S 2 Episode 2.2 : Jada Edwards Discusses How to Lead Others Well

Part of your ability to specialize is people, which means you have had lots of practice managing and leading people. If there were, um, 'cause three, we talk in threes. If there were three key principles for the person who maybe is leading at their church and ministry, or they're leading at their job, they haven't necessarily been trained to be a leader. Because I think most of us, we learn to be leaders on the job. Leadership is an on-the-job training because you don't even know what you need to know until you realize that you need to know it.

Yeah.

But what are the—

you're like, oh—

what are the 3 things that you would say to the person that if they're going to be an effective leader, they have to understand these 3 things? Now y'all don't understand, Jada is a, uh, she's a growth-oriented person. So I'm asking her this knowing that she's probably read like in the last year 37 leadership books. But anyway, or books of some kind.

But anyway, go ahead. Or I had 37 conversations with my husband, who is a leadership guru. He is a leadership genius, so I just sit around and listen, let it drop onto me sometimes. Um, 3 things about leading people well. Number 1, I guess figuring out that leadership is a gift, and I don't mean the gift to be able to lead. It's a gift from God to let you lead, to let you actually have influence and help guide another person. That's a gift. Like, Who are you? I don't care what you're born with, what your temperament is, what your resume says. Who are you to give direction to somebody else and they follow? They want to be around you. They want to serve you. And so, um, because I can be a driver sometimes, I have to remember this is another human being. They have a, they have a family.

They're not a project.

They're not a project and they're not a tool. They're not a tool.

I have a hard problem separating because I love people, but, but, but when it involves a project, my people thing starts.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know what I'm saying? It takes intentional effort to remind myself. It's not that I don't care about the people, but to remind myself that in this moment it's still a person. Yeah, it's not like it's a—

and that's hard. Sometimes I forget anyway and then have to come back around and be like, listen, what I said to you yesterday, sorry about that. Girl, you know I love you. Yeah, sorry about that. Yeah, get comfortable with apologizing. That's just— it will save your life and just be humble. Take that note for parenting too. Just say I'm sorry. You know what, the Lord knew. He'll fix you.

Ah! The Lord knew he was gonna put you with me. That's right. He'll fix it. He knew what that meant.

Jesus will fix it. So knowing that leadership is a gift, understanding yourself and understanding others. And I put those together because I teach a lot about purpose and temperament and styles. Y'all, it is the key to life. It is everything. And there might not be a scripture that says know your temperament, But there is overwhelming evidence as to why. Give me an example.

Different people. What's the evidence?

Give me the evidence. It's why a young shepherd who's not the biggest and the strongest becomes a king, right? It's because God looks and sees.

Y'all see how quick she did that?

It's God looks and sees. It's why a man who was actually anti-God and murdered those for God became the biggest voice for God in the New Testament in Paul. It's temperament. Paul said in Galatians, listen, I don't know Jesus like that. Whatever. Paul says, I was called and set apart in my mother's womb. That means Jesus knew who he was and how he was crafted and created, and even when he was moving away from God, he still had everything God needed. Salvation and coming to Jesus is not about changing who you are. It's redeeming who you already are. He's not trying to remake you, okay? He's just redeeming you. He's just taking who you are and using it for his best, for his glory. So Paul is not gonna be the guy who's sitting down having one-on-one conversation with you.

Paul, project. I'm gonna come in and get this church going. Get your life together.

And how could you believe this foolishness when I already told you the truth? Get your life. Selah. Amen. He not doing all that.

He not doing all that. Okay, wait, wait.

So it's just like knowing, when I say understanding yourself, it's—

Well, one of the things I feel like very strongly about, and I know that we are lovers of the personality test and all that kind of stuff, but part of the reason why knowing yourself is important, however you come to know yourself, is so you have the language to communicate communicate both to other people, people you work with, people you live with, and to yourself to be able to say, okay, this is why I'm made this way, which means this is what's going to happen. Like, you can start to learn this.

I'm going to rub against this kind of people.

This kind of personality, this is what's going to happen. And you can learn those things over a lifetime the hard way. And sometimes reading books about personality, they just give you a little bit of a shortcut because, you know, it's like taking personality tests. Remember in Seventeen magazine, they'd always have the little things you fill out in the back. You would answer the questions and you would know this is right or wrong. So it's not that it's telling you or teaching you something, it's giving you a lens to look at something differently that you can already see. But maybe you can't, because Paul—

and a toolkit.

I'm about to be a Bible teacher. Because Paul even said, he listed out, you know, I'm born of the tribe of Israel, I'm the 8th day circumcised. So he listed out, these are the things about me that make me useful in this way in the kingdom of God.

Absolutely.

So you have to You should be able to say those things about you.

And when you understand yourself, if you take a Philippians 2:3 approach to it that says you consider others' interests more important than your own, then you value understanding other people, right? And not even just personality. Do the hard work of knowing your story. Do the hard work. Listen, it's my temperament, it's my life experiences, it's my bad decisions, it's my pain, it's the times when I was far from God, it's the times where I heard from God, it's my gifts, it's my talents.. It's the education you think, why did I get that degree? It's all of these things are a beautiful mix in this thing that God has crafted your story intentionally, and we don't do the hard work. We're just like, who am I? Who is the bright, shiny Jesus version of me? And he's like, oh my God, if that's the only version of you, then I could take you to heaven when you got saved. I need all of you to, to function well. And so I know, uh, when I say understanding myself, if I get asked to do a speaking engagement, right? I'm thinking, okay, she likes to talk. I like to talk.

She's always liked to talk.

And listen, my mother is like, praise the Lord.

God use that.

When I say he will redeem it, he will take all your bad conduct grades, Jada talks too much, she don't use time wisely, turn it around for his glory. So I've always been that way. So I know it makes sense when people come to me and say, oh, I want to teach. And I'm like, okay, who are you teaching now? Mmm! Rrrr rrrr!

Nobody?

Why God gonna let you get up there embarrassing him? Listen—

listen—

nobody? So why in the world? Come on, know yourself. You just— we spend so much time lusting after other foolishness. I'm saying, I know my pain was in college. I went from a strong Bible teaching church, The Amazing Tony Evans Church to college, and it was the dark ages. It was— I could not translate all of this head knowledge into something that affected my daily life. And So for me, late high school, early college, 20s, they will always be near and dear to my heart. I will always have 20-somethings around me, not because I'm trying to stay young. I don't want them to go down the path that I went down. And I'm always telling myself, what could someone have told me at 22 that might have changed that decision?

And the thing is, it might not change the decision, but it puts you in the position of being okay. When I speak and people come up to me afterwards, One of the things that it's encouraging for me to hear is when they say it was very inspiring, but that's not really what gets my gizzard. There are two things that get my gizzard. One of them is—

that's so country.

That is so country.

I don't know, if you say gets my gizzard, I don't want you to be offended, but somebody right now is Googling you. Gets her what?

One of the things is when somebody can tell me specifically how the message— they know exactly what they're supposed to go home and do different. I want you to be inspired to action, and I want you— and that doesn't happen all the time for everybody, but I want it to connect with something you're going to do differently. That's number one. Number two, anybody under the age of 25.

Anybody.

Doesn't matter. If they come up to me, because I'm just like— and if they say to me, the message was really encouraging, girl, I will put my elbow down and be like, tell me what you're doing.

What you doing?

Exactly.

Who you talking to? Exactly.

And I go all the way in. What are you majoring in in college? What's your biggest challenge right now? Like, I'm like, if I can mentor you in these 3 minutes, 2-minute mentoring. Because for whatever reason, I have your ear and I want you to hear me. And I hope that this resonates. And if their mother's standing next to them, I say, you know what? And the fact that you're here with her, listen to her, listen to her. She has your back. You're going to be tempted to think she don't know what she's talking about.

Listen to her.

And the mother's like, thank you.

Okay, I'm going to get back to my 3 because I'm OCD.

I'm keeping count of these.

So the first one was know it's a gift, know that You don't earn the privilege to lead anybody. God just is gracious like that. And when you know it's a gift, it'll help you be a better follower, by the way, so that the people that lead you are not miserable. Number 2, understanding yourself, understanding others. Because listen, there's some people that when you need them to get something done, you need to send a longer text message. It's like, hey, how you doing?

What's going on?

Oh, by the way, don't forget such and such. And there's other people where you can be like, bam, shoot it to me. Bring the thing.

Bottom line.

That's right. And so you just gotta know who you're dealing with. So that understanding self and others is massive. Do the work, know your story. The third thing is that leadership requires growth. If you— I don't care how fabulous you think you are, if you are not always learning, you gonna jack up somebody in the name of Jesus. You gonna jack somebody up. This is why people leave churches, leave relationships, leave organizations, not because of pay, not because of hours, because of leadership because people join things for people, they stay in things for people.

Yes.

So you've got to grow. So growth is spiritual, it's prayers, reading the Bible, it's all that. But it's also reading leadership tools. Like when John MacArthur, who's been leading for 800 million years— I'm sorry, John Maxwell. John MacArthur.

I'm like, whatever he said. I knew it was telepathy. Yeah. I knew she knew what I meant.

When he gets up, he's like, all I've learned in all my life is add value to people.

You're like, I was like, right?

So I'm like, yeah, okay, how am I adding value to people? And so yeah, when I meet with—

When he speaks, it's like listening to your father.

Yes, yes.

It's very, it's, it's, and if you never heard him speak, just go on YouTube. There's a million things there and it will bless your socks off. And then read his books and under with a pen.

Yeah, yeah. Can I say one more thing about leadership? The thing about understanding people, right? Number 4, loving people. I don't know if it's even a number 4. I think that I, the people who help me, even those who are paid to do it, whether it's my staff at work, staff at church, people who help with my kids, people who help with my kids, I really do try to invest in them and add value to them because I want them to— I withdraw from them because I need things from them. It doesn't matter that I pay. By the way, money is not a deposit. You've got to deposit yourself into people. So the girl who helps tutor Joah and watches him when he's gone to bed, we always chat for 20 minutes. Girl, what's going on with this? What's going on with that? And she can text me about whatever is going on in her life, her relationships. The people I serve with, I want to know what's going on in your family. How's work? What are you stressed about? I know what I need from them, but they're a person outside of what I need from them. And I mean, when you are able to invest in people and really try to add value, what you get— first of all, it's just godly and good, but secondly, what you get in return is more than what you pay for. It's more. And they're not, they're not nickel and diming you, and they're not saying, "I'm tired." They're like, "Yes, what do you need?" Right. And I try to do that to people who lead me too. I try to do that to people that I follow.

I have a little technical question I want to ask though.

Come on in.

Because, you know, I like So, I know what that meant, y'all didn't know. So, because, okay, if you throw out a number, how many people do you lead, aggregately? Like just between, so this many, this many, it's about?

Directly? Don't matter. Oh, oh, you mean everybody that's under what I'm a Ministry?

No, no, no, everybody at the church, like, like that you have, yeah, direct.

That I'm investing in.

That you're going to, yes, that you would say I'm gonna pour into them, like those people.

30.

30. Okay, so my technical question is, because somebody's going like, I want to do that, but keeping up with all that is a lot. How do you keep up with, remember the birthdays, the what happened the last time, the prayer requests that they gave you? What do you, what tools do you in, in, what's the word I'm looking for, you employ, there you go, to help you be a good leader in that sense, in the reciprocal sense?

So number one, remember I'm a specialist, so I don't lead in everything. Now I know how I'm leading people, right? But mostly it is the Holy Spirit, bringing heart to your remembrance. Yes. I'm not even kidding you. I remember, this is so random, I'm gonna talk about Mommy. So I remember one time we were in the hall.

She's talking about Mama.

Right. Right.

I remember who just came in here and laughed at us, by the way. I don't know if y'all heard that. Yeah.

I think they think they grown.

We are. We're not even— we're not grown.

Yeah. I remember one time we were in the hall and maybe this was the Lord telling me I was going to be a pastor's wife. We were in the hall at Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship and this woman came up to us and at the time we were still several thousand members. And she came up to Ms. Evans and Ms. Evans was like, I don't even know if she remembered her name, then she was like, "How was your son's first year of college?" I was like, "What is happening right now? Why does she remember that? Who is this woman?" Right? And I just remember in awe, and I had to be like 14 or 15, so the fact that that even resonated with me only right now, you're witnessing it, people, am I realizing that God was probably preparing my heart to be a pastor's wife. But I remember going, "Oh my God." How does she remember that? And we talked about it as I got older, and she was like, "Well, I keep up with people, but then I just pray about it." I really am like, "Okay, God, you know, I'm not good at these kind of things." I do remember random things, but you do hit a capacity. There's a lot of people. And God is just good. If your heart wants to love and serve people, he'll tell you. And so I will literally be texting someone about to ask them if they got something done, and something will come to mind. And then he'll go, "No, no, no, no, no." Their daughter got in a car accident and I'm like, "Hey, how's your daughter?" You know, it really is not because I'm good, it's because God loves people even more than we do. And he's like, "Just hold on, whatever you're about to ask is not going anywhere." And so I'm always asking the Holy Spirit to help me remember things.

And the brain, your brain is an amazing organ. Yes.

And you can will it. Now you can will your brain. I'm not talking about any medical metaphysical stuff. I'm talking about taking every thought captive, and we are— we control what resonates in our mind. And if I want to value a person, you will start to store away things, just like scripture, that comes to you.

Just like that, you know, that boy that you used to like in high school, or maybe it was just last week. You remember stuff. You remember what he had on. You remember the way he said it, how he said it, because your mind is tuned in.

Wanted to— right.

So you can do that with people that you— that you— that you lead.

So humility. So the Holy Spirit, um, humility. Again, one of the things probably my marriage taught me, because I think I'm driver and directional, but my husband— y'all don't want to know. I learned real quick how to say I'm sorry and just apologize because I have a quick tongue and I'm harsh. She's super quick with it.

So don't say anything mean in a joking way if you're not prepared for what's gonna come back to you.

No, it's good. Working on it. You gonna laugh at me.

I'm working on it. But you may be like, ah!

The Lord uses it for His good, most of the time. So I'm still working on that because He's not gonna take it away. He's gonna just redeem, right? So anyway, I have to work on that. And because of that, I remember the first time, especially as a pastor's wife, somebody set up a meeting with me to say, "Hey, I just felt like, you know, I saw you a couple times last weekend and you walked by me and you didn't speak." And I was like, I was like, in my mind going, what's your name again? I really was thinking that.

And it's not because of this.

It's just, I just was like, I don't even remember seeing you in the hall.

And so it's happened to me too.

My heart, I remember that first meeting, my heart was like, girl, get your life. Do you see the size of this church? Didn't speak to you. It's because I didn't see you.

That's what my heart said.

The Holy Spirit was like, snap your life. She don't have to be at this church. You're her shepherd. If you acknowledge that moment—

Say I'm sorry.

Just say you're sorry because that's what she needs. She don't need you to undo it, redo it, fix it. She needs you to acknowledge it. And it doesn't matter if she's being oversensitive or she— let the Lord deal with her on that. Your job in the moment is to acknowledge the pain. And guess what, by the way, it's a whole lot faster to acknowledge it sincerely, own it, and move on than to try to trying to explain it, trying to re— why ruin a whole relationship when I could just be like, you know what, I'm sorry, I didn't do it very well at that first meeting. I was defensive and I was like, well, that's good. Sometimes you need to understand, you know, and I was trying not to be arrogant. I'm sure I totally sounded arrogant and it took some time for me to realize, Jada, A, you want to be apologized to when you want to be acknowledged when you bring something to somebody.. And this is, again, it's a gift. And so Holy Spirit, lots of humility, saying I'm wrong. And if I'm bringing good people to do all this work I have to do, I have to trust them to give input, right? So I am directional, but then I'm like, own it, give me some feedback on it. When you don't give me feedback, the feedback door is closed. We're going forward, right? I'm not checking in unless you jack it up. So I am, I'm humble enough really to let stuff go because there's a pride in trying to do everything. And you can, you can say, oh, I'm just so busy. There's no— God is not gonna get— you're not gonna get to the end of your life and God's gonna be like, who was the busiest? Who was the busiest? Come on up. It's not— there's no badge of honor for busyness. There's a badge of honor for purpose and specialization. And so humility, Holy Spirit, and then lots of grace. Grace, grace, grace, grace, grace, grace, grace that I give myself first of all, because I was not a good grace giver, still not, and trying to give it to others. And that's hard.

It is very hard.

I'm not gracious with myself, right? So it's hard to give something to someone else that I need to work on.

Which goes back to what you said about leadership, understanding yourself.

And I tell people, I am not super gracious. If you need it from me, you have to tell me.

Please say it.

And I have to create safe environment where they know I have to laugh at myself, I have to be like, "Oh my God, that was a mess," you know, so they get it and try to do it that way because I'm not gonna prevent every mistake. I have to try to create an environment where we can talk about it.

Where we can talk about it.