The Root of Excellent Leadership

There is a question that I believe every leader eventually has to (or at least ought to) wrestle with: Why am I doing what I am doing?

We must consider why we are trying to become better leaders. Why do we learn how to communicate more effectively, delegate more wisely, and encourage our teams? Is it because we genuinely love the people we have been entrusted to lead, or is it because we have discovered that loving our teams tends to produce the kind of culture, productivity, and success we want for ourselves and for our organizations?

The distinction may appear small, almost too subtle to bother with, and yet I believe it is one of the great distinctions of leadership.

Two people can do the same thing for very different reasons. Sometimes, the difference lies between serving someone and using someone.

There is certainly nothing wrong with wanting to become a better leader. We should want to grow, read the books, listen to people who have walked farther down the road than we have, and learn the practical skills that can help us lead the people around us more effectively. However, there is a quiet danger that can creep into our pursuit of excellent leadership when we become more interested in the results, or fruit, of good leadership than in the character that produces good leadership.

We want a healthier culture, so we learn how to make our employees feel valued. We want greater employee retention, so we learn how to create an environment where people want to stay. We want a more productive team, so we study how to motivate people. We begin doing the things that loving leaders do and, if we are not careful, we can eventually convince ourselves that because we are doing loving things we must, therefore, be loving people.

The problem is that those are not the same thing.

Imagine you’re in a house; it is the middle of winter, and suddenly the heater goes out.

One person thinks, “If I don't fix this heater, my family is going to be cold. If my family is cold, they are going to be miserable, which means I am going to be miserable. Honestly, I would really like to have a good evening. So I suppose I had better go fix the heater.”

So he gets up, fixes the heater, and before long the house is warm again. His family is comfortable, the problem is solved, and his evening turns out better than it would have otherwise.

Now imagine another person in exactly the same situation.

He looks around at his family, knows they are cold, and thinks, “They are cold, and I will not allow that if I can help it.” So he gets up and fixes the heater. The house becomes warm, and his family becomes comfortable. And it just so happens his evening gets better too.

The actions are identical—the heater gets fixed in both houses, the families stay warm, and the evening improves. But the motivations could hardly be more different.

The first person cared for his family because he wanted something for himself. His family being warm was the means by which he obtained a better evening.

The second person was motivated to act because he loved his family. His better evening was simply the unexpected fruit of loving his family well.

One begins with what he wants to receive and determines what he needs to do in order to get it.

The other begins with his inward state towards the people in front of him, and his actions flow naturally from that inward reality.

It's the difference between the man who “loves” his wife so he is happy, and the man who loves his wife so she is happy.

I have been thinking about this distinction more and more, because it seems to me that much of leadership development is concerned with fruit. We want the successful business, the healthy culture, the engaged employees, and the loyal clients. We want the growing ministry, and because we want those things, we naturally begin searching for the behaviors that produce them.

There is nothing inherently wrong with that. In fact, understanding cause and effect is part of wisdom. If something consistently helps people flourish, we ought to pay attention to it. However, there is a danger in becoming so fascinated with the fruit that we forget whence the fruit came. We make the fruit the object in itself.

A tree does not produce fruit because it wants fruit. It produces fruit because it is connected to the root. And yet, we try to produce the fruit of being connected to the root by mimicking the behaviors of genuine leaders without allowing the heart of a servant to actually take root within us.

We can learn the vocabulary of humility without becoming humble. We can learn to ask people how they are doing without genuinely caring about the answer. We can learn to celebrate our employees without truly valuing them. We can learn to listen without ever becoming willing to be changed by what we hear. We can even learn to say, “I care about you,” while quietly calculating what that care will produce for us. The most unsettling part is that we may not even realize we are doing it.

That is why the question “Why am I doing this?” matters so much—not because every action needs to be dissected until we become paralyzed by our own motives, but because we ought to be willing to look beneath our behavior every now and then and ask whether what is coming out of us is actually coming from within us.

As a Christian, I find this distinction most clearly illustrated in our relationship with God. So often, we approach God because of the fruit that comes from knowing Him. We want heaven, so we read the Word and pray to be saved.

There is something profoundly different about the person who does not approach God because he wants heaven, but approaches God because he wants God.

The order is reversed—He reads the Word and prays to be saved so that he can know God. And because of Who God is, the fruit is heaven.

Samuel Rutherford expressed this well: “O my Lord Jesus Christ, if I could be in heaven without Thee, it would be hell; and if I could be in hell, and have Thee still, it would be heaven to me, for Thou are all the heaven I want.”

Heaven is not valuable because it is a place where we finally get everything we want. Heaven is only valuable because God is there.

The relationship is not merely the means to the reward. The relationship is the reward, and when we reverse the order—when we make the fruit the reason for cultivating the root—we turn something genuine into something transactional.

Perhaps this is where the examination becomes most personal. If you lead people, what would happen if you asked yourself honestly: What would I still do if there were nothing in it for me? Would I still listen if the person never became easier to manage? Would I still serve if no one thanked me? Would I still encourage if I received no encouragement in return? Would I still love my team if loving them did not make the business more successful?

In the end, perhaps the most powerful leadership we will ever offer isn't the leadership that produces the greatest result. Perhaps it is the leadership that comes from becoming the kind of person who would have served even if there were no result to be gained. When love is truly the root, service is simply what grows.