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“The heart of my people-pleasing problem was a desire to do what made me feel good.”

A thought by John C. Maxwell from his book, Leadershift (p. 85). HarperCollins Leadership. Kindle Edition. (Click on the book title to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.)

Now that is an interesting thought but probably more true than we want to acknowledge.

John says, “That included an unwillingness to deal with difficult issues. To fix this I had to change the way I thought about leadership and the way I interacted with others. I had to stop seeking affirmation. I had to stop trying to be everyone’s buddy.”

John goes on, “One of the people who helped me improve in this area was my mentor, Fred Smith (the consultant, not the founder of FedEx). Once while we were discussing how to handle difficult situations with people, he said, ‘Always separate what’s best for you from what’s best for the organization.’ That statement felt like a smack in the face, because too often I had put myself first. I had always thought about what was best for me. Fred gave me a new perspective and suggested that I think about things in a different order:

1.    What’s best for the organization? ​
2.    What’s best for other people within the organization?
3.    What’s best for me?”

John continues, “By learning to ask myself these three questions in this order, I was able to clarify my motives for leadership decisions.

“I must say that during this relational leadershift from pleasing people to challenging people, I felt great loneliness as a leader. The affirmation that had been such a wonderful sound to my ears went silent during this season. The people who used to seek me out for consensus avoided me when they were unhappy. Some of the people who used to ‘toast’ me now wanted to ‘roast’ me. But as I stepped back from the crowd, I started to find myself. I discovered that if I needed people, I probably couldn’t lead them well. That gave me determination to shift from making them happy to helping them get better.

“Eventually I began to desire what was best for the people I led more than what made me feel good about myself. As the pull for approval lessened, I felt released to do the right thing as a leader. I shared the vision, raised the bar, challenged others, showed the way, asked for commitment, and stopped waiting for consensus. The organization was able to take ground, and I was able to help people start reaching their God-given potential. Those who didn’t want to go with me, I allowed to go their own way without expending all my energy trying to win them back.”

He later says, “One of the greatest lessons I learned in this season was that you never know if people are really with you until you ask them for commitment. When you ask others for commitment, you lose the uncommitted people and you gain the committed ones. When you don’t ask for commitment, you keep the uncommitted and lose the committed. You choose who you lose. I also learned that respect is most often earned on difficult ground. People respect leaders who make the hard decisions, who lead by example in tough times instead of just giving orders, who put others first, and who value people enough to ask them to rise up to the greatness that is within them. It’s been forty-five years since I made that leadershift, but I still feel how it changed me and my leadership.”

We as parents need to understand that God has not given our children to us to fulfill us.  He gave them to us to grow them, to mold them and to challenge them and not to always like us.  But we want to make a difference in them, don’t we? 

Yes, yes!

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