There was a survey done by a large banking company last year trying to discover what made a leader easier to follow, and by a large margin, the number one answer is when people lead by example.
This is really good news for you. Because this is something you can choose as a leader. You can choose to be a great example. You can choose to embrace good character and make godly decisions. You can choose to learn how to relate to people. You can choose to be honest. You can choose to be sexually pure. You can choose to be generous.
Think – every weekend I generally preach 3-5 times, and I expect people to sit, listen, learn, take notes and think about what I say. You know what gives me credibility is that I am often doing that myself. I am off to Grace and Faith next week, and I already have purchased a leather notebook and expensive pen ready to take notes and listen to everything that I am going to learn. I am a lifelong learner. I am leading by example. When I preach, it is clear to most people I am not going through the motions, I have studied, I have learned, I have listened to others.
This is one of the core tenets of leaders. Those who build teams successfully do it because they model what they expect from others. They don’t ask people to do things they won’t do. All my pastors will drive 2-3-4 or more hours to go preach to just a few people – why? They are following the example I set. Some people criticize that – it’s too far for too few people – but they don’t understand the power of reaching people, so it is up to me to model that so people catch the spirit of going as far as you need to, even to reach one person!
You get to decide what kind of leader you are by deciding what kind of person you are – you set standards for yourself and they will be modelled by those who follow you.
Ask yourself today – are you the kind of leader you would be happy to follow? If not, make some different choices.
So, if you want to lead others, my suggestion is always this: set the bar for yourself as high as it can possibly be. Study, pray, work, labour, learn, think… whatever it takes to raise the bar so it. Constantly consider what else can you better, how can you improve.
Remember our credibility as leaders is our fruitfulness (see last post here) and if we want to grow as leaders and prove ourselves more effectively we must be constantly improving. Right now I am working on my Th. D. to develop my leadership. I am also being mentored by a pastor who has planted more churches that I have. Not to mention the daily prayer, Word, sermons and dreaming! IMPROVE!
Let me say it like this, and I know I am taking this quote from someone, but the truth is I am not sure who: be a success before trying to help others be a success. Think about it! I had to speak to one of our pastors this week about having a higher standard for yourself than someone else in the church – it’s called leading. If you are the leader you should be more holy and more fruitful, not less!
So, my advice to any leader or aspirational leader is the following FIVE things that will improve you, and therefore improve your leadership:
Make sure there are people you are accountable to. I don’t just mean in terms of personal holiness, though that is vital, but I mean here in terms of your leadership goals. You tell them – listen, my church is currently 30 people every Sunday, but by November, we are going to get 40 people, I am going to ask the Lord for a strategy and do it, please keep checking up on me. Or whatever kind of leadership it is. There must be goals.
Be responsible for results. You work on it, stop blaming others. If no one else is willing to work with you, that’s not their fault, it’s yours, you are the leader. Learn how to lead better. Learn how to help others, learn how to relate to others better. Spend more time with the Lord! Stop this victim mentality by blaming everyone else. If God has, for instance, called you to pastor, you have to bear the fruit of pastors. You should be reproducing after your own kind! So start expecting it and learning how to do it.
Never ask anyone to do anything you are not prepared to do. I talked about this last time, but it is vital You have to study yourself and see where your weaknesses are and hit them face on. If you don’t know, ask someone you trust and respect, and they will tell you. I see many great leaders in the sense they clearly have the skills to lead, but they have too much ego, too many fears about themselves and others, and too many habits that are just self-destructive. You have to deal with these – it’s called discipleship. You have to be able to let others shine for example. You have to be able to build a team. You have to be able to sit down and learn and not always be in the spotlight. All of these are character issues, and they open the door wide open for satan to make your leadership utterly unfruitful. IMPROVE don’t presume!
Never compromise your integrity. Make sure you know what lines you will never ever cross. Make sure you know how you treat people, and what behaviours are totally verboten to you. Make sure you have lines drawn up in terms of money, relating to the opposite sex, and checks and balances to your decisions.
Define carefully what a win is for you and your team. What is a win? What is success to you, and do not be deceived by a false success. I would not be happy to grow Tree of Life Dagenham to one thousand people but we are people who are not full of the Word, full of the Spirit, full of the nations and full of love. That would not be my definition of success. I would rather have one hundred people who are open and hungry for the Word, love the Holy Spirit and welcome Him, do not have a racist bone in their body and who walk in true Biblical love! That would be more of a success to me. What is your culture of success and what does it mean? What will you never ever do to win?
In the first part of this series, I said that the first thing you have to do as a leader is prove yourself. So, let’s consider this. Jesus made it obvious, but in a world where what Jesus says is often ignored, even in the church, let’s take the time to carefully consider what He said:
Ye shall know them by their fruits (Matthew 7.16, KJV)
By their fruit you will recognize them (Matthew 7.16, AMP)
You can identify them by their fruit (Matthew 7.16, NLT)
Jesus is telling us that we know people by their fruit. Not by their reputation, not by their title, not by how loud they are, not by how gifted they are, not by their place on the org chart, not by how well they suck up to others. But by their fruit.
There are two kinds of leaders in the world – those who are bearing fruit and getting results, and those who are not. We should be aiming to be those who bear fruit! That’s what we should be doing. It is what you produce that matters, it is what you produce that proves yourself.
Which pastor is better to learn from? The pastor who has over the last ten years planted several churches, the churches are growing, people are happy to be there, people have been saved, healed, baptised in the Holy Spirit there, miracles are happening, learning is happening, offenses are dealt with – or the one who has been to the “correct” Bible College and is platformed by the right people?
When you make it that stark the answer is obvious, but many are still confused or they just do not care about Jesus and what He said.
What you produce is what proves you. What you produce is what gives you credibility. And here is the truth, you cannot fake results. You cannot fake fruit. Either you are producing something or you are not. Either you are adding value or you are not. Either you are fruitful or not.
This is the first step to all authentic leadership – be fruitful. Be fruitful BEFORE you try and get a platform to help others be fruitful (if you are in the position where you platform others, do not platform the unfruitful because they cannot produce fruit in others if they cannot in themselves). Be fruitful. The amount of people I know who are setting themselves up as pastors of pastors, as Regional or Area pastors, as pastor’s advocates who have never been fruitful pastors is truly horrifying to me.
Be more fruitful than the people you lead – so that means, and in our age of freedom and rights most people do not understand this – it means you have to hold yourself to a higher standard than the people you lead. You should be reading the Word more, praying more, fasting more, living more victoriously, more humble, more kind, more gracious. It’s not easy, but you need to do that.
How are you led as a leader? Who is holding you accountable for bearing fruit? What is your dream for the future? You cannot be vague about having dreams or goals, you cannot mock or make light of this. If you are going to lead, you need to have goals of your fruitfulness. These are all immense issues and not side issues and must be addressed for your leadership to have any credibility.
You need to take responsibility when you make mistakes. To continue the metaphor of fruitfulness, you need to be the first to prune yourself. You cannot go around pruning others if you are not pruned. I was once at a conference and the worship was going on before the first session, and I was absolutely lost in worship. It was like it was just me and Jesus in the room, and suddenly a speaker got up and started shouting at the people that they were not worshipping well enough and for twenty minutes ranted about people using their phones during worship, thinking about dinner and whatever else.
It later transpired that this person had been actually clipping their nails during the worship, and God had spoke to them about this. Rather than lead themselves into worship, this person just ranted at everyone else in the room for twenty minutes – time that could have been spent lost in wonder at how awesome Jesus is.
You have to lead yourself first – if you are a preacher, preach to yourself first, if you a worship leader, lead yourself to worship first, if you are a pastor, make sure you lead yourself to green pastures first. As a pastor of pastors, I watch carefully to ensure our team are leading themselves first. Do not ask people to go to places you are not prepared to go to! When I see a pastor who is leading but not being led, who is feeding others but not themselves, who expects others to listen to them when they preach but they never listen to another preacher and are never in a conference unless they are platformed there – that’s someone who is not a leader!
Also, another difficult conversation we all need to have with ourselves is that intention is not fruit. Jesus did not say by their intentions you shall know them. A while back, a man with a church of around 20 people not only offered to mentor me, he very kindly offered to receive payment from me for the job. I said I am pastoring a church of 150 people, how can you help me progress? He said that he always intended to have a church of 200. That’s not fruit, that’s a dream. I believe in dreaming, dreaming is good, but dreaming does not prove you – what you produce does, fruit does.
So, focus today not on getting a title, a platform or anything else. Rather ask the Lord: what do I have to do to be more fruitful?
We talk a lot about leadership in the church, and we should. It is a vital part of being able to grow. Our lives actually depend on our ability to respond to leadership – from honouring our parents when we are young (and older), to honouring the leaders of the nation, to giving double honour to preachers and teachers. And then as we learn how to follow, we should then be stepping up into leadership – and because the lives of those we lead and influence depends so much on their response to leadership, those of us who are called to lead need to take that leadership role so absolutely seriously.
Leadership can be summed up in the word “influence”, John Maxwell says “leadership is influence”, influence is when you do something or say something that causes a desire in someone else to do something. A good teacher might influence you to learn, a good pastor might influence you to pray, to fast, to study the Word, a good father might influence you to be a good father. Good leaders create a desire in us to do things that make us better.
In the past, much of leadership has been done by what I call positional leadership. This still happens in business today, you do what the boss says because he is the boss, and it doesn’t matter about his character or example, or ability, or any relationship you have with them. But today, it’s a lot easier to find new jobs, and – relevant for us – it is a lot easier for people to also find new churches. The day in which you only work for one company and there is only one church in town is over. The world is a better place for it.
Today, to be a leader, you have to earn the right to influence people. In other words you have to answer the question: why should anyone follow you? Even if you are the boss, and have the title, you still need to answer this question, and the question expressed differently is what makes you someone worth following. You have to prove yourself. When you join the military, before you get rank (which is influence) you have to prove yourself. In most companies it is the same. In churches, it should be the same too. When your children are born, just being their mum and dad is enough to influence them, but as they mature, you need to develop your capacity to influence to help them as adults!
Claude Winninger said that letters after your name are like a tail at the end of a pig, it doesn’t change the taste of the bacon. Reading this blog will not give you letters after your name, but I believe that these posts will change the flavour of your bacon! They will help you prove yourself, develop good relationships, lead successful teams and help people reach their potential. I believe that I have over the years proven that I can build teams, proven that I am a good (though far from perfect) example of Christian discipleship and that I can help you develop as a leader.
Now if I break this down and give you steps, some people might accuse me of being impersonal – but you can follow steps and still love people! Breaking down the task of leadership and developing your ability to influence is not impersonal, it helps you help people! Just decide right now that you will treat people like people, not like objects and you can follow some steps and still grow!
One of my favourite book series is Sharpe (I also love the TV programmes with Sean Bean in as well loosely based on the books). Sharpe is all about leadership, it is about a soldier that was given the rank of leader but it took time for that leadership role to be ratified in the heart of his soldiers. He had to prove himself as a soldier, as a strategist, as a leader. He had to prove that he had his men’s best interest at heart!
He had to prove himself, he had to develop relationships, he had to build a team, and he had to raise up more leaders.
At the end of the book series, even after Sharpe leaves the army, his men are still loyal to him – it transcended his rank and position. It became part of his life. It became reality. That is manifest leadership. I believe that for you to become a leader and influence others, you must do the same as Sharpe:
Prove yourself. I am a Christian leader. What proves me? Acting Christian. The gifts on my life prove something, when I preach well, equip well, flow in the gifts, that proves something, but really Christian leadership is proved by Christian character – forgiving those who wrong you, turning the other cheek, humility, kindness, how you treat others who cannot do anything for you. Not being driven by the platform or the spotlight. I believe at the first step leadership is proven by what I call the 3 Cs – character, capability and compatibility. You need godly character to be a Christian leader – you need to love and respect others, not gossip, not slander, not be high minded, you need to be sexually pure, and holy. The best list of this character is found in 1 Timothy 3. Capability means the ability to do whatever job it is. You need to be able to do the job. That is the easiest one to make up if it is lacking, by the way. Finally, compatibility means you can work with the others in the same place. Can you submit to the leaders with joy, can you enjoy being in the team, would you be there if you didn’t have to be. All of that is compatibility, and it really matters.
Develop relationships. You cannot lead people who you do not build relationships with. You have to learn relational skills.
Building a Team. All leaders are marked by their ability to build a team. When they start a task, others gravitate to them and want to help them, whether that task is street evangelism, making teas and coffees for the church, ushering. What I love is when someone starts a task, and I see others drawn to them to help that task – that’s a sign of someone who has the character and ability to lead. The first time I noted someone’s leadership quality who is now a pastor was when they started putting out chairs, other people just wanted to help do that to be around them and be more like them.
Raise Leaders. Everything God creates gives fruit that is the same kind. Apple trees give apples. Orange trees give oranges. Giraffes have baby giraffes and dogs have baby dogs. Everything reproduces to kind. I believe that if someone has been a pastor for more than a few years, let’s say the best part of a decade, then around them should be pastors they have raised up. Sheep give birth to sheep, but shepherds have shepherds! Whatever task you are doing, before long you should have others doing what you do and multiply yourself. That is the pinnacle and the core task of leadership – to multiply yourself.
But for this kind of leadership to work, it has to be manifest leadership. You have to earn the right to influence others day by day by day. That right cannot be bought once and for all, it is only for hire, and the rent is due over and over and over again.
As a leader, you never arrive. But the people you are leading never arrive either. That’s actually good news because it means tomorrow there is something and somewhere better! We keep advancing, learning and growing. There is no such thing as static leadership. Leadership is always a walk – no journey, no leading.
Do not ever take the task of leadership lightly, do not take the fact that you influence people lightly. We just planted our 11th church. Every time we plant a new church, and we grow, I kneel before the Lord and ask Him to help me take the task of leadership seriously and do it well. The more people I influence, the more I want to lead them – not for my glory or benefit, but for theirs. I want them to walk in their dreams, I want them to develop a life of abundance.
A lot of harm is done by people who just want to feel important, and social media has not helped. People want social influence – they want likes and clicks, and they want to be noticed. They struggle to love themselves, and build their identity in their influence not in Christ, and so they become leaders but not influencing people for good! This is serious stuff, and we need to take it seriously.
Being a leader is a holy invitation from God Himself, whether it is the boss at work, the dad, the mum, the pastor, the elder, the deacon, the worship leader, the policeman, the teacher, the youth leader. Take it seriously. Good leadership influences people for the better, it can change communities, it can heal nations, it can change the world. But before we break down how to manifest leadership and bring yourself to a place where people choose to follow you, you have to realize influencing others is a huge responsibility, and take it seriously.
I will say more about this in the weeks to come, but right now – spend some time praying that you will use your influence well and for the kingdom. To influence people to love not hate, to help not hinder, to build the church not tear it down.
One of the ways that you can become a more effective leader is by being able to speak in public, and give a speech. Obviously, for those of us in Christian situations, we are thinking mainly of the sermon, but in business and other places there are times for speeches, for presentations and so on.
Even if you are not a preacher, being able to speak in public can help you if you are ever called or required to speak in front of a large group of people. This post is only going to give you some simple help, but it will help you.
Prepare Well. Don’t be moved by expert travelling ministers who are preaching a message that they have easily preached over fifty times before who get up with no notes. You need to prepare. It is essential. You need to learn what you are talking about, go through your notes, think about how you are going to say it, practise. Practise with a few friends, or your spouse.
Be Authentic. You are a unique individual. Think about the Tree of Life preachers, there are so many different personalities. Be you. You don’t have to sound like me or Richard or Lee or Patience, just be you.
Be Confident. If you are up the front speaking, someone believes in you. You are not there by accident. People want to hear you. Make sure someone there is encouraging.
Don’t talk too fast. That’s a sign of nervousness and it makes you seem unconfident.
Don’t talk too slow. That’s a sign of nervousness and it makes you seem unconfident.
Make eye contact. Look up from your notes, look around the room, and make eye contact with people. Look at them.
Do your best. You cannot do more!
BONUS TIP: have some passion. Really care about what you are talking about and the people you are talking to will care too.
All leaders will at time be in small groups, and have to communicate to small groups. If you are never in a small group, you are not a leader!
To communicate well in a small group, the first thing is to remember what you are supposed to be discussing. Lots of people in a small group will want to bring their agenda or problems or want their voice to be the dominant one, and there will be options to be distracted from what you want to do.
If you are an elder running a living church, stay with the study as much as possible, get the Word of God into people. It can be a challenge. Another challenge is that you might have something else going on and your own inner dialogue might lead the discussion another way. When I have a pastor’s meeting, I love seeing the pastors so much, I often just want to see how everyone is doing rather than help them learn a new system! Oops! To remain focused and be intentional on what the meeting is for is the number one skill necessary to be a good communicator in a small group.
How can people in the small group respond to the information if you did not give them all the information! When others are responding, you need to show that you are interested and engaged. Never be passive. I don’t mean have something to say about everything, but if you have something relevant, share it.
If you cannot communicate with others, you could have the best vision and strategy for extending the kingdom of God but unless you can communicate it, you might as well not even have it.
So, the first rule of communication is that it is two-way. You have to learn to speak and listen. You have to learn how to do that in person, on Zoom, on the phone, by email and by social media.
Some of you are better at the listening side, you have to learn to communicate by talking too. Others are good at talking, but you have to learn how to listen. Both speaking and listening add to the conversation.
The second rule of communication is work on the non-verbal side of things. Your body language will speak louder than your words whether you like it or not. You have to work on your facial expressions, you have to stand up straight. I used to work for a company that insisted we wore a suit if we had to meet a client or if we had to call a client. They realized that even wearing the suit changed our attitude and voice on the phone, and that made a difference. Smile before making a phone call! That really helps!
The third rule of communication is to genuinely care for the person you are communicating with. Authenticity makes a difference. Make the person you are talking too feel like the most important person on the planet!
All of these are pointers to skills that take a while to learn, but work out which one you need to work on most, get a good book about it and learn!
God has designed us all to be unique. And I believe that God has given each of us a lane that when we stay in it, we seem almost super-human to others. A super-power. You have certain skills and abilities that come easier to you than others, that you can handle more efficiently, that produce maximum fruit for minimum effort.
We have to find our lane and stay in our lane, and that is how we win at life. If you are an evangelist, don’t try and be a pastor. If you are a pastor, don’t try and be a prophet. If you are in the ministry of helps, don’t try and preach! When we spend effort developing a weakness – I am talking about weaknesses of skill here not weaknesses of character, they should always be worked on – then we are wasting time that could make us better at our strengths.
When I invite a guest speaker, I invite them for their strengths. Imagine I invited Andrew Wommack and he didn’t speak on grace, or I invited Jerry Savelle and he didn’t teach on favour! We celebrate people’s strengths, it is your strengths that will make you money and open doors for you. Work on your strengths. This week in Tree of Life, Christopher Alam is coming to teach on the power gifts of the Holy Spirit. I’ve never asked Riley Stephenson to do an end-times conference.
Weaknesses should be farmed out – delegated to others, or avoided completely. You do not have to be well-rounded in the tasks you can do. You do not have to drive in every lane, find your lane and stay in it. Do not become a jack of all trades, you will end up a master of none. Be narrow in your focus – develop your strengths.
When I talk on this to leaders, a question you might ask would be: how can I find my strengths or lane. Firstly, what do you love. What your passion is – that’s a huge clue to your destiny, your lane, your strengths. When you do what you love, you will see your strengths over time. You will be drawn to what you are good at. Another way is to ask your good friends, they will tell you and give you wisdom from an objective point of view.
Once you know your lane, you have to spend time and energy developing your strengths. I spend a lot of time working on what I am good at, which surprises some people, but that’s the way forward. Develop your strengths!
What are you doing right now to develop your strengths? Are you:
Reading a book right now about one of your strengths? Just opening my Kindle, I am currently reading a book on the theology of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, a book on prayer, and a book on honour. These are all strengths of mine. I am working on making my strengths stronger.
Listening to sermons on your strengths. I am currently listening to a series by Andrew Wommack on imagination (again). It’s a strength of mine, but it is going to be stronger.
Who is mentoring you in your strengths? Who is stronger than you in your strengths and can make you stronger?
What is the last conference you went to that will help you in your strengths? I am off to a prayer conference in two weeks to develop my prayer life. Praying is part of my strengths, and I am developing a strength. Every pastor should be in a pastor’s conference every year, every evangelist should go to an evangelist’s conference, every worship leader should go to a worship leader’s conference, every apostle should go to an apostle’s conference. It’s vital you develop on your level of strength and calling and in your lane.
You need to do this, and you to need to be pro-active in developing your strengths. You need a routine and you need to put things down on paper. Set a goal to listen to a sermon every day this week on one of your strengths, and write down the name of the sermon you listen to every day. Set a goal of going to a specific to your strengths conference every year, and find one now if you haven’t already got one in mind. Pray about a mentor. And be disciplined and deliberate and work on your strengths.
Working on your strengths and staying in your lane – will make you more productive, more successful, and get you greater fruit and greater results in your life and in the kingdom of God. This is why it’s very important for every leader to do this. Now when you are pioneering, starting a new church for instance, you have to do everything, and it will take time for you to find your lane and delegate the rest out, but once that happens – stay in your lane.
Maybe you are working for a ministry or even at your workplace this advice will work – speak to your boss and talk about shifting your role to focus on your strengths and doing more that is in your lane.
Some of you reading this right now need to stop working on your weaknesses and doing things you are not designed or called to do! Some of you need to become a lot more aggressive about working in your strengths and staying in your lane. Find out what you are called to do, find out what you are good at and develop it! You do not have time to do everything so find out what you do well and work on that!
One of the worst things you can do as a leader ever is stop learning. To reach your potential as a leader you have to keep learning. One of the phrases I believe in so much is lifelong learner. Right now I am doing my DMin, I am doing a course on how to mentor better, I have just come back from a pastor’s conference in Texas – learning, learning, learning. Even at our leadership conference that starts in a couple of days, I will be mainly learning.
I know a lot of people who when they reach a level they are comfortable with they stop investing in learning. I know people who reach a certain age and think school days are over – no school is never over. If you stop learning, that is why you have stopped growing. If you stop growing on the inside, you stop growing on the outside. The apostle John expressed this truth nearly two thousand years ago when he said “Beloved, I pray that you would prosper and be in health, even as your soul prospers”. In other words, your life-prosperity is directly linked to your soul-prosperity.
We have to absolutely put in the time and effort to learn more, it’s essential. I often ask my pastors and people I platform “what are you reading at the moment”, because I want to know they are making the choice to continually grow and learn!
Many people have not even started learning in life yet, I am talking about adults. They have never understood the importance of learning. I have been criticized by people for being in learning situations as much as I am, but that is just that person revealing that they have no idea of the value of learning.
The next step after realizing that learning has worth is taking responsibility for your own learning. Deliberately learning something new is the most important thing you can do for your future. You need to be deliberate about this, you need to be intentional. Choose what you want to learn and who you want to learn from. Pray about it, and ask the Lord for wisdom.
I have been dealing with someone recently who is struggling in several areas, and I found out he was learning from some very questionable ministers. I tried my hardest to help him learn from some more fruitful ministers, but he wouldn’t. That’s a tragedy. It is such a shame.
I cannot give you a specific next step for your learning, but I think everyone should learn something about faith by reading Kenneth Hagin, something about prosperity by reading Kenneth Copeland, and something about grace by reading Andrew Wommack. I’d start there if you have never read a book deliberately before. Learning about these things will change every area of your life. I am talking about promotion at work, living a life of more fruit, a deeper ministry, personal prosperity, new big wide open doors and better friendships.
It is essential to be a leader that you are a learner. I am so wary of some ministers I know who will never be in a room unless they have the microphone. I am wary of worship leaders, children’s ministers, deacons, ushers, anyone who is not learning new information all the time. We have to be constantly learning. I would recommend getting to the place where you are reading at least one book a month. You should also be listening to sermons, and finding mentors who can help you grow and develop your leadership skills. I also think everyone should be in at least two conferences a year where they are there just to learn.
When was the last time we deliberately learned something new? When was the last time you spent money on growing yourself and learning something?
Listen, if you are going into your vision but no one is coming with you, you are not a leader, you are person on a walk. You have to develop some people skills! It’s amazing how many pastors and leaders don’t have people skills. Some are only interested in speaking to those who can promote them and their ministry. I was in a conference recently in which I was being ignored mainly, until someone realized I had ten nice platforms they could teach on, and considerably more money than most of the other ministers in the room. Then suddenly, I became a person of interest. Not because of my wisdom, my personality, not for friendship but because of what people could get from me. That’s not people skills, that’s sycophantism and it is obvious and it is repulsive.
Other pastors are so nice and kind to everyone that if someone stabbed them they would apologize for getting blood on their knife. They don’t know how to say no. They do not know how to confront people. That’s a skill that is lacking in many churches. Jesus knew how to say no. Jesus knew how to confront people. Jesus did not let people manipulate or intimidate Him.
But at the same time, Jesus had strong and healthy relationships. He once called Peter satan, but the next day, Peter showed up looking for more work from Jesus. That’s a strong relationship!
Leadership at its most basic level is influencing others, so your ability to connect to others is directly linked to your leadership ability. You have to learn to start new relationships and connect to people, you have to be the one who starts things. Proverbs 18.24 says that a man that has friends must show himself friendly. Don’t moan that no one is calling you or texting you, pick up your phone and call and text others. Listen to other people, find out where they have come from, find out what their life is all about, what they care about – and you will build relationships. Don’t be too busy working to build relationships with the people – people is the work!
You have to learn how to communicate clearly. Communication is a two-way street, not a one way street, so not just talking, listening too. Even in preaching, which is fairly one-way as a means of communication, I can feel if the congregation hasn’t grasped something so I need to go over it again, or if they have got really excited about something so I need to speak more on that. There’s always two directional traffic in good communication.
One of the best ways to build good relationships is to support people when they are going through hard times. We all need that kind of support at times, and if you are the one providing it, you will be able to lead more effectively. Now do it for real, don’t do it to increase your leadership base. Don’t do it to earn brownie points with someone, don’t do it to make someone guilty or indebted to you, just do it out of love. But one of the benefits will be that!
Another key I have found to good relationships is to be positive. People gravitate to positivity. There is a serious lack of positivity in this world. When you start saying something like “When I pray, things happen”, “I can help you beat this”, “we are going to see some miracles today”, “we are going to get to where we are going”, some people will get their back up, mainly because they don’t want to put any effort into changing, but others will be drawn to that kind of faith and positivity. That is the kind of relationships you should be building.
Working on people skills is something that will take the rest of your life. Deliberately do it. Find people who are good leaders and learn from them. Actively work on good friendships.
Inspiring and Challenging Dreamers 