Leading From Who You Are
Everybody leads. From the lowest position on the org chart to the highest. Every person is leading someone. It is not a question of whether or not you can lead. You are. So, you might as well choose to lead well. Every interaction you make with a fellow staff member, a congregational member, a visitor, even with the person checking you out at the grocery store. You are leading. Everybody leads someone. God has created every person with a unique design, a profile, that will help them lead in every situation they face. Yes, God has wired everyone to lead and to be a leader. It is up to you to steward those qualities, to learn about them, and how to leverage them in an appropriate way to influence the people you are around in a positive way.
Have you learned about the unique characteristics of yourself that will help you lead well
Are you regularly choosing to add value to people around you, or are you taking value away from those people?
Leading well entails an intentional effort to learn the ins and outs of who you are and the four key areas that influence how you will lead. Every person has a mix of these areas and none of them determine whether or not you can lead, or whether you are a good leader or not. Great leaders learn how their unique design impacts their leadership and leverage the strengths of that design to build the people of the organization up.
Here are the four aspects of your design that God has given every person that will impact how you lead:
Behavioral Style
It is ultimately immaterial which system you use to give definition to your personality type. DISC, Myers-Briggs, Enneagram, whatever you want to call it. Ideally, use one that helps you identify your disposition, the strengths/weaknesses of your profile, and that you can easily understand. Every person has a personality profile. You have one. God wired you together with it. It has great strengths and it has great weaknesses. You will lean towards tasks, people, or something in between. You might lean towards a highly dominant personality, or tend to stay more quiet and observe. No personality type is inherently better, or worse, than the others. No type determines whether or not you are a leader. Your behavioral style, or type, will help you see what sort of roles you would be stronger in and what roles would be more challenging, or frustrating, for you. Your type will help you recognize what strengths and abilities you bring to the leadership table.
Spiritual Giftedness
For the purpose of this article, let’s focus on what are called the Motivational Gifts ground in Romans 12. Every believer has gifts given and empowered by the Holy Spirit. These gifts are a vital component of leading. Again, your gifts don’t dictate whether or not you can lead, but they help you recognize how you will approach leadership. A person with the gift of service will start from the point of,”What can I do to help?” A person with the gift of administration will start from a point of organizing people and things. Naturally, spiritual gifts have strengths and weaknesses. Learning about your gifts, along with all of the gifts, will help you navigate leading. Knowing how you will typically respond to a leadership stimulus will help you either step into it, or it can help you look at a problem in a different way.
Extro/Introversion
This area is all about your energy. In life there are things that take energy away from us and there are ways that all of us seek to recharge that depleted energy. For an extrovert energy is increased through groups, people, social situations, stimuli, and other sorts of activity. An introvert recharges through quiet, alone time, and other far less stimulating environments. Neither is better or worse than the other. Learn how to use this area to your advantage as a leader. If you lean towards introversion, recognize that one-on-one conversations and interactions will be easier for you and play to your strength. If you are extroverted, use your group interactions to encourage people and learn more about them. Recognizing how you recharge is vital to having the stamina and energy to keep leading.
Life Experiences
There are things only you have walked through, seen, lived, and grown through. God can and will use your life experiences, both good and bad, to help you lead other people. Your experiences are your own, but when shared they can become a valuable influence to the people you lead. Drawing on, reflecting on, and learning from your past success and failures helps build a leadership instinct for future decisions. Set aside time on a regular basis to reflect on what you have learned, what you are learning, and what you still need to learn. As a leader, invest time in learning about the life experiences of the people you are leading. These things can provide important insight into why and how they will act.
Make time to develop your understanding of your own leadership areas. Over the course of your life these traits will largely stay consistent, but it takes effort to see them mature in your own leadership capacity. Don’t buy the lie that some people can’t lead. Everybody leads and these qualities will help you understand how you will lead the people around you.