A leader’s relationships are one of the most significant and important areas of his or her life. As you would expect, I believe the most significant and important relationship any of us have is our relationship with God through Jesus Christ in the presence and power of the Holy Spirit. Since I follow Jesus that relationship must be solid and growing in order for me to lead anyone else. As that relationship is solid and growing, I become more filled with the Holy Spirit and demonstrate the “fruit” He gives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control more fully and more effectively. Those traits are vital for effective leadership. When I am impatient, or undisciplined that impacts my leadership in negative ways. When I demonstrate the nine aspects of the fruit of the Spirit, my relationships, and thus my leadership with those around me, grows more and more effective. I could say much more about that, but let that suffice for this post.
Once my relationship with God is on solid ground, I must make certain that I am on solid footing with–myself. You may not have expected me to write that, but Jesus told us to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, and our neighbors as ourselves. If you and I are going to have healthy and effective relationships with others, we must have healthy self-love. I am not talking about self-esteem, or thinking more highly of ourselves than we ought. I am talking about understanding that we are infinitely valuable to God, which makes us infinitely valuable. It means knowing that despite our hurts, hang-ups and habits that tend to derail us from living healthy and growing relationships with God and others, we are moving forward as human beings, because we know our worth. We all have our deficiencies, and that is why our relationship with God is so important: Jesus died to pay the penalty for our sins and to overcome all our deficiencies. If we do not have appropriate self-love, we will not build deep, healthy and meaningful relationships with others.
Building deep, healthy and meaningful relationship with others takes time, effort and a belief that such relationships are a major priority in our lives. While nearly everyone would say that relationships are important, building relationships is primarily a quadrant II activity, that is an activity that is important but not urgent. Yesterday, Nancy and I invested the afternoon and early evening with a couple with whom we want to build a deeper relationship. We were together for nearly seven hours. The four of us could have spent or invested those hours far differently, but because we invested them together our relationship grew significantly. All relationships need both a QUANTIFY of time and QUALITY time in order to grow. We have fostered the myth of quality time in this culture, which contends that if we spend small snippets of quality time we can foster deep, abiding, healthy relationships. The truth is quality time is a product of quantities of time. Woody Allen once said, “90% of life is just showing up.” I don’t know exactly what he meant by that, but I take it to mean that when we “keep showing up,” whether at work or in our relationships life grows and develops. Consistency and persistence are vital in developing relationships.
Another key truth about relationships is: I cannot be everyone’s best friend. Some contend that we need to be “fair” in our relationships and invest equal amounts of time with others. Jesus is our example when it comes to relationship building and “sharing” time. He invested time in thousands of people during His brief ministry, but He focused time in a 100 or so of them, devoted time to twelve “disciples”, and invested particularly in three of them. If we’re married, we need to invest more time with our spouses than with anyone else in relationship development. Many assume that if we’re in love our relationships will grow “automatically.” They don’t. Every relationship needs investments of time, love, truth, grace and more in order to grow. If we have children who are still under our influence we must invest time in them. Then come our work or school relationships, our friendships, those we have made conscience choices to mentor or receive mentorship from, and even acquaintances. We will not spend and invest the same amount of time with each, nor ought we to do so. As with all matters of life management we must decide and then make commitments in order to grow.
I would encourage you to take some time today to sit down and ask this question: Who are the most important people in my life right now? As you respond, write down their names. Then ask yourself: How much time am I investing in growing these relationships? Is it enough? How can I be intentional about growing these relationships? As you respond to these questions it may well raise more questions. After all, leading isn’t always about having all the answers, but about raising the right questions, then addressing them with increasing intentionality. The time you invest in deepening your relationships with God and others will increase your capacity for leading in ways that few other things you can do will.
Here’s to leading better by investing time in people–today!