Podcast, Season 2, Episode 4: Lessons On Leadership From the Life and Times of Ezra (part 4 – Get Set!)

In my thirty years of life and experience in leadership roles in Christian organizations, there are leadership lessons that I learned (and continue to learn) from the life of ministry to which God called me.  Over that time, He taught me lessons based on stories, principles, and truths from the Bible that have been translated into personal application.  This particular series of articles focuses on a set of those lessons drawn from the book of Ezra in the Old Testament, the same lessons that I have published in my latest book. This week, (along with last week and next week, and in honor of the upcoming Olympic Games in Paris) we are starting the race of leadership. Today, in part 4, it’s “Get Set!,” where we get into position to start running by first preparing ourselves, both personally and spiritually, with lives of integrity. This is the transcript of the podcast.

This is a series where we are diving deeper into principles and practices that connect biblical truth with wisdom and applying them to the practice of leadership. The purpose of the series, and of the website as a whole, is to connect faith, wisdom, and leadership in a way that will help you grow in your leadership and make an impact. That starts with realizing that God has a plan and purpose that can be trusted, whether or not we can visibly see His hand in it, and He has a part for us in this purpose.

Now we are in a 3-week subset in this series in which I am laying the groundwork for effective leadership. I am using the analogy of the starting blocks in a race, when all the runners line up and get into position, and the starter yells, “On your mark, get set, go!” (I know that the starter actually fires a starter’s pistol, and doesn’t yell “go!”, but you get the idea.) Those three commands capture the ideas I am discussing:

1. “On Your Mark” – that’s all about getting to the starting line and in the right place. As a leader, that means getting yourself into the right frame of mind and equipping yourself for what is coming. That’s what we talked about last time.
2. “Get Set” – that’s all about getting into position in the right form, so that you are best prepared to start well. As a leader, that means performing the actions that set you up to be followed and trusted. That’s what we are focusing on today.
3. “Go” – that’s when the starter’s pistol goes off and you start running. As a leader, that’s when the work begins as you start leading your people and your organization toward your mission, vision, or change. That’s we will be discussing next week.

In the specific ministry to which God had called me, part of my purpose was to help facilitate restoration, healing, and health. Depending on where the Lord placed me, that took different forms relevant to the history, context, and mission of that organization. One of those places, I discovered, was most in need of healing and restoration of relationships. I recognized God’s sovereign purpose and process in bringing me there, so when I arrived, I first took the time to learn the history and context to understand the culture and it’s needs, and I diligently sought God’s discernment and leading (those actions reflected the step of “On Your Mark!). In doing that, what I learned was that there was a tremendous level of hurt and wounding that occurred prior to my arrival, and lots of leadership dysfunction that had caused that hurt. As a result, there was a lack of trust across all levels of relationship – administrators didn’t trust the board of directors, teachers didn’t trust administrators, the board of directors didn’t trust either the teachers or the administrators, and the parents didn’t trust any of them.  For the most part, these were people who loved God and loved the organization, but the dysfunction and wounds had led to everyone’s need for self-preservation to inhibit transparency and trust, which in turn was affecting the health and function of the organization.

I knew that my most important job early in my leadership there was to help people heal and restore trust. So, that’s what I set about doing.  How I chose to do that was by first focusing my energy on being trustworthy.  I wanted everyone to see that I would do what I would say I was going to do, and that therefore, I could be trusted. Every week I would tell teachers things that I would be doing – visiting their classroom, sending out a communication to explain something, providing some resources, and many other things. Before I ever said those things out loud, I had made sure, with certainty, that I would be able to do those things. In most cases, they were things that I would have been normally doing anyway. They difference was that I said it out loud where they could hear me.  Then, I made absolutely sure that I did it. After doing that over and over again, people began to believe that they could trust me to do what I said I would do.  All I was doing was building trust. Understand that this was not manipulative behavior on my part, because I was being genuine to who I was and to what my purpose was.  Integrity is one of the virtues that I most value, and so it is important to me that people see me being who I say I am. That mattered in this context, because people could tell that not only would I do what I said I would do, but they could tell that it was a reflection of my character. The end result was the restoration of trust.  I still remember the joy I felt at the end of the school year when almost every one of my employees included “trust” as one of the top three positive factors in the year.

Here’s what really happened: I lived out in my actions what I believed to be true and important, and that produced the credibility that people needed to see in order to follow me.  In previous episodes of this podcast series, when I talked about the importance of pursuing an intimate relationship with God as well as learning to understand where He has placed you, that was all about developing the capability to lead. But when you then live a life that is clearly consistent with what you say in your words, that develops the credibility to lead. When you have both the capability and the credibility, you become an effective leader who makes an impact. I often point to Ezra 7:10 as a model of this, which says that “Ezra had prepared his heart to seek the Law of the Lord, and to do it, and to teach statutes and ordinances in Israel.” First Ezra had learned to know God, then he lived it out, and then he was equipped to lead, based on the capability from what he knew and the credibility from how he lived.

What that means for you is that if you want to succeed at the work of leadership, you first need people to accept you as the leader. Before they will do that, they need to know that they can trust you. That means that before you can do all the work that is required of leaders, you first have to live a life that is consistent with your beliefs and values, and do it transparently enough that people can see it so that they can tell that you are authentic and genuine. But even before you can live consistent with what you believe, you first have to know what you believe. In other words, before leading comes living, and before living comes learning.

The bottom line is that leadership is like starting a race:

• “On Your Mark!” – means to align yourself with truth by seeking and knowing God and knowing where He has placed you, and by establishing your foundational beliefs and values. This is where your capability comes from.
• “Get Set!” – means to live your life so that your actions and behaviors reflect those beliefs, which is another way of describing a life characterized by integrity. This is where your credibility comes from.
• “Go!” – means to step out and do the work of leadership. It’s hard work and therefore requires someone who is both capable and credible, and that’s why this step has to follow the other two.

Last week, we focused on the first step. Next week we are focusing on the third step, the crucial components of the work of leadership. But today, our focus was on the importance of living a genuine life, one where your beliefs and your behaviors match, so that people will trust who you are and be willing to follow.  As my dad would say, “Your walk talks and your talk talks, but your walk talks louder than your talk talks.” If you want people to follow you when you do the work of leadership, they first need to see that that you are living what you believe. And that’s what it means to “Get Set!”