I was a bit of a loud mouth growing up. No matter what I did I felt like everyone needed to listen to me because, well, I was much smarter than them and everyone could use a little bit of my great ideas. I played sports and would try to command the team to listen to me, whether it was on the field or in the pool.
I remember in one of my water polo games during my junior year when I first began to realize the error of my ways. I had recently accepted Jesus into my life and was struggling to be as popular as humanly possible at school, be the best at sports, and be on the leadership team at church. As you might imagine, this did not work out so much for me. Well, this particular game was getting out of hand and I was not happy with my teammates and their play. Of course nothing was my fault and everyone else was the problem. I got more and more ticked off as the game went on, and we only fell more and more behind, until our ultimate defeat was sealed with a crushing loss.
On the bus ride home I gave a great lecture about needing to be better and that people had to be more committed… and so on. I was pretty proud of myself. So proud that the next day at church I told Kevin about my great leadership skills; he was going to be so proud of me too. Well, he only had one question for me, as was customary in our relationship, “Wow, how did your teammates respond?” Uhhh… silence.
That’s all it took for me to realize, for seriously the first time like ever, that no one ever listened to me. I mean, why would they? All I did was give away blame, puff myself up, and now worst of all (and I still blame this on Kevin for introducing me to Jesus), give Christians and my church a bad name. What an idiot I was! I stewed all night, knowing that I had absolutely zero influence over any of my guys. I was embarrassed, humiliated, and ashamed.
But here is the cool part, the lesson that I learned from all that was that I had been bloviating for so long and trying to assert my great leadership, and only made myself look stupid. Kevin, on the other hand, asked a simple question, without trying to make me look stupid; he genuinely wanted to know. My way vs. Kev's way was night and day.
You see, Kevin was leading out of who he was, and that showed through his humility even in that situation. He was leading out of his very being. And that is the mark of a great leader - one who is more focused on “being” than “doing.” Proverbs 11:30 says,
“Live right, and you will eat from the life-giving tree. And if you act wisely, others will follow.”
Kevin was living right and acting wisely, I was not. You can figure out the rest, I am sure. So my question is: Are you more interested in being or doing? When we focus on ourselves and become better people, it comes out in the way that we speak, act, and live. My encouragement is that you ask a couple of peeps you trust where you are on that being vs. doing spectrum. Love to hear your thoughts.
Praying for you,
MO
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