7- Day Devotional, Developing The Leader Within You 2.0 Mfano

“Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant .” – Matthew 20:26

The heart of leadership is based on serving others, not yourself. When you humble yourself, and make serving others a core part of your leadership values, you help and empower others.

That’s because servant leadership is all about the person you serve. To grow in effectiveness, you must value what is valuable to that person. It is not enough to just “get better.” We must get better in the areas that are important to the ones we serve. As a leader, do you possess what your team members need, specifically in the areas that can benefit your people?

More than twenty years ago, Charlie Wetzel came alongside me to help me with my writing load. Charlie could write, but he didn’t really know me well. The first thing I did was give him a set of one hundred of my lessons on cassette so that he could start to understand my speaking style. But I knew that wasn’t enough. I needed to be proactive in serving him so that he could serve me and my organizations.

One of the things I did was give Charlie a book of quotes and ask him to mark what he considered the best ones. After he did that, I looked through the same book and marked the quotes I thought were the best. Then we compared our choices. In the beginning, 90 percent of our choices didn’t match. So, I explained why I liked the quotes I picked so that he understood my thinking. Then we did this exercise again, and again. After doing this a few times, our choices matched 90 percent of the time. If I hadn’t taken responsibility for trying to help Charlie, it would have made his job much more difficult.

To bring out the best in others, I first have to bring out the best in me. I cannot give what I do not have. Neither can you. As a servant leader, when you improve yourself in areas that are important to the people you lead, not only do you get better, but you make the person you serve better. That compounds your and their effectiveness. And it has a high return both personally and organizationally.

The wins you experience on the outside with your team will be the result of the victories you first experience on the inside.