Have you ever heard someone talk about leadership using words that sound so cliché that you either tune out or turn off whatever you’re listening to?

Not that you’re so arrogant to think you got this but when someone pushes out something that sounds like it belongs on the inside of a fortune cookie, you question the credibility of the speaker/author/teacher. Right?

So if I told you that each of us need to learn how to “lead ourselves before we attempt to lead others,” you might be thinking: Yep, I’m done with this blog post!

Don’t be.

Check this out. It could be the most important piece of leadership advice you ever hear. And it wasn’t even my idea!



While listening to one of the 20,000 podcasts that Pastor Stephen sends me every week, I heard pastor and well known leadership guru Andy Stanley begin to speak about what it means to “lead yourself.” Truth, I almost turned it off…come on Andy!! That’s all you got??

Then I actually listened to what he was saying and almost started to cry.

My thoughts:
Am I really leading myself to expand and deepen my capacities as a Christ-follower/Husband/Father/Pastor?

or

Am I just settling for old habits and patterns that got me where I am today?
Wow.

It was tough because I realized I wasn’t doing such a good job at leading myself. How could I expect people to follow a leader that wasn’t leading himself?

Well...no more of that.

Change is happening.

And it hurts. BUT I think it’s helping.

Interested yet? Here are some questions to take a moment and ask yourself honestly to see where you might be at:
A year from today, if I made no changes, would I be happy and satisfied with who I had become as a ___________ ? (insert your roles)

When was the last time that I truthfully evaluated my spiritual maturity and felt convicted enough to do something about it? Did anything change?

If someone got to walk with me through a day and see everything I did, would they want to be on my team?
Now look, I’m not a psychologist, but I’m sure there is a line between leading yourself well and unhealthy obsessive thoughts about not being satisfied with “where you’re at”. But let’s be honest, there’s probably a very limited amount of people in the latter category.

So, get after it team! Let’s learn more about what it means to lead ourselves well and see what God does with it. Just my two cents.