adopt – I believe it is a good thing for what quality leadership means today.”
Adrian Lauran, Pastor, Quo Vadis Church Hateg, Facilitator – The Global Leadership Summit Deva, 2014
”I always enjoy coming to the Summit – it is a place where I grow, I get training, a place where I always discover that it is possible to do more. I appreciate the faculty, especially those who bring change in leadership. I came to respect those who go beyond being ”powerful leaders” and become vulnerable.”
”It is difficult to sum up what the Summit means for me. I was asked to come by my own children, because, it seems to me that, as you grow older, you stop learning. I am glad I came, I am glad I already discovered that I did some of the good things we talked about here and I learned that you can learn at any age many things about life.”
”It is my 4th experience at the Summit – I like that the speakers are selected from among people with experience, experts in their fields, but also relevant for us, through the universality of the principles they teach. I read their books, or listened to them before, after which I read their books.
The participants’ interaction is also something important – we are all colleagues in ministry, we know each other and it helps to experience the sharing of common ground principles. I waited for Brené Brown’s message – I saw here 2 years ago at TED and I was very curious how she would apply what she said there in our religious context. I did not know anything about her spiritual background, but I enjoyed what she said – the power of vulnerability, of love.”
