I was thinking about leaders today and looking at a picture that came across my desk. My mind settled on the picture to the right and a question came to mind: does the word leader match with what is displayed in this picture? The picture is of a number of students in a leadership development exercise. I ended up falling in love with the picture because of its depiction of leadership for two reasons:
We are never asked to lead alone.
Most leadership pictures are focused on the leader, this was focused on those being led!
We can’t lead alone; so many of us try, including me at times. I attempt to shoulder too many things in the various areas I lead. I justify this isolation to protect those I am leading and to prove my competence as a leader. As noble as it may feel, it is important to recognize that I need people beside me. I don’t need people to follow me; I need people who are beside me. Anybody in leadership (and I believe everybody can lead in some way) needs people beside them. Not just following, but walking beside.
If somebody is physically following you and you start to lean, the only thing that happens is they lean too as they follow you. This is why so many places have cultures that cause burn-out and major stress. Each one of us can be guilty of leading alone!
When we have people beside us, they keep us from drifting. The weight is shared and we move forward together. They help set boundaries and alert us to potential drift and the issue causing the drift. As they help bear the burden, they keep any one person from leaning in a harmful direction. So many things can happen when you lead with people beside you instead of behind you. We all need people beside us, we can’t lead alone.
God knows we need this, in most situations where He has called people to lead there has been somebody with them. Moses and Aaron, Joshua and Caleb, David and Jonathon, David and Joab, Jesus and His disciples, Paul and Barnabas. We are better together!
Secondly, leadership is never about power positioning or image. The stereotypical leader is seen as the one standing up while everybody else sits; the main-stage speaker; the distant-yet-elevated member of the team. While this can be a part of leadership, it is only one lens through which leadership is defined. The moments of leadership that matter most are the ones where the leader is serving the people beside them. Jesus even spoke to this while here on earth!
Matthew 20:26-28 says, “It shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave, even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
No matter what our leadership roles look like, our heart should always be aligned with that of Christ Jesus. When we do get up and speak or take charge it is because that is what serves the people we are leading, not because we want to be a strong leader. This is the biblical model of leadership!
This is seen in the picture above where a group of friends is trying to rearrange themselves on a board by their birth date and learning they need to serve their teammates for success.
This picture is not of a fun activity by a bunch of youth, but a picture of leadership. It’s a picture of people leading alongside each other and serving one another to accomplish a task.
We need to see more of this picture! We need to see more servant leadership!
So, how can you model servant leadership where you are? How can you bring people around you and serve them?
