SHOW NOTES
Laws of Leadership, pt1
Leadership in Context with Keith Tucci
Episode 172
1. The Law of Self-Investment
There are laws for leaders that we have to tap into and understand because they really, really work. The Law of Self-Investment is one of the laws of growth. Leaders must grow.
If you are leading and no one is following, you are just going for a walk. Leadership ultimately is the ability to influence people to help them make godly decisions. We have to live that out ourselves and be one step ahead of those we are leading.
When you look at world class athletes, they look at food as fuel—how are they going to fuel their body? Most of us look at food as fill—what am I going to do to fill my body up? For those who look at food as fuel, their body will perform better than those who look at food as fill.
I wanted to have a garden. So I talked to knowledgeable people and did what they said. I had a great garden. I followed the laws of nutrition, and they worked. There was a plan for that garden. I didn’t randomly plant things in the soil. I sought out people who had gone before me, took their advice, and it worked well. I tapped into laws that I didn’t necessarily understand, but I knew that they worked.
We know that there are certain foods we put in our body, and the way our body breaks those foods down affects us in a positive way. We might not understand the mechanism of that, but we grab the reality of it.
Likewise, there are spiritual things that we don’t necessarily understand how it works, but we know it does work. As a Christian leader who wants to influence people, the Law of Self-Investment—feeding yourself, fueling yourself, putting spiritual nutrition in yourself—has to be at the top of the list.
So many times in ministry, we are pumping mud, so to speak, as we have nothing in the tank. There are times when that will happen, but it shouldn’t happen by design. Develop good patterns of self-investment. What are you doing right now to invest in yourself? Not investing in a program, not investing in a strategy, but investing in yourself.
If you don’t read, you can’t lead. What are you going to read in this new year? Are you reading things that are toxic and causing confusion and compromise?
What conference or continuing education are you going to attend on purpose? I have found that many leaders will agree that conferences or classes are good, but they will only fit it in if nothing else is going on. That would be like an athlete who doesn’t make time to eat because they have to practice. You have to make time to eat.
Businesses and corporations will have short-term training that they will set up for this year. They are going to keep doing it until they get better at it, even if it is redundant. I think Christians are bad at redundancy. We don’t practice things. We move on to a new thing, but we aren’t doing the old thing as well as we could. In Luke 16, Jesus talked about the sons of this world being wiser than the sons of Light. In this context, He is specifically talking about developing a plan. I think we should develop a plan and be at least as smart as they are. Plan to invest in yourself.
When I see people that lack commitment, what I really see are people that misunderstand the Law of Self-Investment. They think their garden is going to grow without fertilizer.
What are you putting in you on purpose? Be committed to being trained. Be committed to being around leaders you can learn from. Be committed to reading books that will help you get to that next level. Put fuel in yourself, not fill.
Join us next week as Keith Tucci continues to put leadership truth in the context of the local church. And as always, please like, share, rate/review, and invite others to listen. See you next week!
