There is a philosophy that’s virtually universal and taught in many religions called the Golden Rule. It simply states: Do to others what you’d have others do to you.

My mentor, Zig Ziglar  has often taught “You can have anything you want if you’ll just help everybody else get what they want.” That’s simply a restatement of the Golden Rule, and it’s right on. Leadership begins and ends in helping other people achieve what they can’t have unless you help them obtain it. God gave you unique keys to the locks in people’s lives when He especially gifted and positioned you to make a unique difference in the world. Choosing to use those gifts, abilities, resources, & vision to make a difference for others is leadership—Servant Leadership.

Who is Depending on You?

Core Value #1 in our company states: It’s about the people depending on us. Those people are the focus of your leadership. Who are they? Family. Co-workers. Employer. Neighbors. Fellow church members.

The first person depending on you, is you. No one else is responsible for your achievement but you. So the first place you exert leadership is in making a difference for yourself. Only when you become everything that God uniquely created you to be, can you then be a leader who helps to make a difference for other people.

You were uniquely created for a purpose. Finding and fulfilling that purpose is the greatest exercise of leadership.

Well-meaning, but misinformed Christians often parrot a line about the importance of being a servant leader, but they have no idea what it means. Often it gets reduced to “serve ME” by “agreeing with ME and doing what I want you to do.” But servant leadership is actually about doing the greatest good for the most people. It has nothing to do with being mild mannered, politically correct, socially acceptable, or making people feel good. It has everything to do with moving them forward in the way that will help them. Help them what? Whatever. Help them with a problem. Help them meet a need. Help them become more or better.

I’m not an athlete or a sports fan, but I love sport for its analogies. In our company we often speak of “moving the ball” or “moving down the field toward the goal line.” That’s what leaders do; they help others move toward the goal line. They call plays. They run them. They redeploy resources and reassign people as needed. They do what is necessary to help their team score. That is how they best and most effectively serve others.

When Jesus talked about serving, He taught that greatness came from serving ALL. That’s interesting. I’ve heard a lot of preachers and teachers emphasize “serving” but I’ve only heard one ever tie together the notion of “greatness” and “all.”  Wow! That’s big. If you want to be everything you can potentially be and really make your mark on the world—really make a difference—you need to find a way to help the most people possible; as Jesus put it—all!

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Coming up Next: YOU are essential to THEIR success.

Incarnational leadership is never about yourself; it’s always about others. It’s never about elevating yourself, or about exerting your power, or gaining personally. Instead, leadership is about using your gifts, abilities, resources, and vision to make a difference for others. That difference can be as simple as helping someone master a concept (as a teacher), or as complex as heading up a global peace initiative.

Whether in your family, your job, your church, your community, or the place you work, it’s all about making progress for others. THAT is what servant leadership does.

Arguably the greatest leader in history, Jesus of Nazareth is recorded in the Gospel of John, chapter nine, as saying that if you want to be great, you must be the servant of all.

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Coming up next: Misconceptions of Servant Leadership

Leadership is essential to achieving your goals. In most cases, you can’t achieve them by yourself. You are going to need help. But you are the one who sees the vision the clearest and tastes it the strongest, so you’ve got to help the people around you—people who in my case God put there—see the same vision you see. You’ve got to lead them.

True leadership is in short supply. There are many people in corner offices with big titles, but far fewer who are truly incarnational leaders—the type who embody the vision.

I’ve reflected a lot on leadership recently trying to understand why it was in such short supply. I’ve concluded that leadership deficiencies stem from mistrust. The average person believes people in leadership are in it for themselves, and many are. Those who are positions of leadership often assume others have the same self-interests they do, and so in order to protect their position and the benefits it gives them they refuse to make way for more capable younger or newer leaders. Those self interests can be financial, but more often they are about power (which is way over-rated); simply lording it over others. I’ve seen this happen in church, in organizations, and in companies with which I’ve been involved. Invariably it goes back to small people so insecure in themselves and so unconfident in who they are that they hold a tight grip on their own church, or company, or organization and strangle the life from it by holding on.

It happens over, and over again in the same cycle. Children see it in their parents and then exhibit it in their own adult lives; planting the same seeds of distrust, watering them with incapability, and eventually reaping a harvest of un-success, all because they don’t understand what leadership is.

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Coming up next: Leadership Means Making Progress for Others

I was reading in Proverbs today, something I try to do everyday–you know there is a chapter of Proverbs for every day of the month–and I pray for wisdom. In chapter 18, verse 18 it says “Casting the lot settles disputes, and keeps strong opponents apart.”

Some observations:

1. It’s not about who is right or who is wrong, winning or losing, its about deciding. There may be a clear right or wrong. There may be many shades of gray. Or it may just be a mess that we can’t really untangle. Whichever the case, the “issue” has everybody frozen. All forward motion has ceased, and when the herd isn’t moving forward the individuals in it tend to stand around and pick on each other. The objective is to move forward, and the rendering of a decision—right, wrong, offensive to all or none—at least gets it over and allows everyone to move on. I’ve won cases and I’ve lost them. The important thing is they are in my past.
2. Casting the lot doesn’t really require much skill. You just have to roll the dice, or flip the coin. In ancient thought there was the idea that God controlled how the lot fell, and certainly I think He could, and sometimes does, but I also think that sometimes the lot just falls the way it falls. It is not ours to control how the lot falls, it’s ours to cast it—to make the decision—so that everyone can get unstuck and move forward.

Personally, I get stuck sometimes. I want to win. Particularly when I am sure I am right. And, I try not to get “at issue” with someone unless I think its a big deal and I am sure I am right. Sometimes I even want to punish someone, because frankly, I think they deserve punishment and I can even create a very valid Biblical argument that well justifies our meting out punishment to an erring brother.

My guess is that many people get sucked into this quagmire of right and wrong and punishment. And that’s rarely the point.

We’d all be better off if we could let go of winning and losing, of right and wrong, and focus instead on making the decision that allows everyone to move forward. Forward motion holds the reward. Whether they like it or not, Wisdom moves people forward.

Cast the lot. Settle the dispute. Make the decision. Say “Earl, you pay me to give you advice. Should I give you advice that will make you angry, or only advice that you want to hear?” If he says he doesn’t want advice that will anger him, that’s forward motion. You have now discovered someone who should not be your client. YOU can move on! But if Earl says he’s willing to hear, then tell him it’s time for him to move forward and not waste time and energy on what happened back there. “Settle the dispute” in his MIND. That may be the only place it exists. The opposing party may not even know there is an issue.

Ultimately, the best thing you can do for a client is provide them leadership that gets them unstuck and moving forward!