Leaders have to give up to go up: A chapter from Wisdom in Leadership

Leadership is servanthood. Your job as a leader is to serve those you lead and to do everything you can to develop them and benefit them. The more people you have to lead, the more people you have to serve.

Sometimes when you first start out as a leader it can be tempting to look at the people higher in leadership over you and think to yourself, “I can’t wait to be in that position. I’ll be able to do what I want and I’ll have lots more flexibility. The more authority and responsibility I have, the more freedom I’ll have to do what I want.” But that’s not how it works—and especially not in Christian leadership.

When you’re one of the people, the followers, the organization exists to benefit you. Anyone who’s in leadership will be serving you, either directly or indirectly. When you’re a new Christian, the whole thing is about helping you to grow and develop. There are official courses and structures and groups designed to help and serve you. There will also be a whole lot of horizontal acts of service taking place—people serving you who aren’t a part of any official structure. And that’s a good thing. Sooner or later, you’re encouraged to begin serving those around you as well.

Service is sacrifice

But as you grow in your faith you begin to lead others, whether in an official capacity with a title or in an unofficial capacity as you reach out to love and serve those around you (meeting with another person over coffee to read the Bible, for example). And as this happens it becomes more about others and less about you. You focus on what’s best, most helpful, and most beneficial for the people you’re serving.

Leaders and organizations sometimes forget this and think that the higher up you go the more it becomes about you, the more the organization’s practices are shaped around you. But leadership is servanthood, and the more you lead the more you serve. And the more you serve, the more you will sacrifice. Leadership is never about getting more perks and titles and positions.

Leadership requires a sacrifice of time and a sacrifice of preferences. Sometimes you’ll need to sacrifice what you want to do or what interests you in order to put time into the people you’re leading and to deal with their issues and concerns.

As you lead more and more, it will all become less and less about you in countless ways. The more you lead, the more sacrifice is required of you. The more you lead, the more you’re required to serve. The more authority and responsibility you have, the less freedom you have to do whatever you want.

When you’re a member of a small Bible study group, for example, you have a certain level of commitment to the group and to the other people in the group. But when you feel a bit under the weather, or you have a competing commitment, you can just skip the group. And people do—maybe they shouldn’t, but they do. When you’re responsible for leading the group, however, that option isn’t open to you. It’s not particularly relevant whether you feel like it or not. You need to be faithful and you need to be there and so, in this way, when you move from being a member of a group to being a leader you don’t gain freedom; you give up freedom.

And the more leadership responsibility you accept, the more you’ll need to give up. If you expect it to be different you’ll either be bitterly disappointed and frustrated with the people you’re supposed to be serving or you’ll twist your leadership so as to make it all about you and your comfort and prestige—and in the process the people you’re supposed to be serving will become disillusioned by your selfishness.

Christian leadership is about servanthood and so, though it might at first seem counterintuitive, as you gain authority you will lose freedom. Which means that leaders will need to give up as they go up.

If you enjoyed this chapter, then check out the rest of Wisdom in Leadership.