This Leadership Hack is the Hardest: First, Lead Yourself

How I First Learned about Self-Leadership and Why I Still Strive to Do It.

Six years ago, I led a board meeting for the non-profit I was starting up. LeaderWorks was going to be an organization that provided leadership coaching, consulting, and resources for church leaders. I explained this vision for LeaderWorks to my newly minted board members. I was eager to help young leaders become better leaders.

One board member, a retired and successful man in his mid-sixties — about my age — said something that had the ring of truth to it, even though I didn’t like hearing it. He said, “There are lots of ways to be a good leader, but they all start with the same idea: First, you must lead yourself.”

“There are lots of ways to be a good leader, but they all start with the same idea: First, you must lead yourself.”

I didn’t want to believe it. Even after 40 years of being a leader in churches, I imagined that exercising leadership was all about tactics, demonstrating a courageous, out-in-front, visible kind of influence that helped others follow. I knew it wasn’t only that — leadership is a complicated skill. It is as individual as the leader. But my friend’s comment stayed with me.

The point is made clearly if we add a few words to a well-known phrase: People will not care how much you know until they know how much you care…about personal management.

I have discovered how true it is. It is the first step — and the hardest step — to effective leadership. Leading and managing ourselves — our mind, body, and spirit through good habits, personal discipline, and integrity — might be the hardest thing about leadership.

The 15th-century monk, priest, and writer Thomas à Kempis said it this way: “Your first and principal business is to possess your own soul; when this is done, everything else will be added to you.” This sounds eerily and wonderfully like Jesus saying to his disciples, “Seek first the Kingdom of God, and its righteousness, and everything else will be given to you.”

The great Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon added his characteristic boldness to the same idea with this quip, “A man has no right to rule others, who cannot rule himself.”

Most leaders want to lead others. This desire is not usually an ego trip or a lust for power or control. Leadership can feel like a burden for those who desire to lead. Leadership is a deep-seated feeling of restlessness when a group of people want to go somewhere, but there is one there to point the way.

A person’s desire for leadership often arises out of a love of the mission, purpose, opportunity, or goal of the group. The love for the mission is so strong and passionate that the leader will stand in front of others and say, “I think I know a way to do this. Follow me!” And hopefully, others will follow.

But people will not follow — and why should they? — if the leader isn’t leading themselves — their body, mind, and spirit — exercising self-discipline, self-mastery, and compassionate care of self and others.

DAVID ROSEBERRY lives in North Dallas with his wife, Fran. David leads a non-profit ministry called LeaderWorks and consults and teaches church leaders nationwide. David has written many books that are available on Amazon. Follow him here on Medium or go to the LeaderWorks website to see his book and sign up for his occasional newsletter.