What is #Tol? It is a Team of Leaders and a leadership methodology brought to civic affairs by The Center for Collaborative Command and Leadership. This program has been brought to London by Emerging Leaders through the Leadership London program and part of the Emerging Leaders mandate to retain, attract and connect young talent in London On.

Taking directly from the #ToL website, #ToL is describe as,

The concept of Teams of Leaders has been developed by the US Army to help it to interact with the civilian world of the post-Cold War era, and to promote utilization of the immense intellectual, business, and logistics capabilities of the Army in the service of the civilian authorities. In addition, the ToL concept served to strengthen the existing relationships with the long-standing allies of the US, and to form new ones with the large number of rapidly emerging partners.

The original goal of the Teams of Leaders concept was to fill the structural gap in situations where a single authority and a single shared purpose were typically either unclear, subject to external manipulation, or entirely absent. Hence, the driving force behind the Teams of Leaders approach was the wish to promote an environment that builds common understanding, and develops mutual trust and confidence among a wide variety of professional, organizational, and national teams forced to act jointly in the often turbulent setting of the contemporary political, economic, and social world.

Ultimately, ToL policies, programs and practices were found to be equally applicable across both the military and civilian governmental, non-governmental, and corporate entities acting in the joint, inter-agency, inter-governmental, and multinational (JIIM) setting of globalized activities. The transition of ToL from the military to the civilian sphere of activities was largely afforded through the work of the Center for Collaborative Command and Leadership (CCCL, formerly Center for Collaborative Leadership in Healthcare – CCLH). Presently, the ToL concept serves as the unique and exceptionally well suited tool in the development of collaboration among entities involved in missions executed at all levels of the civil society and of the corporate world.

On October 4th, your Rogue Preacher began his first session with #ToL and Leadership London. It was an exciting day of learning the methodologies and practices and collaborating with an exciting group of Londoners, of leaders, who are seeking to become citizens of action committed to reshaping London for a better future.

Each month we will meet and tackle problems in various sectors of London and thereby gain valuable insight across all of London while putting into practice the methodologies of #ToL. These sectors include:

• Non Profits
• Healthcare
• Education
• Technology
• City Government
• Economic Development
• Our Place in the Region
• Our Heritage
• Arts

There is much to be learned and much to be shared. There will be techniques of building teams rapidly, developing solutions to long standing problems and rapidly responding to new problems as they emerge. It plans to be an amazing journey of discovering London, developing leadership skills and team building methodologies and most of all continuing as a life long learner.

I will endeavour to share thoughts and insights, especially as they pertain to the church. Hopefully as I blog my way through this project there will be insights that can be applied directly to the church, its long term problems, rapidly developing problems and help foster a stronger and better teams of leaders throughout the church.

I will try to not be critical of the church, but at times I will have to be. My critiques will not be about pointing out problems and assigning blame, but rather will be about offering ways we can name our problems, but also tackle them to help further God’s Kingdom and build up the church here in London.

So check back periodically, and hold on…we are going to plunge deeply into the heart of London.