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?
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