What is Servant 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 your host Tim Pratt Jr. and this is the Student of Life Podcast, and we're going to talk about servant leadership here within, uh, Season 5, Episode 2. Um, so just a quick recap of the last episode. If you want to go back, check out What Is Leadership. Uh, keep in mind, leadership is very broad. You have a lot of people, you know, you have transformational leadership, you have charismatic leadership, you have spiritual leadership, all this type of stuff. But in this one, we're going to talk about servant leadership. And in that last one, I talked about kind of two elements and then what helps cultivate, and that's what kind of segued into the servant leadership model. That's what helps cultivate those things. And so we talked about leadership is influence, like John C. Maxwell said, nothing more, nothing less. And then also leadership is relationship. And so in this one, I want to kind of take a deeper stab into servant leadership. And once again, I just want to say, to preference, I'm not going to cover everything, but just to kind of give you really truly some bare bones of what it is to truly serve, to be a servant leader. And so one of the things that I, that I talked about was kind of, uh, hinting on the Gospels when Jesus washed his disciples' feet. And so in that text, like I said, I don't want us to necessarily take through the literal thing that Jesus did, although that was a literal thing, it was real what Jesus did, but I want us to extract the principle of it. And so if you, if you can visualize a triangle uh, for me. And you know, you think about like just that high point, but in servant leadership we flip it upside down. And so we see that as that leader serves, that influence, that impact, it, it expands because of the development of the people, the development, uh, so you see how those lines are very close and then it just starts to widen and widen and widen. So one of the first things I believe to really make sure that we are an effective servant leader is that who are we spending our time with? Who are we spending our time serving? Because that is very essential. Who are we spending our time developing? Because truly discipling and development and influence is really the same thing in so many words. It really is. A lot of them, yeah, yeah, I can point to the difference if you really wanna get technical, but it's a lot of overlap as well. And so you want to ask yourself as a servant leader, who am I spending my time with? Who am I really serving? Because this is the true essence of servant leadership. So for example, one of the first things that I want to hit into is that I believe that whether you believe in God or not— so I'm a faith-based person, like I say, this is a faith-based podcast, but even if you're not a faith-based person, I try to walk that line because I, I want to I want you to stay engaged. And I, and I do encounter and meet a lot of people that listen to this show. Thank God that this is growing. A lot of people are sharing it, uh, that they're not necessarily like, hey man, Tim, all that Jesus stuff, you know, I get it. And listen, I'm gonna preach Jesus, I'm gonna teach Jesus. But I do understand that it is people that they just really look at the principles and they call it a different thing. But I want you to know that truly, I believe true servant leadership came from Christ. It came from Jesus Christ. And so one of the things that I believe we have to understand is that when people come into our life, whether it's— whether you believe God allowed them, sent them, or whatever, he sends them, but it's up to us to define and align. I'm gonna say that again: it's up to us to define and align, not God. Now, he helps us, and, you know, like I said, if you don't believe in Christ, well, whatever you're studying, you know, your relational intelligence, so on and so on, it's your responsibility. To define and align the appropriate people. And so when it comes to being a servant leader, look at Christ with the disciples. He— when he selected the 12, and we know one Judas, he did not deceive Jesus because Jesus knew he was fully God and fully man, but he betrayed. And it didn't sneak up on Jesus. I believe that lesson— that's a whole nother topic, a whole nother message. But I do believe that we can extract from that. But let's just think about it in the 12, and we know that Judas ended up getting replaced. But when we, when we think about this, when it comes to Christ, is that he took these 12 men. Now I know, yes, you know, when he, when he taught him, he spent his years, you know, 3 and a half years before he went to the cross and all of that with these men. And the part that I want you to think about, yes, I understand, I know he, he left an advocate, which is the Holy Spirit, and we've been born again and truly, truly have accepted Jesus and believe with our heart that He died for our sins and Christ raised him from the dead, and we truly accept this. Holy Spirit comes and dwells in us. And you know, that's— but that's a— that's not the topic today. The topic today is servant leadership. I have to say that sometimes from over-spiritual, over-spiritual folks and stuff like that, and sometimes not, just, you know, because people are very literal. But in the context of this episode, servant leadership is that when you look at that because we're going to go back to the washing disciple feet. But when you really look at that, Jesus today— no, I'm sorry, let me back up, I apologize. We would not be who we are today if it wasn't for Jesus spending his time with those disciples. You know, he said about greater works than these things, and that, you know, you'll do numbers together. That meaning that Jesus was speaking from the context of his time was limited here on Earth. You and I have never met Jesus face to face in the flesh. If somebody say they have, they're lying. Nobody has met Jesus face to face. Now, we commune with him spiritual, but none of us have met him face to face. But however, his influence, his influence reigns. Think about it. And it reigns is because of the time that he spent with those 12 disciples who went out and was very proactive spreading the gospel. Teaching the things that Jesus taught, living the life that Jesus instructed them to live. It was people. And so you have to ask yourself, if you are in leadership, are you defining and aligning the right people so that you can spend the right time with the right people? And Jesus even had an inner circle— Peter, James, and John. He even had an inner circle within that, in that 12 disciples. Think about if he would have spent his time with nothing but Judases. Now I do believe eventually, somehow, some way, you know, God, he's the God of the universe, the message would have got across. But just from this standpoint, if you're a leader, think about if he would have spent his time with all Judases. Would it have— I don't believe it would have stopped it, but it would have greatly hindered it. It would have hindered it. So sometimes you have to ask yourself, as a servant leader, that whatever that God has called you, tasked you to do, whatever you're trying to do within the servant leadership model Have you took the time to truly build the relationship so that you can define and align? Know where to place people, know who to develop, know who to spend time with. Think about it, because sometimes we're not using the servant leadership model the right way. We're so busy doing any and everything, we're, we're not defining and aligning right, so we're misaligned and we're spending time with a bunch of Judases and it's like, man, like, they just don't— things are not happening. You're spending the wrong time. You're not following the example Jesus said. You're not spending time with people that have a conducive heart, but you're spending time with people that have a hardened heart, a rocky heart, or a distracted heart. We, we know this in the gospels with Jesus when, like I say, when he talked about it, the, the basically the soil and the parable, it was metaphorically speaking for our heart. So you want to spend time with people that have conducive hearts. Because when you're sowing these seeds in people, their heart has to be conducive so it can take root. The seed can take root and it can flourish. So that's one of the primary things as a servant leader you have to recognize. Now, I believe that I can only truly get there through prayer and intentionality, because I always wasn't like that. I would spend time with just everybody that I believe I need to spend time with, but I had to learn that it's not that, um, that I love people less in the context of ministry and just who I work with. No, it's that I love people equally and accordingly, the way Jesus has commanded me to. But however, I can't give everybody the same time. So in certain aspects, you do have to treat people differently. That's not a, oh, I like you more. This is about leadership in a leadership context. Now, outside of just personally, like, yes, it's a lot of things I like to do, but when it comes to the context of leading, you have to know You have to know who can really— like, who can I mentor and coach and develop? Then you have to ask yourself about yourself, but that's another episode. I'm not gonna get into the coaching element right now, but, but you have to be coached as well. Because think about it, Jesus was also Jesus in the flesh. He was continuously communing with the Father because it was about his will. He came to carry out the will of the Father. So am I connected And then am I spending time developing? That's one of the first primary things of serving leadership. The next thing, and this is where I— what I really had to learn, and I believe God allowed this— oh, let me back up, sorry, let me back up to, uh, close out the point of the washing the disciples' feet. So like I say, that's what I believe Jesus was showing us in that. Don't necessarily take it literally where you start going to wash people feet, but that's what I believe that he was a part of that, what he was showing us in the servant leadership model, meaning that, look, I'm the Son of God, I could just sit here and reign right now, you just worship me for who I am, straight up. But no, he said, I'm going to take a low degree, even how he came into the world in a manger and all this type of stuff, to serve. Now we worship and we praise him now, but he came to serve. And even in the frustrations with those people, the disciples, when they would ask questions, and sometimes we can say, man, how many times do you have to tell them this? How many? It was long-suffering. He was patient. He was developing and cultivating them. And look at the impact today. So that's what we have to ask ourselves once again. Are we modeling servant leadership the way the greatest servant leader, which is Jesus Christ, did it. So now let's be back up. The other thing was servant leadership. Like I said, I had to learn in the season of God, the season of life, the, uh, the season in my life that God had me in, is conflict. Knowing how to balance, having the necessary knowledge and discernment to know when to correct people and when to encourage and affirm people. Jesus did this perfectly. All throughout the gospel. His love was perfect. And so when we look at this in the context of leadership, I hated conflict. When I started studying servant leadership, I, I didn't have a healthy view of it. In other words, when it says that I looked at all the positive because I wanted to be likable, I wanted people to love me, I wanted to inspire, I just got caught up in that side of it. But the, but the other side of servant leadership is also too, not that I'm looking for conflict but that's a part of it. So God— recently, man, I was in the season of my life where it was just conflict after conflict, conflict leading up. People I would see on my, uh, reviews, you know, uh, Tim is just too nice, Tim is this, Tim is that. And so, and these things, you know, as I met, I'm like, I know, I, I know it's a problem for me. So I was really trying to grow in these areas, and then it went from like I knew what to do that I didn't know how to practice it because I didn't want to get it wrong. And so finally God just allowed things to start happening where I didn't have a choice but to just take these things and start practicing it. Like, for example, like, you can know about football but don't know football because you can like study the things, play your Madden and college football games and go to games and things like that, but then you cannot have played the game. And that's where God was starting to take me. He said, okay, you're studying all this material, all these podcasts and all of this type of stuff, but now I'm finna allow you— I'm gonna place you in a place where you have to play the game. And that's what happened. So it was just conflict after conflict, and I would start to like tweak and learn these type of things and engage to— it got to the point where it's like, okay man, what's conflict? It became— it started to become natural. So as a servant leader, or just a leadership in general, you cannot avoid conflict. You are serving by handling conflict. Think about your kids as you help. And even times we, you know, we give our kids what they want sometimes, but most of the time our primary thing is to help meet their needs. But Sometimes it's— a lot of times it's very challenging conversation with our kids, with our spouse. We love them, we're serving them, but we have to deal with these things. We just can't avoid it because it'll turn into something that is a mess. And this is what Jesus did so perfectly. One minute, like I said, he was rebuking. The next minute he was loving and like— and he just loving and, uh, healing and things like that. But then the next minute you whitewash vipers and things like that. Then the next minute you, um, go— I mean, uh, who are your accusers? So when we think about that in, in the context of scripture with Jesus, he did it perfectly because he was God, but he was also teaching us. So our servant leadership, it has to have boundaries. So if someone is a cancer or they're just acting out and they're going through and just— I've seen this so many times, man, in not just in what are my day-to-day, but I've seen it in ministry, I've seen it in people that I coach, uh, times just mentoring and so on and so on. And I'm like, you have to grow in the area of having crucial conversations. And that's a book that you might want to check out, How to Have Crucial Conversations. It's a great resource. But you have to do that as a servant leader. You have to have the knowledge of, okay, how do I reel this person in? And they might be reeling them in through having continuous challenging conversations. Even to the point where it might lead up with, hey, I don't want you to get tired and this becomes your identity, but the things that you are doing there, they aren't changing. So I have to remove you. I have to remove you from the team or the organization because you have become a cancer, because I have to serve this organization as well as the people. Sometimes that's a decision. So I had to truly learn that as a servant leader. And last but not least, one of the core things that really kind of marries the two of these together is that servant leadership, servant leadership in its essence, in its true essence, is to love, to do everything with the heart posture of loving. Like, straight up, is to do everything with a heart posture of loving. So in other words, motivated by love, true love. I see it all the time when you look at it. Like I said, sometimes people, you know, they used to write buzzwords and say all these right things. But yes, it is accountability. You can hold account— you can hold people accountable with love. You can affirm people with love. You can correct people with love. In the ministry, you can rebuke people with love. You can challenge people with a heart posture of love. All of this is a part of servant leadership. I had to learn this, and I'm continuing to learn it. You have to have empathy. You have to be willing to take a step back and get to know people, see things right before we attempt to set things right. Servant leadership is highly relational, and I don't understand how people are in leadership or say that they are a servant leader, but then they aren't relational. Your team doesn't know you, you don't know your team. So how can you make the right decisions if you don't have— know your people? Know the people that God has allowed you to steward over. Because at the end of the day, especially just— they're his people is what I mean. But it's He's allowed us as leaders to steward over. So it's highly relational. I believe this is the coaching element of it. And so with servant leadership, like I said, it's not always about being liked and, uh, loved and just letting everybody do everything they want to do. It's truly understanding, okay, how do I serve and carry out the mission that God has given me? Or if you're in the context of an organization, how do I carry out the mission with integrity and love that this business or this organization, company, has instructed me to do, has placed me in this space to do? Because I know a lot of people, man, that technically— oh man, they're way smarter than me, way smarter than others— but they couldn't even lead someone to the restroom that's right down the hall. Straight up. So they're very technical, they know their way around all the latest gadgets, all the latest things, they can run circles around people but can't lead someone to the restroom. They can't inspire anyone. So you have to have that balance. Yes, you have to be competent of your role, but you have to be willing to lead. And with this, I think we're using it so loosely now like leader, leader, leader, but as a servant leader too, you lead with intentionality, you lead with the understanding of context. Because even if you are up under a leader that you totally despise and you say, this is not a good leader, and you truly know in your heart that you have done everything you can to, uh, serve them and lead up under them, sometimes God is teaching you in that season what not to do in leadership. So it should make you even more aware and self-aware that this is how I should not lead. I've had those seasons as well in so many things, in so many things. Not that it's bad people, because people grow, and you— so you have to give people space and grace. I always say grace and truth. Jesus was full of grace and truth. Not truth and grace. I believe the scripture was very intentional why it worded it like that. So you have to give people grace, you have to give them time, you have to give them room, but also too you have to be truthful. This makes love. This is a heart posture of love. And so servant leadership, man, like I say, I, I love studying servant leadership and transformational leadership, but I don't believe that you can manage people. I really don't. I believe you can set processes and all these things in place, but I truly believe in this essence, because you have to have a level of trust. You can only lead people through inspiration, the buy-in. When people buy into you, they buy into the vision, they buy into the leadership. And people have to trust you as the leader. You can't always explain things. They have to know that you have their best interest at heart, and that comes through buy-in. But if you just, hey, I got the title and I'm the top dog and I'm the leader and I've been selected as this team, yeah, you in for a rude awakening. You in for a very rude awakening. Just give it time. So man, listen, like I said, it's so many other areas that we can go with this servant leadership model, but these are, like I say, 2 to 3 big things that Servant leadership, to me, in its essence, this is what it is. It's serving people, serving people, leading people, being influential in developing, cultivating people, man. To carry out— in my context with the ministry— to carry out the works of the ministry. And like I said, if it's in the secular, kind of like I said in the last episode, to carry out those works that's appropriate to the vision that whatever organization, company, or whatever you are leading through servant leadership. Servant leadership to me does bring forth transformation because look at, like I said, look at Christ. Our lives are transformed because of what he did, because of who he is for us. So ask yourself, do I embody the similarity that Christ did? Even if you're not a person of faith, can you extract those principles? Do you embody those principles? This is servant leadership. So listen, I pray that, man, this has touched you. I pray that it inspired you to start really looking it up. If you want to have a conversation, uh, like I said, I just recently launched the mentoring coaching program. I'm only doing 5 hours a week right now due to my secular, because I'm required to spend so much time and serve them. I have to do it as I'm doing it for the Lord. And, and I, I really love what I do, especially the coaching and facilitating part as it evolved. But I also love a lot of things outside of what I do in my day-to-day when it comes to like this podcast, uh, the ministry element and the coaching and development, uh, things that I do. I don't like calling it a side hustle because these are things that I eventually hope that I can somehow operate in different areas and just do full-time completely. But I love it. So, and if it's not me, man, reach out to somebody. But we're going to get into why you should have a coach. Why You Should Have a Mentor, like straight up. But in this one, in this context, is servant leadership. So like I said, I pray that you've been touched by it. I pray that you are starting to have a better understanding of what true servant leadership is. And, uh, man, the best is yet to come for you. So hey, I appreciate you all for sharing. Of course, it's going to be in the outro. The podcast is really growing, uh, it's really starting to pick up steam. We're going to stay in this leadership block for a little bit. We're going to continue on with it. And, uh, I don't know, I don't know what the next one's going to be, but I hope you enjoyed this one. Continue to be blessed. See you. 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.timothyprattjr.org. Once again, thanks.