Leadership and relationships.

As I sat with my family in church this morning, I was moved by the joyful chorus of voices that proclaimed gratitude for the many blessings we’ve received and affirmation of the goodness of our God…and on this particular morning, God’s gift of the mothers in our lives hung heavy on my heart. As I thought about the way my own mother leads in our family, my mind paged through the memories of her countless sacrifices and the consistent selflessness that is evident in the way she gives herself to others. She lays down her time and energy every day, spending her hours giving, driving, organizing, cooking, cleaning, fixing, making, using what she has to keep the Woods’ family household functioning. And she doesn’t serve our family because its simply her role or job, or because she’s concerned about the logistics or success of our family as a mini corporation…she serves and thus leads because she loves each PERSON in our family, fueled by her RELATIONSHIP with each one of us.

 Sipping hot chocolate and listening to the rain pitter-patter on the roof, I’ve been exploring this connection between relationship and leadership in my mind, turning over the inseparable nature of the two. In his essays on servant leadership, Robert Greenleaf said, “the leader must be willing to be a servant first…focused on the needs of others.” Focused on the needs of others…leaders are not fixated on their own needs, but their focus—and thus their eyes—are directed towards to needs of people around them. Piecing through this characteristic of leadership has made me question where my focus is—am I so concerned with my own needs and desires that my eyes are too busy darting around my own situation that I am missing—or even ignoring—the needs of people around me? How often do I not just notice but focus my gaze on the needs of others? I am often frustrated by struggles with myopia—where I find myself consumed with my personal thoughts, challenges, and ideas…my hope is to develop a habit of looking for ways to serve people around me…not just shooting quick glances at the homeless man on the corner, or the woman struggling to push an overflowing grocery cart through the parking lot, or my friend going through a hard time…but to grow more sensitive to and aware of people I pass by every day, training my eyes to become accustomed to focusing on other people’s circumstances instead of my own.

In addition, a further consequence of Greenleaf’s prerequisites for leadership is that leaders value people, not needs. In order for a leader be focused on the needs of others, the “others” must be important to the leader—who considers their needs to be significant because of their relationship with the “others.” For example, my mom is focused on the needs of our family because of how much she values each member of our household, her concern for our needs stemming from her deep-seeded compassion for her children and husband. Thus, in order to be focused on the needs of other people, other people must be a priority in a leader's mind. And in placing a higher value on people in their lives, leaders subsequently value their needs and dreams more than their own. Leaders’ relationships with people foster a desire to serve.

On this Mother's Day, I am thankful for a mom who leads by serving our family day-in and day-out, challenged by the way she is truly and humbly focused on the needs of others... and I am looking forward to exploring the intertwining of leadership, relationships, and servanthood for the next 8 weeks.