Speaking to the training partners of World Serving Leaders, I want to reflect a little bit with you about “what is at the root of our worldwide company and purpose”.
When we have a skill that we want to bring into the marketplace, you are skillful trainers. When we have a passion that motivates us to do something, you are people who have seen the impact of good leadership and bad leadership. When we have special knowledge, each of you is certified in serving leadership, and you’ve done many things over the years that have qualified you to speak into the lives of others.
When we bring our skill, knowledge, passion, and experience to bear, that isn’t all we’re bringing. We’re also bringing our identity. We’re bringing our character.
When we do things that we hope are of service to others, we impact them as a fundamental expression of who we are not just what we know, and not just what we can do.
In years gone by, what I did was train leaders. I trained leaders who owned companies, who pastored churches, who ran hospitals, who were heads of universities, and who served in government. I was training serving leadership skills and practices to leaders who were running their organizations and institutions.
But we have grown so quickly and so broadly that I can’t do that anymore and still be faithful to the calling we’ve been given.
So I have pivoted my work to serve the training partners of World Serving Leaders. That’s you.
If you’re not part of World Serving Leaders, if you’re not a trainer or certified partner with us, you are welcome to listen in. But I want to focus on things that can help World Serving Leaders trainers across the U.S., across the U.K. and Europe, across Africa, across Asia, and across Central and South America become better at making a positive impact by training leaders.
Today, I want to focus on who you are. Who we are. What is our culture at World Serving Leaders? How do we understand the core nature of our identity and our character?
Because you know that you can have, for example, a super skillful engineer standing beside another super skillful engineer in an engineering firm and they can have two completely opposite impacts depending on who they are.
One engineer may be thinking about what they can get out of it. Maybe they’re insecure. Maybe they’re constantly thinking about how people view them. Maybe they’re worried about hitting their bonus.
The other engineer has an identity that is other-centered. They go to work everyday thinking, “I can make a difference for people today.”
Those two engineers are not going to show up the same way.
You and I have talked about this many times, my training partners, my friends. Who we are, and how we bring ourselves to serve our clients through the tools of serving leadership, has a massive impact. In fact, it often has a decisive impact on our outcomes.
I want to say a few things by way of encouragement and reminder. These are simple, but important.
First: we are serving leaders.
Of course you might say, “Well, of course we are, that’s the brand we wear. That’s the company’s name.”
But you know as well as I do that we can lose track of that. We’re human beings. We become anxious. We become self-centered. We get hurt. We become fearful. We need to make a living. We need to take care of our families. We hope people view us well.
All the human conditions are our human conditions.
So, I need to be reminded, and I want to remind you in this first message to our partners: we are serving leaders.
We’re not here for ourselves.
When we get up in the morning, when we prepare to talk to a prospect who we hope will allow us to serve them, when we stand in front of a room of leaders and work with them—it is powerful to remember that we are there for them.
We are client focused. We are other-centered.
Our great joy, our security, our future, our impact, our legacy of it will flow from remembering that we are here to serve, not to serve ourselves.
You know that one of my favorite Bible verses is found in Matthew 20. In that passage, the mother of James and John, the sons of Zebedee, comes to Jesus to negotiate positions for her boys.
She asks Jesus to put one at his right hand and one at his left.
Jesus then has a conversation with them. I won’t unpack the whole passage today, but what Jesus says is powerful.
He tells them, “You are not going to lead your lives the way the world does.”
The way of the world is to lord power over others, to make more of yourself than you should, to elevate yourself and push others down.
But Jesus says that is not the way.
If you want to be great, if you want to have impact and make a difference, serve.
If you want to be first, put yourself last.
And then Jesus says something remarkable: “I’m not just instructing you on how to live. This is what I’m doing too.”
“I did not come to be served. I came to serve.”
Friends, I find this incredibly helpful.
We have bad days. We have hard seasons. Nothing deeply valuable for the world is easy. Easy things are easy, but they aren’t transformational.
Transformation requires character.
We grow in perseverance through adversity. We grow in character through suffering. That’s very clear.
One powerful way to stay grounded is to remember that we are not here for ourselves.
The wonderful thing is that our Lord has our back. We don’t need to constantly guard ourselves because He is taking care of us.
He takes care of the sparrows. He will take care of us.
Our Lord frees us from anxiousness, insecurity, fear, greed, and the darker impulses of “What can I get?”
Because of that, we can lay those things down.
We can place our attention on the people in front of us and ask:
How can I make them stronger? How can I add to their skill? How can I help them solve their problems? How can I serve them?
If you look at the DNA of World Serving Leaders and you know the Serving Leader Compass, you know that we begin with DNA.
Who are you?
We are a company devoted to service.
It is a joy for us to serve you. It is a joy for us to serve one another. It is a joy for us to serve our communities, our organizations, our churches, our businesses, and the leaders in our governments.
It is a joy for us to build others up.
So I wanted to begin here at the beginning.
Who are we?
We are men and women devoted to serving others, not to making ourselves more than we are.
We are people who can build true community because we are truly with one another.
The problem with self-serving behavior with ego, anxiety, insecurity, and fear is that it fractures our bonds with one another.
But when our hearts are focused on service, we can truly be present with each other.
You can learn from me, and I can learn from you.
You can share what is difficult for you, what you’re struggling with, where you’re hurting and I can do the same.
We can truly be with one another when our hearts, minds, and spirits are centered on serving.
So, friends, today, for these few minutes, let me encourage you and remind you what a privilege it is to lay our lives down for others.
What a privilege it is to follow our Lord and Savior, who had the greatest impact on the planet by serving.
Let me encourage you today to take whatever you are struggling with as a human being and place it before the Lord who loves you.
Then ask a simple question:
Who could I serve today?
Who could I call today? Who could I visit today? Who could I share serving leadership with today?
Whether they reject me or not is okay, because I’m not in the business of avoiding rejection.
I’m in the business of serving.
Who could I visit, the person who has been on my mind?
You can go to them without fear of the outcome. If your devotion is to serve, you can always be sure of the outcome.
You can serve them. You can encourage them. You can share with them.
Because that is who we are.
We are serving leaders.