Gary Harpst

Gary Harpst Speaking Topics

• Moving Beyond What Leaders Must Know to What Leaders Must Do

  Leadership is a discipline and like all other disciplines is based on applied knowledge. There are foundational truths leaders must understand to be effective, but ultimately that understanding has to be applied to bear fruit. In this session, Harpst moves leaders into the challenge of how to build a system of leadership that allows organizations to sustain growth and continue to execute. Without some system, all organizations outgrow their own ability to execute, what Harpst calls the execution paradox.

  In this session, leaders will learn:

  • What the execution paradox is and the forces behind it.
  • The impact of people not obeying the laws of physics
  • Key design requirements your system must satisfy.
  • Six habits leaders must establish.

• Built to Beat Chaos, Biblical Principles for Leading Yourself and Other

  Today’s leaders are well acquainted with chaos. While most businesses (hopefully) enjoy times of success and smooth sailing, we also face periods of disruption, upheaval, discord, and extreme stress. We may be tempted to approach these chaos cycles by putting our head down and waiting for the storm to pass. But Gary Harpst has an encouraging message: We are not created to be victims of chaos, but rather to harness it for our own purposes.

  Harpst delivers an insightful and practical discussion of how to transform chaos into order by relying on strategies drawn directly from the Bible. You’ll learn how to find fulfillment and success by leaning into your innate ability to calm the madness and control chaos by:

  • Understanding the fundamental processes underlying how we put things together for a purpose.
  • Answering the question at the heart of leadership: What is it that holds my team together?
  • Mastering two critical dimensions: the habit-building system an organization needs to grow and stay fit and the relational skills that create oneness.
  • Discovering why everyone is biblically called to leadership and the dynamics of self-leadership.
  • Applying biblical principles to transform your organization through action.

  A workable road map for board members, executives, managers, pastors, and other organizational leaders, Built to Beat Chaos is the straightforward, practical, and biblically grounded business manual every leader should read. Ultimately, its message transcends the business world. Just as the laws of physics hold our atoms together, the laws of human relationships—facilitated by leadership—hold ourselves, our families, our organizations, and society itself together.

Human Design and Why People Do the Things They Do - A Biblical Perspective

In this powerful talk, Harpst explains the design requirements for humans as clearly stated in the Bible. And he explains how we are designed to fulfill those requirements. These explanations give leaders great insight into why people do the things they do. And it helps clarify what the primary challenge of leadership is. And encouragingly why leadership is the most important and challenging work for the future of humanity.

Attendee will learn:

• An understanding of what all humans were created to do
• What chaos is and why it is not your problem, but your purpose
• The primary tool for overcoming chaos
• The single most difficult and important aspect of leadership
• Why maintaining order is more difficult than creating it

The People First Model of Leadership

In this presentation, Harpst explains the two fundamental dimensions of leadership required to sustain organizational success. Neither dimension is sufficient by itself. Without balance, an organization will outgrow its own ability to thrive. One of these dimensions is human relationship skills and the other dimension of managerial process skills.

In this session people will learn:

• Human architecture and its affect on building organizations.
• The symptoms when either of these dimensions gets out of balance.
• A five-step model for building and sustaining aligned human relationships.
• Why the people dimension has to come first.
• The essence of what leadership is.

Why Order Is Easier to Create Than Keep

People want to win. More accurately, the Bible says they need to win. That is what we all are created for. This need drives us to things that seem almost impossible. We don’t have to think long to identify jaw dropping healthcare that saves an infant's life that was born with heart defects, or a breathtaking musical performance or athletic feat. We are swimming in human achievement.

But the brutal facts are that once something is built like a home or especially a business it takes more energy and effort to sustain its existence than it did to create it. Most of us as builders are simply not prepared for that. Leaders have to confront themselves with the realization that their role is not just to bring order out of chaos, but to maintain order as people and products come and go – as organizations and the world around them changes.

In this session, participants will take away:

• What the three types of chaos are.
• What it takes to create order
• Why order it is more difficult to keep than establish it.
• Five deceptions that are barriers to keeping order.
• What the fitness industry teaches us about how to maintain order.
• What chocolate cake teaches us about leadership.

People Don’t Obey the Laws of Physics. The Essence of Leadership

The Bible says the study of the universe reveals truth about God (and since we are created in His image something about ourselves as well). One peculiar truth is that the whole universe is made up 98% of two simple atoms – hydrogen and helium. And yet from those two atoms galaxies, human beings, flowers, animals, trees all have been created. This teaches us something important about leadership. Creating things is not as much about the raw materials used but the wisdom to integrate them in unique ways.

A primary role of leaders is to integrate people around a shared purpose. But when God did His amazing integration work, He used the laws of physics to bind atoms together in different ways. Leaders however are challenged to bind people together who do not obey the laws of physics. This is the essence of the challenge of leadership and why it is the most meaningful work in the world.

In this session, participants will learn:

• Why everyone is created to lead, no exceptions.
• Why humans don’t obey the laws of physics.
• Why civilization is advancing technologically at a breathtaking pace but is falling apart in terms of human relationships.
• What leaders must know, do and be to bring order in their part of this chaotic world.