What is Leadership?

Hey, this is Tim Pratt Jr. and I want to welcome you to the Student of Life podcast. Listen, we're going to get into so many transferable truths throughout the content of these episodes that I believe God is going to use to help you apply, because he's going to reveal what's already been there the entire time. Enjoy. Yo, what's up? So this is season 5 and I'm excited about it. Uh, listen, I had something else in store, but I wanted to stay true to the commitment with launching September 13th. But this is season 5, we're gonna get in it, and I'm going to do a leadership series, a leadership block, instead of doing the Address the Mess series that I did some light promo on. I've just been working and working and really devoting myself to a lot of leadership lately, especially doing things outside of kind of my day-to-day. Like I said, I work as a Senior Agile Delivery Manager at 360 Insights. In addition to that, I'm also, you know, an associate pastor, uh, Willow Chapel Ministries. I help with my father-in-law's ministry as well, Alive Lively Songs in Stuttgart, uh, and, uh, and yeah, and Willow Chapel Ministries in Palm Bluff. But nevertheless, I really wanted to take some time and just kick this off with what is leadership. Season 1 episode— I mean, Season 5, Episode 1, what is leadership. I just wrapped up a leadership development conference this weekend. Awesome. Went through a lot of stuff and it just opened my eyes up to no matter how much teaching that it is about leadership, it's still so much more to teach and learn and apply. Because even in my day-to-day job, it just all around me, I see that people have really gotten a lot of good, like really got great great with a lot of the buzzwords and they don't know all the right things to say, but they haven't really become one with the leadership model of true leadership. And so that's why I just, you know, yesterday when I was kind of leading and facilitating the workshop, I asked the question, what is leadership to you? You know, 30 seconds, basically, what is leadership to you? And people were, humility, you know, integrity, love, uh, being able to follow, submissive, correcting, um, doing things, having a, you know, great character, knowledgeable, uh, like I said, willing to serve. I believe I said that, and so on and so on. But what I noticed is that no one never said a title, a title. And so John C. Maxwell, you know, we've heard him say this over and over and over: leadership is influence, not simply a title. People can respect the title and still not respect you. That's true. We see it in the military, we see it in secular, we see it in all— we see it everywhere that people— and I used to be afraid of people when I first came into this and I was young and didn't really know a lot and was trying to prove myself. I used to be afraid of people with big titles, but as I got older and I grew and I'm like, man, no, like, I do my job. This is a person at the end of the day. Yes, titles still matter in certain contexts. A lot of people But truthfully, true leadership is influential, and influence comes through relationship. So you can even say in the same breath that leadership is also a relationship. So whether you have an inspiration to inspire or inspiration to follow, both go hand in hand. Those that inspire to lead and those that choose to follow are extremely important in the context of relational leadership. And so yeah, because one thing you have to understand, if you are highly relational with people and you're cultivating influence with them, one thing about your team or just people in general, whether you're leading across, even if you don't have direct reports or whatever, most of the time they will look to you on how you handle various situations. You end up in certain aspects duplicating what you are who you are, not what you say, but who you are. And so you want to keep that in mind when you think in the context of leadership, because I see it's so much, man. Even with all the information and knowledge and con— just everything out there, people are still struggling with becoming one with leadership because we're getting real good with buzzwords and just saying things, trying to play with people's emotions, but we're not becoming one with the essence of servant leadership. Transformational leadership. And so you give it time, people see through that. And I tell people all the time, you know, when I took an opportunity to go to Perks that they had gave me as a technical project manager about a little bit over 4 years ago before we were acquired by 360, I really like— I, I knew about the whole agile and like, like things with Scrum and stuff like that. I more so studied a lot of the traditional project management but I hid in leadership. I was dead— I mean, I'm sorry, Lord, please forgive me. I was striving, striving. I was dedicated. That's what I was trying to say, dedicated to just devoting myself to leadership, understanding especially more so, like I said, the servant leadership model and studying transformational leadership. So I hid in that, and it gave me time to learn these frameworks and learn certain things like that. Now, in hindsight, I do wish I would have went back and learned a lot and devoted myself to a lot more of some of the, like, the principles and agile things and stuff like that. But at the end of the day, I knew that I didn't want to lack in the servant leadership part. I, I, I was basically, like I say, determined not to lack in that area because I knew that that was just as important. It was because I've seen people that are great, you know, like they understand all the frameworks, all the science and engineering behind certain things but they don't know how to lead people. They don't. And that sucks. And I— so I really think we have to spend some time asking ourselves, what is leadership? What is the essence of leadership? And so one of the things that I believe that can help cultivate the areas of influence and relationship is being a servant leader. Being a servant leader. And so like I say, in this block we're kicking off with our leadership series.. And servant leadership is going to be a topic today, but right now I want to just deal with the essence of leadership at a very high level to kick off this Season 5, Episode 1. So like I said, I'm not going to do this series address the mess. We're going to stay in this leadership area. Leadership, leadership, leadership. I'm saying that a lot. All right, so servant leader. I want to read something to you, and this is, you know, it comes through best basically from Matthew 20. He said, whoever wants to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave, just as the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. In other words, there are many who want to exercise authority but few who want to take the towel and the basin and wash feet. Now, I'm not going to tell you to go wash your people feet that, you know, you have been given authority over in the context of leading. Now, authority over the titles and stuff like that, not necessarily the person, but authority over the titles and things like that, that their roles that they're doing. And so when it comes down to it, because even in the context of church, I don't— when a pastor under shepherd, those are truly not his people, they're God's people. So even when you're in the secular, I think that truthfully the roles and all of that belong to the company. They're technically not your people, but those roles and this stuff, you are responsible for them. So you want to connect, you want to get to know the person who's doing the role. That's why I always say, yes, when people get fired or when people leave and things like that, yes, the role can be replaced, but not the person. Let me say that again. The role can be replaced, but not the person. Everybody's not replaceable. Trust me, I've learned, especially within the last year of just what I do in the, um, in the secular, working at 360, as well as in the, in the ministry. Everybody's not replaceable. And so therefore, you want to take time and just truly make sure that you are exercising the authority through servant leadership. Like I say, don't take it so much as little as going to wash someone's feet, but serving them, serving them. And servant leadership, I think a lot of people hate that title, although it's used like, say, a lot of the buzzwords to try to play on people's emotions. But truly, servant leadership is meeting the needs, not necessarily the wants of people. Like, I'm a servant leader to my family, and although I do get my kids what they want sometimes, but at the end of the day, my primary thing is help them to meet their needs, help meet their needs so they can end up doing the things that they want to do. And so this is the focal point of servant leadership within the context of church, but we also can extract this from and use it within the marketplace. Because the— to prepare God's people for the works of service, when we go to Ephesians, so that the body of Christ may be built up, so when we're going and we're being fed and being taught by the pastor, the under shepherd that God has placed over whatever local church that you're at, and then we go out beyond those four walls and do the work of the ministry. Well, it's the same thing if you take that model and you are a leader in the context of what you do day to day. Are you building your people up to do the work of whatever— the work of the organization that you're doing? Are you spending the necessary time to truly mentor, develop, and coach people to do the work of the ministry or do the work of the organization. I believe that all these transferable truths can hit anywhere, anywhere. So this is the focal point. This means that in the context of the local church, with Christ being the head of the church, the entire body is served in the act of providing leadership. See, when we have a heart posture to be a servant leader, I believe that we look at it is all being mutually submissive. Now we understand the authority that's in place, but I believe what, in essence, what this is saying from a biblical perspective, the servant leadership, it frees the local church as well as the secular environment of the abuse of power, and it promotes mutual respect. Like, straight up, it, it promotes mutual respect. Like, so all that corruption and stuff like that, it promotes mutual respect and love for one another. That's the true essence of servant leadership. Now we're going to get into another segment, another topic later, but servant leadership, when you really think about this, you know, and like I said earlier, this is something that I'm truly dedicated to. I would hide in it, and it bought me a lot of time. Now I am, you know, really starting to take a step back, and thankfully, like my, you know, my manager, uh, and the employer that I work with, they, uh, and then, you know, a guy that I— when I was going through the training, he ended up giving me like an $800 class for free because he was like, man, I see that you're so dedicated. And I was doing this Certified Agile Leadership program where it kind of covered Essentials and Teams. And so he was doing another one on Organizations over the weekend or something like that. And, you know, I had already maxed out and stuff like that. So long story short, he was like, man, you know, I asked him, I say, do you mind if I just sit in? I don't even have to get the certification or anything like that. And he was like, no, like, he's like, man, you're devoted, you know. Sometimes I believe in paying it forward, and it really blessed me. And so, and then, you know, like, right before that, a few weeks before that, or a month or so, they let me do the Certified Scrum Master, which focuses on the essence of servant leadership. And, you know, of course, a part of the Agile framework. So what I'm saying is that when I started, like, really diving deep into those things And then now I was like, wow, okay, this is teaching me this. This is like, all of this stuff makes sense, but I can also practice servant leadership. I was like, wow, God, it's like this role was truly created for me. Like, I really love this. This— now these things are making sense. And so for me, it was like, this is what it's about. I love being behind the scenes. I don't care anything about the spotlight. I really don't. And like, I really don't. And so I love being like where God allows me to be, kind of like Samuel, a kingmaker with David, you know, like a kingmaker, if that makes sense, when you look at the story with Samuel and David. And so with me, I just, I love people. I really do. I like, I love people. And even in the context of ministry, you know, being called to pastoral things and, uh, to, to, to preach the gospel more so, and serving my undershepherd, you know, serving my father-in-law, uh, like my wife, like I said, my kids, you know, just people. And so now God is helping me. Okay, I have you here and I've built you up here, and I literally see him working. And, you know, as I try to do consulting and coaching on the side in like a, a way through relationship and through just helping develop, like I said, push people, it's allowing me to like demonstrate, if that makes sense, demonstrate a heart posture and keep trusting God to just, you know, keep me humble. Not me, but trusting God to do it, trusting God to just allow me to serve people, keeping people at the forefront in this proper context. So now I understand that it is moments and times that, okay, like, yes, I have to choose me and make sure that I'm in my best version and stuff like that. But in the essence of it is that with servant leadership, I believe that is the best model to follow, the best model. And so therefore, that's why I say like the focal point of servant leadership within the church is to literally prepare the people of God his people for the works of service so that the body of Christ may be built up. So you really have to ask yourself, am I a servant leader? Am I doing this in the context of my job? And so on and so on. And that's the next segment we're going to get into. We're going to break down more of what is a servant leader and possibly even transformational leader and so on. And so like I say, just bear with me. I had to detour some things. I wanted to stay true to the commitment because we'll be welcoming our little girl into the world soon. Uh, only little girl. So now, uh, 3 kids, 2 boys and 1 little girl. Cameron, DJ, and Navy. So, uh, hey, let's get it. Like I said, I had to stay true to the commitment. This is the whole point of Agile, and I really hope you take some time and, uh, this series is going to bless you because you got to remember this, if nothing else, you are a leader no matter what your role is, no matter what your responsibility is. Because even if it comes down to you leading yourself, you have to make a decision. God doesn't force us to do anything. So sometimes you even have to make leadership decisions when it's just dealing with you. But if you are responsible for people, if God has delegate— given you authority, delegated you to be over certain, certain people within the context of what they do, You gotta ask yourself, am I really dedicated to serving leadership? Because if you're not, I'm telling you, like, you're in for a rude awakening. So take some time and just look up some articles and buzzwords, or reach out to me and let's connect and let's talk about it, because I want you to be the best leader that you can possibly be. And that's what this series is about. A lot of material out there, but I'm giving it to you through my lens and through my experiences. And I'm sure that as time goes on, if we talk about this 3, 4, 6 months from now, especially a year and so on, things will evolve. So hey, let's get it. What is leadership to you? Take some time, jot it down, and talk about it with someone and ask somebody else and look for the transferable truths throughout it. Be blessed. Hey, what's up? I want to thank you for taking the time to listen to the Student of Light podcast today. If this content has impacted you in any kind of way, please take some time to share it on your social media feeds. And also, if you want to connect with me or just learn more about me, go over to www.timothypratt.org. Once again, thanks.