Smart leaders know they should devote time and energy to relationships. They also know that the payoffs, both tangible and emotional, are out of all proportion to the investment involved. Here's what leaders do to engage others. You can do the same:

LEADERS GIVE BACK Without exception, the leaders I know are immensely thankful for their good fortune — their opportunities, families and health. And so they give back. They volunteer on charitable boards, contribute to community causes and serve as mentors and advisers. As their outreach widens, so, correspondingly, does their influence.

LEADERS EXPRESS APPRECIATION Such leaders are quick to express thanks for what they consider to be a job well done. A client once recommended that I dine at a specific Montreal restaurant. When I went to pay, the server informed me that the bill had been taken care of — by my client. The tab was $150. I certainly appreciated the superb meal, but what I was most grateful for was the thought behind the gesture. You don't have to buy someone dinner to deepen an association. If you come across a book you think a colleague would enjoy, send it off with a handwritten note. If you're on a budget, just write the note. The best investment a prospective leader can make is in some high-end stationery. It will say a lot about you.

LEADERS STAY CONNECTED Leaders "ping" regularly, initiating quick e-mail and voice-mail contact with members of their network. A message might consist of a note of congratulations, a heads-up that they're going to be in town or just a friendly hello. And, as busy as they are, they rarely let an e-mail go unanswered. They almost never drop the communications ball. Interestingly, and tellingly, the lower you go down the corporate food chain, the more e-mails go unanswered. By failing to respond, recipients are nevertheless sending a message — about themselves.

LEADERS CREATE SUPPORTERS A couple of years ago, a client had a couple of extra tickets to a black tie dinner, and invited me and a guest to attend. I asked an old friend to come along. At the time, she was working on a professional designation, and shared that fact with my client. He wished her well, and that was that. Or so she thought. A year later, my friend earned her designation. Her name and photograph appeared in the newspaper, along with others who had successfully completed the course. Soon after, she let me know that my client, whom she had met only once at the dinner the year before, had sent her a letter of congratulations on her achievement. My friend was thrilled: my client has a fan for life.

Submitted by Peter Davison

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Future of the Church

Do you know what you are getting for Christmas? In my family it's always a surprise, we don't know until we open the package what it contains. I think the future of the church is like that.

I sense a kind of despair sometimes as churches struggle to survive. Sometimes churches even close, bringing sadness to the members and the community around them. But I believe strongly that we can look forward to the future of the church the way we look forward to our Christmas gifts — expectantly and hopefully.

Like many people I take pictures at Christmas; the themes are similar: the tree, the gift opening, carving the turkey. I have years of these shots and every Christmas is different even though there are common elements. I think the future of the church will be like that — with themes and elements that are present today but are put together in a new way. The future of the church won't be like the past, but there will be a future.

Things I have read recently convince me that we are going through an upheaval in the church as great as that of the Reformation. You can imagine that those times were difficult for people living (and dying) through them. And yet the church emerged better and stronger than it was before. I think God is doing the same kind of work in the church in this generation. We can join in, we can chose hope; or we can choose to trust God and look forward to a new future full of promise; or we can complain because we can't have the past back, which is what many Christians are doing.

A book I found encouraging is "The Great Emergence": How Christianity is Changing and Why by Phyllis Tickle. The author helps us to see the present life of the church in the context of its history so that we can look to the future with hope.