I’ve heard leadership been defined as a characteristic in one person that another person naturally wants to follow. 

Being a pastor on staff in the evangelical Church today, one would hope (especially me) that one characteristic used to describe me would be… a “leader”.  But I’m just now learning probably the most elemental leadership lesson that there is.

Most of my leadership style thus far has been to ask an individual to do this or do that….that “no, we are not going to do that” or “sure we can do this” without proper thought behind the decision, and to be honest the majority of the time not having or showing much concern for the individual that’s supposed to be being “lead”.

BIG MISTAKE!!

I’m in the process right now of recruiting small group facilitators for our developing small groups program.  As I sit down with an individual one-on-one during this process, it comes to me clearly like a slap in the face:  I cannot just ask this person, “hey, do you want to be a small group facilitator?”  No!  I have to develop a relationship with them first.  I have to ask them how their wife is doing, how their husband is doing, how their kids are doing, how work is going.  I have to show an interest in them!

But even then I don’t jump directly to the “task at hand”.  I begin to speak vision into their lives….vision of how God can use them, vision in how I view their leadership capabilities in this type of ministry, vision of why small groups are such an integral necessity for our church.

After this, that’s when the request of the task comes in.

If you haven’t learned this leadership lesson yet, you better learn quick.  Because if not, you soon won’t have too many followers.

Lesson learned…..leadership begins with the person, not the task.