your personal leadership will mean that you are not able to fully focus on other things, like the development of others, growing effective teams or guiding an organization. Neglecting your personal leadership can unravel everything. The news provides examples of this reality virtually every day in stories of gifted, talented and experienced team or organizational leaders who are disqualified because of poor personal leadership.
Leading yourself well is an act of stewardship. It also prevents you from becoming a bottleneck and prepares you for future opportunities. If you lead yourself well, other people will take notice and doors will open.
Personal leadership is also a strategic leverage point. You can seek to influence others, but they can choose to ignore, resist or even combat your leadership. You don’t have ultimate control of how others respond. But, you do have ultimate control on how you respond.
This doesn’t mean that personal leadership is all up to us. We don’t have the power or will to change ourselves. Ultimately, God’s forming work is his work. Jesus is the vine, God is the gardener, and we are the dependent branches. As Jesus says in John 15:5, “If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” At the same time, our role isn’t passive. As we remain in Christ, we are partnering with God’s work in and through us.
But this isn’t easy. Our biggest leadership challenge actually looks back at us in the mirror every morning. It’s us. Dee Hock writes,
The first and paramount responsibility of anyone who purports to manage is to manage self…It is a complex, unending, incredibly difficult and oft-shunned task. We spend little time and rarely excel at management of self precisely because it is so much more difficult than prescribing and controlling the behavior of others. However, without management of self no one is fit for authority no matter how much they acquire, for the more authority they acquire the more dangerous they become.2
There are far too many news reports and stories of called, gifted and trained leaders who implode or cause great harm to others. This usually doesn’t happen because of lack of giftedness, education or skills. They implode and wreak havoc because they didn’t lead themselves well.
The focus of Leading Me is about inviting God and partnering with others to radically transform and practically lead the most important and most challenging person you can lead—yourself. Though I’m assuming that Christian leaders are the primary readers of Leading Me, personal leadership is a requirement for everyone. Whoever you are and whatever you do, you are responsible to lead yourself today and every day.
Leading Me is split into two distinct sections. Here is how the book is laid out:
•Section 1—Chapter 1 helps you to better understand your unique partnership with God in leading you. Chapter 2 provides a biblical framework of God’s design for your life so you have a clear target in mind as well as an evaluative tool.
•Section 2—Chapters 3 to 12 focus on eight key practices for leading yourself well. These practices are rooted in Scripture and based on the proven process of the Arrow Leadership Program. If you intentionally focus on these eight areas, you will develop a solid foundation, practical toolkit and user-friendly pathway for leading yourself effectively over the long haul.
One last thought before you continue on. Leading Me isn’t designed to be read in one sitting. It’s intended to be read and processed slowly over time. So, take one chapter at a time and reflect. Make some notes in a journal. The reflection questions at the end of each chapter will help you to process, share and apply your learning on your own or in the context of a mentoring relationship or small group environment.
Reflection Questions
1.Reflect on the story of the tree in the backyard. What stands out to you from the story and metaphor?
2.What words or phrases would you use to describe the kind of impact or legacy you would like to leave?
3.How do you need to grow in your own personal leadership to be a faithful steward in living and leading well?
Section One
Chapter 1—The Starting Place
King David’s resume was pretty impressive. A gifted musician and poet. A bold and courageous warrior. A skilled strategist. A called, chosen and anointed leader. A man after God’s own heart. The list could go on and get much longer.
In this midst of these qualities, skills and gifts, David faced many significant leadership challenges. For starters, there already was a king. Not only was there a king, but Saul was an insecure and unstable king who regularly flew into blind and violent rages against David. He also had David hunted through the wilderness like wild game.
Another leadership challenge was David’s team. In the early days, this motley crew must have been quite a handful. In 1 Samuel 22:2, they are described: “all those who were in distress or in debt or discontented gathered around him, and he became their commander. About four hundred men were with him.” Not exactly the textbook DNA of a high performance team. In later days, David’s military commander, Joab, went rogue and murdered Saul’s military commander after he had brokered a peace deal with David. And it’s painfully clear that David’s own son Absalom rebelled, led a coup and publicly disgraced his father.
Added to these challenges was external opposition. Whether it was facing down a giant, overcoming powerful enemies, or dealing with the taunts of hecklers, David regularly navigated situations of great pressure and difficulty that would stretch virtually any leader to the limits.
Despite this list of significant leadership challenges, I believe David had a much greater and much more personal leadership challenge. At the core of all of these challenges is David’s personal leadership. If David hadn’t partnered with God in leading himself well, the negative impact to himself, his team and his cause would have been much greater.
David’s biggest leadership assignment and leadership challenge was himself. When David had opportunity to kill Saul, he could have done so to the applause of his team. Instead, David found self-control to hold back as well as courage to rebuke his team. In the loneliness of the caves and life on the run, it would have been understandable if he had been overcome by despair. Instead, he persevered in trusting and worshipping God.
When Ziklag was destroyed by fire and the wives and children of David as well as of his men were taken captive, David could have been consumed by his own raw emotions or by the threats of his followers. Instead, he sought out and listened to God for his next steps. When confronted by Nathan, David’s pride and sense of self-protection could have rejected the rebuke and led to even greater consequences. Instead, he responded with humility, brokenness and repentance.
David’s personal leadership in partnership with God made the difference in each of these situations. But we also know that David had a major lapse in his personal leadership. When other kings were setting off for war, David didn’t join his men. We can speculate on the reason for David’s choice to stay home, but we know that lust and a sense of entitlement took over when he gazed down on a bathing Bathsheba. David’s lapse in personal leadership spiraled into more sin, with deceit and ultimately murder. This failure wasn’t about David’s giftedness, calling or competency as a first-chair leader. This failure was about David’s personal leadership.
The consequences were enormous. It offended God and weighed David down with guilt. The ripple effect left both Uriah and the son of David and Bathsheba dead. It put a dark asterisk beside David’s record as a leader. It contributed to calamity within his family,
