Category: Leading through the Church

As we continue our focus leaders and accountability, we turn today to “Asking Hard Questions.” While having a structured approach to your accountability relationship is important, being willing to ask and respond to hard questions will determine whether you are actually holding one another accountable or just getting together as friends, Bible study partners or coworkers. While trust building is necessary at the beginning of every meaningful relationship, the sooner you are able to get to the point of asking each other hard questions, the more you will grow through the relationship.

For example, If you are in accountability for deepening your spiritual life, you need to give each other permission to ask whether you have read your Bible, prayed, and applied God’s truth in love in your everyday spheres of influence. This is a “basic level” hard question. It’s a hard question, because it calls you to be honest at the level of daily personal growth. If you committed to reading your Bible every day last week, and you only read it twice, then when the question is asked, you will have the option of telling the truth and admitting your failure in this area, or lying and being a failure in the who concept of accountability.

As your accountability partnership grows you will ask harder and harder questions. For example, in order to move from basic level hard questions to intermediate level hard questions, means moving from the level of activity and performance, to the level of character. You may ask each other, such questions as: Did you cut any corners, or cheat anyone this past week? A yes answer would mean you wasted your company’s time during working hours, or you didn’t invest your full attention with your children when you were talking, playing, or working with them in the past week, or you didn’t show up to your small group, or you didn’t engage if you did.  Another question you might ask would be: Did you purposefully participate in any conversations intended to hurt another person’s standing in your company, peer group, family, etc…? You can see why this is a hard question. No one wants to answer yes to this one, but we can all find ourselves engaging in this kind of behavior if we’re not intentional about growing in our integrity on a daily basis.

The hardest question of all ought to be asked at the conclusion of your conversations: Did you lie to me today? While this is a catch all hard question, it ensures that we operate in the arena of honesty. Otherwise, we aren’t holding one another accountable. I know how difficult it is to tell the truth when we’ve messed up in any area of our lives, or the same one ever and over again, but if we don’t we will never grow out of the negative or sinful behavior that is keeping us stuck where we are.

I need to underline the truth we have mentioned a couple times already: trust is the basis for every human relationship, and we aren’t likely to respond to such hard questions in a completely honest manner until we trust our accountability partner to keep the information to himself or herself. The only way we can determine whether he or she will do that is to put ourselves out there and tell something that we have done that is not good. While that can seem brave to some of us and foolish to others, the truth is it is absolutely necessary, or we’re deceiving ourselves when we say we’re in accountability.

Having been in the same accountability relationship for more than twenty years it is easier to admit my shortcomings than it used to be, and to answer the hard questions truthfully, but at times the temptation still exists to respond in a less than honest manner. It’s simply a matter of persevering in the relationship and building on the trust each gives the other, until it becomes easier to tell the truth, even when the truth isn’t pretty. We know we have “arrived” in our accountability relationship when we can celebrate the victories of our partner and tell the times when we really messed up, and our partner responds with affirmation of the victories and correction and encouragement for the messes.

The bottom line is life is messy. The only way to overcome the messiness is to wade in and clean it up. My experience is that happens best in accountability relationships, because over time we help each other clean up the messes together, and we move to deeper levels of growth, productivity and maturity than we will ever do on our own. It all hinges on our willingness to ask and answer the hard questions our accountability partner asks with honesty and humility.

Here’s to leading better, by asking and answering the hard questions that will lead to growth in our lives–today and into the future!

Yesterday I wrote about creating a leadership culture and at the end of that post, I mentioned that today, we would look at your culture document.      First question: do you have a culture document, that is have you taken the time to think through and write down the elements of your work, church or even family culture that are too vital to leave to chance? A great place to start is with the three things you can control: your allegiances, your attitudes and your effort. New Life’s culture document makes it clear that we’re serving Jesus Christ, who we believe is the King of kings, and Lord of lords, so we’re quite serious about our ultimate allegiance. Your allegiance may be to your company, to your family, or whatever it is that tops your list.

When it comes to attitudes, the culture document is the place you make it clear what kind of attitudes are and aren’t acceptable. For example, our document makes it clear that we are not “hired hands,” that is we don’t have an attitude of punching the clock when it comes to our work. We believe that the Kingdom of God doesn’t fit in our job description, so we may have times when we’ll need to work through a schedule time off. In my case, I’m officiating at a funeral today, even though I’m on vacation this week. To me, I’m making the right choice, and I’ll take some time next week to make up for the off time I’m missing today. You may not have that kind of flexibility in your place of work, church or endeavor, but it’s important to decide what your attitude is toward getting the job done.

Another area where attitude is important is when it comes to whining. We have a no whining policy for New Life staff. If you receive a pay check you lose the opportunity to whine. That doesn’t mean you can’t be critical of a process or situation, only that dealing with it includes finding constructive approaches rather than whining. Again, you may have a different attitude toward negativity, but whatever it is, having something about it in your culture document will help assure that everyone’s on the same page. After all, it’s hard to stay on the same page unless there’s an actual page on which to stay!

When it comes to effort, everyone wants employees or staff to give their best, but it isn’t realistic to expect someone to be at the top of their game every minute. The key is to include in your culture document that best effort is expected, and when someone isn’t feeling well physically, or is going through a challenging time personally, the document may address the need for team efforts in such situations, or specific responses to make when a coworker is performing at less than his or her peak.

As with all documents of this type, a culture document is always a work in progress. As I mentioned yesterday, we want to include that we are great at celebrating successes, but right now, we’re not. We’re monitoring our progress and one day we’ll add it to the document when the time is right. The key is to start somewhere and move one step at a time to the point that your culture document offers a clear representation of who you are and what your doing as an organization.

Here’s to leading better by making the first step, or the next step of progress on your culture document–today!

While virtually every post I’ve entered so far has included at least one example of the leadership topic I’ve emphasized, I wanted to be explicit today about the importance of leading by example. We can say or write anything we want about  leadership, but unless we are doing it ourselves others will rightly label us with the “H” word–hypocrite. While none of us is 100% consistent in everything we say and do, the more consistency we live between our words and actions the more effective our leadership will be, and the more influence we will have not only with those we lead directly, but those around us who are impacted by our leadership.

I’ve been watching about an hour of the Olympics coverage each day since this past Friday, and one of the truths that has been brought home to me by these mostly young athletes is their absolute commitment to attain their goals. No one could call them hypocrites when it comes to the discipline needed to become effective in their chosen field, or in their willingness to do whatever it takes to win. The challenge becomes the win at any cost mentality they have developed can and has resulted in some athletes using performance enhancing drugs, or questionable or unallowable decision-making or equipment. As with every good or even great opportunity leaders have–and whatever anyone says, Olympic athletes are leaders at least in their chosen fields of endeavor–sometimes the thought is that the ends justify the means.

This thought has led many leaders to forget the example they are setting along the journey in order to get to their desired destination ahead of others, or with greater success than others. We have seen this path taken by leaders in every field of endeavor: business, sports, the church, education, you name it and someone who everyone thought was a great example turns out to be a cheat, a liar, or a phony. As leaders we must make certain that we use appropriate means to attain our ends. I remember more than thirty years ago while sitting in a preaching class at Princeton Seminary, when the professor said, “You can attract a crowd by preaching in your underwear, but the question is, ‘What will you do next Sunday?'”

Shortcuts are always a temptation on the road to success as leaders. While all of us ought to find the easiest and best way to do anything required in our particular field of leadership, sometimes the easiest and best way is still hard. After more than thirty years in the ministry, I still haven’t found an easier way to develop my relationship with God than to invest at least an hour a day in prayer and Bible reading. I’ve tried easier ways, faster ways, but in the end I always come back to the truth that no relationship is built easily or without an investment of significant time.

Think about your primary area of leadership. What kind of example are you setting when it comes to character, behavior, to living through best practices in your field of endeavor? Are you taking shortcuts that will eventually turn out to be anything but shortcuts, because they will compromise your integrity? One of the easiest ways for an Olympic athlete to be disqualified from a competition is to stray off the prescribed course for the event. Whether it’s moving outside of one’s lane, or missing a required element, or using an improper technique disqualification means that years, and in some cases decades of training are wasted.

I don’t want to take anything away from the achievement of earning an Olympic gold medal–or any Olympic medal for that matter–but the stakes are often much higher in your leadership and mine. If you or I stray off the course families will be ruined, businesses may be destroyed, and churches may lose their ability to speak truth and love into a community. All this and more make it vital that we learn the best way to lead in our areas starting with modeling character and integrity, and then learning or developing best practices, and then modeling them in our own lives. As we set the example, we also set the tone of what is and isn’t acceptable in our organization’s culture, which makes all the difference over time, because our organization’s culture provides the arena in which all that we do gets carried out, and sets the boundaries of acceptability and victory. More on that tomorrow.

Here’s to leading better by setting the right example in every area of our lives and leadership–today!

As we continue our Three Things You Can Control series, those three things being our allegiances, our attitudes and our efforts, today we turn to our attitude. Many years ago John Maxwell wrote a book about attitude. In it he said that our attitude determines our altitude. In other words, how “high” we go in life is dependent on our attitude. That’s because we can’t control what happens to us in life, but we can control what happens in us, how we respond to what happens.

We see this truth all the time when tragedy strikes a family, or a community or a nation. Some respond with fear, despair and desperation, while others respond with courage, hope, and determination. What’s the difference? At the base of it all the difference is attitude. Our allegiances certainly help in determining our attitude, but are also separate from them. I have seen folks who trust Jesus fall apart in certain situations, when others move resolutely forward. Once again, the difference is attitude. When any situation occurs we get to choose the attitude with which we respond.

That is not to say that each of us will always choose the same attitude in every situation, but over time our attitude grows and develops just as we grow and develop physically, emotionally and spiritually. The attitudes we “feed” grow stronger, and the attitudes we ignore grow weaker. That’s precisely why I say we can control our attitudes. For example, let’s say we live in a community that experiences devastating floods, and you and I lose our homes as a result. They are totally destroyed. How would we respond in that situation? Obviously, many variables determine how we would respond, but the three things we would be able to control in the situation would be our allegiance, our attitude and our effort.

If our allegiance was to our material goods, then such a loss would be absolutely devastating. If our attitude was one of despair, because we would lose everything, then we may not put much effort forward to move on with our lives. We may simply sit and grieve. On the other hand if our allegiance was to God in Jesus Christ, we would recognize that while we had lost every “thing” we own, we hadn’t lost anything of ultimate value. I’m not minimizing the inconvenience, the sense of personal devastation and loss, because in the flood we would surely have lost personal mementos of relationships we hold dear that could never be replaced. But at the end of the day our attitude would be one of hope. The reason I say that is because God gives us hope in such situations.

That attitude may not be the first one to surface. I have been through a number of devastating circumstances over the years, both personally and vicariously through the families I have served as a pastor. Depending on the depth of the loss, and the era in my life when the loss occurred, my first attitude may have been anger, or despair. But those have always been replaced by hope, gratitude, determination, and other attitudes that have permitted me to move forward. Even the great prophet, Elijah, succumbed to an attitude of despair when Queen Jezebel told him she was going to kill him. While that may seem rational, he had just experienced the greatest demonstration of God’s presence and power in his life just hours before. We would think Elijah would have heard Jezebel’s claim and laughed, or at the very least have responded with calm confidence that God would protect him.

Instead, Elijah ran. He ran for 40 days, and all that while he asked God to take his life. He forgot that because of his allegiance to the one, true and living God, he could face any threat with the assurance of ultimate victory, even if that victory meant an eternal one after this life ended. Elijah shows us what James told us about him in chapter 5 of his book: Elijah was a man like us. I’ve alway found great comfort in those words. Elijah wasn’t made out of some special genetic material. He was a common, ordinary man like us. He served an extraordinary God. His allegiance is what made him great. The same is true for each of us. As leaders we must always remember who we serve, then we will gain an ability to serve with humility, confidence, assurance and hope regardless of the situation.

So how is your attitude toward life in general and toward difficult times in particular? Do you see life as a long series of unwinnable obstacles, or as an experience set in front of us by God? Are you ready to face this day with confidence and hope, because you know God is leading you as you lead others? Or are you just hoping to get through the day? Whatever attitude you bring to this moment the good news is you can change it or keep it. It’s up to you, because we get to control our attitude.

Here’s to leading better by choosing attitudes that will overcome the obstacles we’ll face-today!

On Friday we started a four-part series titled: The Three Things You Can Control. I overviewed those three things on Friday: Our Allegiance, Our Attitude and Our Effort. Today, let’s take a deeper look at what it means that we can control our allegiance. First, some would say, “I don’t have one allegiance, I have many. At a certain level that is most certainly true. For example, I have allegiance to God, to my family, to the United States of America, to New Life Christian Christian ministries and so on. But at the deepest level, we all have one primary allegiance, and that primary allegiance determines how we respond in all our other areas of allegiance.

Jesus stated this clearly nearly 2,000 years ago when He said, “No one can serve two masters. You will love the one and hate the other, or be devoted to one and despise the others. You cannot serve both God and money.” Jesus didn’t say it was challenging to serve two masters or to have two ultimate allegiances, because ultimately we are servants of our ultimate allegiance. He said it is impossible to have two ultimate allegiances. How interesting that nearly 2,000 years ago Jesus saw that the two primary allegiances that would vie for our ultimate allegiance would be God and money.

Two millennia later that is still true. While a handful of folks may hold family as their ultimate allegiance, most people boil it down to whether they are going to pursue God first in their lives or money and material goods. As leaders, our primary allegiance determines everything about how we will go about our leadership. For example, if God is our master, our ultimate allegiance, then we will seek to understand what that means at the deepest level, so we will know how to live out the allegiance. If I am a follower of Jesus Christ, I will understand God quite differently than if I am a Jew, a Muslim, a Buddhist or a Hindu, for example. Jesus revealed God to be personal in a way no one else ever has. After all, He was and is God in the flesh. His teachings, while reflected in other religions, since truth is truth, are quite unique in their characteristics from the way they may be represented in other religions.

The point here is not to debate religious differences, but rather to say that what I believe about my ultimate allegiance will determine how I pursue my life and leadership. Since I follow Jesus, my leadership will always have a servant nature to it. Jesus told His followers that even He, who is the King of kings, and Lord of lords, came not to be served, but to serve and to give His life as a ransom for many. If I am going to lead as a follower of Jesus, then I will think of the needs of those I lead first, because I am their servant as well as their leader.

On the other hand if money is my ultimate allegiance, then I will pursue my life in a different way. The “bottom line” will be my bottom line. I will always be thinking about how I can produce more income, more product, more material goods, and I will count my success or failure in life based on whether I have the most. We may not be that crass about it on the surface, but if our ultimate allegiance is the bottom line we will put things before people, while if Jesus is our bottom line, we will put people before things.

You may be thinking, but what about atheists, who serve no god, and also don’t seem to pursue money? Such folks exist to be sure. Their number is in question, because when a person claims not to believe in God, that person’s ultimate faith is by definition in the material world. Such folks may align themselves with a pursuit of what is best for them, or best for others, or they may not have a particular concern about ultimate allegiances, since they don’t believe in anything ultimate.

My goal here is to help us understand that we have control of only three things in our lives, and the first is our allegiance. We get to decide whether we will devote our lives to God, to our families, to the pursuit of well, or even to pursue nothing as our ultimate allegiance. We can certainly change our allegiances over time, but only when we are intentional about determining our ultimate allegiance and then aligning the rest of our lives to pursue it will we ever be strong leaders. The greatest leaders in human history have had a clear vision of what they made their ultimate allegiance. They pursued it, because they thought it was best for them, and often, because they thought it would be best for everyone else, too.

Once we determine our allegiance and align our lives to its pursuit we can become effective leaders, and only then. People who are drifting through life from one allegiance to another, or without any particular allegiance may well be happy, many are. They won’t be leaders. So, what is it you are seeking to lead? Is it just your own life? Is it your family? Your company? Your church? Your cause? Whatever it is, when you stop and take the time to get crystal clear about your ultimate allegiance, you will be able to align all your subordinate allegiances to pursue that ultimate allegiance and your leadership we become exponentially more effective.

Here’s to leading better by making certain we define our ultimate allegiance and pursue it diligently–today!

I concluded yesterday’s post by asking what a leader ought to do when he or she has gone first in developing or using a new tool or process and it turns out that the innovation really wasn’t effective. The short answer is go back to what you were doing, or do something different. One of the greatest roadblocks to leadership is a failure to admit when we’ve made a bad or at least a non-helpful decision or commitment. No one likes saying, “I was wrong,” but until we learn to do that as leaders we’ll never be as effective as we could be. Because we’re human beings, we make mistakes. Those of us who go first make more mistakes, because we don’t always have the benefit of other people’s experience to guide us. While certain base-level truths guide our general decisions and actions, we all face opportunities to innovate in our lives, whether at home, work, school, or play. As I said yesterday what separates leaders from the rest of folks is leaders go first.

When we have gone first and been correct often enough, people recognize us as leaders. The challenge then becomes our tendency to move toward one of two extremes. Those who have been successful in inventing or choosing the latest innovations often enough may go to the extreme of thinking they will always make the right choice. They become reckless in their approach to leadership. At the other extreme are those who have attained a certain level of success by going first, and then say, “I don’t want to lose what I’ve built. Therefore, I’m going to maintain what I have. No more innovations.” While people seldom move to the absolute end of either extreme along the spectrum of innovation and maintenance, we do face the danger as leaders that we will tend toward one extreme or the other.

I’m the kind of leader who likes to try new things. Thankfully, I’ve learned over time that “trying” new things all the time is a sure way to lose focus and eventually to lose my effectiveness as a leader. Thanks to John Ortberg, I learned the difference between trying and training a number of years ago. Training is any concerted effort continued over time that will empower us to do something we cannot do now at a point in the future. Trying, on the other hand may be nothing more than a half-hearted effort to do something new or different. As leaders, we cannot afford the luxury of trying every new idea that comes along. I did that too often in years past. Thankfully, I ordinarily saw the idea, process, tool or whatever wasn’t working, and was willing to say, “Enough of that.” While that was an important ability, it still frustrated those around me to no end. After all, who wants to follow a leader who is charging off in four different directions at once?

The key for all of us when it comes to innovation and adopting new ideas, models, and technologies is to consider the implications of the change before we “pull the trigger.” I’m one of those folks whose tendency when it comes to pulling the trigger is to follow the sequence: fire, ready, aim. As we all know the most effective sequence is ready, aim, fire. Over the years, I’ve been blessed to be surrounded by other leaders at New Life who were better at getting ready and aiming. They have helped me to see some of my great ideas, or more properly other people’s great ideas that I wanted to adopt, were indeed, great ideas but the timing wasn’t right for us to implement them. When I’ve listened, the results have been quite effective. At times, when I’ve pushed us forward, the results were also quite effective, because the idea was right for us, and God is gracious.

Far more often, though, when I have not listened to the counsel of those around me who are good at getting ready and aiming, I’ve found myself in the position of having to say, “That didn’t work. We need to go back to what we were doing.” Or “That didn’t work. We need to try something else.” Or “That didn’t work. Let’s just bag it.” None of those are good options, because they demonstrate an initial lack of leadership. The key in those moments is not to compound an initial lack of leadership with an ongoing lack of leadership by riding a dead horse, as my Dad would have put it.

Great leaders will surround themselves with people who fill in the areas where they are deficient. My deficiency is rarely an unwillingness to adopt an innovation that will improve our effectiveness. My deficiency is “firing” before I’ve taken time to get ready and aim. Thirty years of leading has given me more than enough evidence that such an approach is seldom effective. Thankfully, as I’ve grown older, I’ve matured and God has brought a team around me that has helped me become far better in preparing before firing.

While I could offer dozens of examples of how firing on a new idea or adopting someone else’s innovation backfired and led to my having to say, “Time out. That was a bad idea,” we had a recent victory at New Life that shows what happens when the team works together to make one of my “go first” ideas a major success. As I’ve mentioned in a couple of previous posts, this is the 15th anniversary year of New Life. Back in January, I told the staff we needed to take time to celebrate this milestone, because I’ve never been good at taking time to celebrate. I said that April, which is our actual anniversary would not be a good time to celebrate, because it’s too close to Easter, and if we wanted to do anything outside the weather would be iffy.

My idea was to have the celebration coincide with Independence Day weekend, and to have fireworks as the grand finale of the weekend. Fireworks are not new. In fact, they are ancient. What would be new, was a community fireworks display had not been done in Saxonburg for decades, if ever. Eventually, the weekend planning came together, and we thought of virtually every detail, and distributed responsibilities for each detail to a particular staff member and his or her team. (When I say “we” I mean our leadership team at New Life.) The result of months of getting ready and aiming on the part of many creative and dedicated people is that Independence Day weekend was an incredible celebration. More than 1,000 people participated on our property and around the community with the fireworks finale. People left that night saying, “Wow! That was great.” The key was we had several good ideas, that were different than we had done before, and we planned them over a period of six months. Attention to detail was left to those who love attending to details, and we even added a last minute mission dinner, which was my idea, that had enough planning to be effective, and the weekend was amazing.

If you are a leader who tends to fire before you get ready and aim, know that you will find it necessary to pull the plug on many of your ideas. In those instances, please, pull the plug. It will save you and everyone else a lot of additional grief. Better yet, build a team of people who will help you get ready and aim before you fire, a team who will help you see that not all of your great ideas are. Listen to them, but also listen to God for that rare time when your “crazy” idea is His idea. In those moments do everything you can to ensure that you have gotten ready and aimed, then fire. The principle that leaders go first is valid all the time. The better prepared we are before we go first, the less we will have to go first in saying, “I was wrong.” This is a time when I hope you will learn from my mistakes and successes, rather than having to make all the mistakes yourself.

Here’s to leading better by admitting when our ideas aren’t great, and by developing a team to ensure that our ideas are great before we implement them–today!

It’s often been said that leaders are simply those who go first. I saw hundreds, if not thousands, of examples of that at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown over the weekend. For example, when baseball was invented no one wore a glove to catch the ball. It was considered “unmanly” to even consider wearing something on one’s hands when catching the ball. Over time someone decided to where fingerless gloves to pad the palms of both hands, while not limiting the dexterity required to throw the ball after it was caught. This was the first of many leadership innovations regarding the equipment used to play the game. As we know, gloves have evolved a great deal since those days when it was unmanly to wear any kind of glove. Now, we have catchers mitts, and first baseman’s gloves, as well as individualized gloves for infielders and outfielders.

Each of those innovations required someone to go first. That player was undoubtedly laughed at and ridiculed for being soft, or for cheating, or for any number of infractions of the purity or intention of the game. Yet, as with all lasting leadership innovations, over time people came to recognize that different wasn’t wrong, or ridiculous, but in the particular case in question it was better. Imagine the first catcher who put on a chest protector, or the first outfielder who put cleats or spikes in his shoes to get better traction. You can hear the shouts of “Cheater!” or “Look at that idiot!” And yet, eventually all baseball players were wearing cleats and every catcher wears a chest protector.

Whatever your field of leadership, you will find yourself in the position of needing to go first at times. It will take courage. It may take innovation. Sometimes you will be ridiculed for jumping on the bandwagon with others who are using an innovation that few have yet adopted. Relatively few leaders are true innovators, but nearly every leader has been an “early adopter” at times. That means we have seen an innovation for what it is: an improvement to an old process, system, or tool of our trade. When personal computers came out in the early 1980’s, I saw at once that such a tool could revolutionize the way I prepared papers or sermons or anything I wrote. That’s no different than a baseball player recognizing that a webbed glove would do a better job of catching a baseball than a fingerless glove that covered just the palm, or a five fingered glove that provided protection for the fingers, but no good place for the ball to rest.

Thirty-seven years ago, I needed a new softball glove. I had switched from baseball to modified pitch softball, and my old glove was worn and it’s web was designed for the smaller baseball, rather than the much larger softball. I went to a sporting goods store and discovered that a new glove was on display. It was a softball glove and it had a “super monster” web designed specifically for use with softballs. The glove was fully one-third larger than my old glove. The price tag on the glove was $50, which was a high price to pay for any kind of glove in 1979. My brother Tom was with me and he knew the owner. He told the man I had just been married and I didn’t have that much money. Then he said, “Why don’t you sell it to him for $25?”

The guy responded, “That wouldn’t even cover my cost. I’d have to get at least $35.”

I said, “I’ll take it.” I had been a better than average center fielder before wearing that glove. Now, I could get to balls a few inches farther away than before, and with that “bushel basket” far more of them stayed in my glove than ever before. As you would expect, some of my teammates laughed at me when they saw the size of the glove. They told me I was cheating. The interesting thing is within the next season or two everyone was wearing gloves like that. I led the way on our team, because I’ve always been an early adopter. I don’t think I’ve ever had more than a couple original ideas, but I’ve been willing to step out and go “first” when it comes to adopting new equipment, ideas, and strategies when I could see they were an improvement. (I took good care of that glove, and used it for 34 years, before “retiring” from playing a few years ago. I still have the glove, and could use it if I came out of retirement. While this is a post for another day, it showed me that sometimes it’s better to pay more up front for a better product that will last, than to buy the “bargain,” and end up replacing it regularly.)

So where do you need to go first today? Is it in buying a household item, or tool for your work? Is it in implementing a new idea that you’ve been reading about for a while that seems to be helping others in your field excel in their efforts? Remember, sometimes you’ll go first and find out that you were wrong. That’s the topic of tomorrow’s post. What do you do then? (Spoiler alert: Be the first one to recognize you made a mistake and abandon the new way until you find a better one.) Whatever it is that you need to do differently in order to demonstrate your leadership, remember that baseball was once played without gloves. Thankfully, someone decided to go first and change that!

Here’s to leading better by going first–today!

In a recent blog post Michael Hyatt noted the five qualities of great leaders. They all started with the letter “i.” The qualities are insight, initiative, influence, impact and integrity. The post is excellent, making important points about each of the qualities. The one that jumped out at me, though, is that Hyatt noted the words Influence and Influenza both come from the same root! I had never made that connection before. Influence and influenza are both contagious, the one to our benefit the other to our detriment. Our influence as leaders is intended to spread to others, those in our immediate spheres of influence first, and then to ever expanding spheres of influence. At least if our goal is to be leaders of leaders.

While the “flu” is indiscriminate in its spread, moving from one host to another by virtue of contact, influence isn’t nearly as spontaneous. In order to influence others, particularly in order to influence them for their good we must be intentional, and we must live out all the other qualities of leaders that Hyatt identifies. As we mature as leaders, we eventually become aware that our lives matter and that our influence must be directed where it will matter the most. The flu may attack anyone in its path, but we must not take that approach as leaders. One of the most important truths I have discovered in practice over the past five years is that I have the same amount of time in a day, week, month, or year, but I must invest that time radically differently if I am to be a leader of leaders. I must invest more time in less people in order to influence more people.

Let me say that again: I must invest more time in less people in order to influence more people. At one point, my goal was simply to share the truth of Jesus Christ in His love with as many people as possible, and to help as many people as possible to come to trust Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. As they did, I would help them grow in their faith, so they would influence other people to trust Jesus as Savior and Lord. That’s a great goal, but it’s thinking of influence more or less like influenza, rather than as a leader who wants to make the maximum, possible impact. For example, at one point in New Life’s history, I wore a lot of hats. I did a lot of the pastoral care, worship, discipleship and even a fair amount of personnel development. While my primary task was to have the insight needed to see what was most important for the big picture future of New Life, I was often caught up in the details of everything else.

Over time as we have seen God bring more and more people to New Life, and as we have helped them trust Jesus as Savior and Lord and grow up in Him, we have been able to add staff members who have skills in specific areas such as pastoral care, worship, discipleship and so on. We have made it clear since the beginning of New Life that each of us must equip leaders in our areas to develop others, but while the clarity of the task was never in doubt, I often did too much of the ministry “in the trenches,” and didn’t invest enough time in equipping and developing leaders. I also didn’t invest as much time as I needed in equipping myself, and gaining new learning from others so I could be the best equipper of leaders I can be. All of this stems from my understanding of influence. The question becomes: Am I going to influence a handful of people who will influence a handful of people, who will influence…., which means that over time we can influence a tremendous number of people, or am I going to try to “infect” everyone myself? That answer to that question determines the ultimate extent of my influence–and yours.

If you want to be a “hands on” leader–and we all start out as hands on leaders if we care about people–you will never influence as many people as you could if you determined to be a leader of leaders. The choice is always ours, and the truth is we must always be willing to be hands on in a particular moment, but we must always remember that in order to influence the most people we can, we must change the focus of our influence. It must become intentional and concentrated to make the most difference over the long haul. I hope all of us are in leadership for the long haul!

Here’s to leading better by investing our influence in fewer people (leaders) who will invest their influence in far more than we ever could on our own–today and tomorrow!