Last time we talked about the first stage of leadership, which is leading ourselves. We cast a vision for our own future and then proactively work toward that vision. The second stage of leadership puts an emphasis on others.
I’ve been brought up to think that I’m good as long as I “uphold my end of the bargain.” We have sayings like, “At least my side of the street is clean.” Most of my life I have been concerned primarily about my part. So long as I wasn’t the one who made the mistake, the one who provoked others, the one who left the chore undone, etc, then I was good. If anything went wrong, at least it wasn’t my fault.
As I look around I think others are working under this same approach.
But this approach is the antithesis of great leadership. Great leaders don’t just take care of “their side of the street.” Instead they are concerned with how others are doing and point others toward a better future.
Just so you know, I still need to work at this, and work hard. My default is still to just make sure I’m doing right, and then let others do whatever.
Example From Marriage
Let’s talk about the specific example of marriage. For the longest time in my marriage, I would just make sure I didn’t mess up in the marriage. I think Rena too just made sure she didn’t mess up. Of course this doesn’t work all the time. So for a long time, our marriage was two individuals living together hoping it continues to work out. Sound familiar?
Then one day, I realized that we had been creating the marriage we had up until that time, intentional or not (mostly not). And if we wanted our marriage to be different, we could just decide to make it different. Someone just needed to initiate and paint the future marriage we wanted to make. So, I started doing this to a degree. And even the little “painting” I had done made a huge difference. Our marriage now is vastly different than it was just a few years ago.
In simple terms, I started leading in our marriage. Instead of it just wandering along with a sense of uncertainty, our marriage started to be guided more intentionally. I stopped being concerned with just myself and what I was doing and started to be concerned about what we were doing together.
The Second Stage of Leadership
This is the second stage of leadership: to be concerned with others and how we’re doing together.
This is important for our calling. When we discover our calling and we have a vision for the future, it will gain a lot momentum when others join us. Others will join us when our callings are in alignment. But people won’t join us if we’re not leading.
There are people waiting for us to lead them. Are we ready?
