A few weeks ago I had the privilege of interviewing Brad Lomenick, president of Catalyst, on his book The Catalyst Leader: 8 Essentials for Becoming a Change Maker.
Brad is a model of the leadership qualities he talks about and it was a lot of fun to talk to him.
And here is also an edited transcript of the interview, in order to provide a shorter summary for people who prefer to read. (Note that the transcript is really a paraphrase of both him and me, because that’s the easiest way for me to summarize things. For any who compare the two, you might have an enjoyable time of comparing what goes in to my head with how I actually understand it and restate it!)
Here’s the transcript:
Brad, tell us first of all what Catalyst is and what you do for Catalyst?
I’m the president of Catalyst. Sort of the key strategist and key visionary. We’re a really small team so I’m really involved in the program of the events we put on as well.
We do leadership conferences. If anyone is familiar with John Maxwell, John is the one who started Catalyst along with a number of other leaders. We really have a heartbeat for younger leaders — for those in the first half of their career life. We are a Christian leadership movement and conference. We have a heart for Christians who are in the marketplace as well as who are working in roles connected to the church.
We see our role as creating an opportunity to connect, inspire, equip, and then release the next generation of leaders who are in the first stage of their career. They are out of college, but still in the first half of their professional life. That’s our heartbeat, and we’ve been doing this now for almost 14 years.
Atlanta is our flagship gathering every October, where we will have 13,000 leaders gathered this year [note: next week!]. But we do many other conferences throughout the year as well, including Catalyst West, a Dallas event, and Catalyst One Day.
Why did you write this book?
That’s a great place to start. I just turned 40, so I felt like part of the stewardship of the role I’ve had for the past several years meant that it was time for me to pass on a lot of what I’ve learned. I wasn’t planning on doing this; at least for me, my perspective had been “I’m just the guy behind the scenes; I’m a practitioner, not a thought leader, not a voice.”
But I had some friends who really challenged me on that. They said “you do know some things and you do have some things to pass on to the next generation. You aren’t just the guy behind the scenes. You need to be a wise steward of the way God has given you the opportunity to be around so many great leaders and you need to pass on what you have learned.”
The ultimate reason for me, though, is that I’m looking around at a lot of my peers who are starting on the rocket ride and having influence very early in life, and are coming up against roadblocks in their leadership because they haven’t been fully equipped. With our generation, so many of us are stepping into leadership roles earlier than in prior generations, sometimes before we are ready. We are leading now, but we also need to lead well. And the way we finish well in life and in our leadership is to lead well now.
That’s the essence of this book. I want my generation to lead well now, and to be able to look back on things 40 years from now and say “we took the baton that was given to us, and we ran the race well.”