026 Core Beliefs: Leadership

Most people think leadership is about position, authority,or influence.

But the truth is—leadership is not something you step into…it’s something that flows out of what you believe.

In this episode, Joey points out that if your beliefs are off, your leadership will be off by breaking down 3 core beliefs that every true leader must carry—whether you’re leading a home, a business, or just your own life.

Transcript

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Most people think leadership is about position, authority, or influence. But the truth is that leadership is not something you just simply step into. It's really something that flows out of what you believe. If your beliefs are off, then your leadership's off. And today we're breaking down three core beliefs that every true believer must carry. So it doesn't matter whether you're leading at home, if you're leading at business, or if you're just leading in life. If you're a leader, if you're a good leader, you have to carry these three beliefs. Let's take a little time. Let's talk about that. Welcome to the Iron Pursuit Podcast, where men are forged by the truth of God's word. As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another. This podcast is a call to biblical manhood. Here, we challenge men to rise above comfort, reject passivity, and live under the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Each episode is designed to strengthen your faith, sharpen your character, and equip you to lead with integrity, grit, and grace. So whether you're a husband, a father, a brother, or a friend, this is your invitation to pursue the kind of manhood that honors God and changes generations. This is the Iron Pursuit. All right. Thanks for coming back and joining us again, guys. We are now on the 26th episode of the Iron Pursuit Podcast. 26th episode. You know, I've been thinking like over the last few episodes, I keep saying, well, are we on episode 23 or 24? Well, I know today we're on episode 26. I actually got that wrong last time. But we are carrying on with our core belief series. And today we are going to look at the core belief of leadership. I have been waiting on this one because I love to teach leadership. I love to talk about leadership. And today we're just going to dig right into uh the core beliefs of leadership, because if you don't have this one right, you're not going to be a good leader. And I think most of the guys that are listening to this, most of you who are listening to this, you're leading in some capacity, um, or you're growing into uh some sort of leadership position. And it doesn't matter how big that leadership position is, if you're leading at all in any way, shape, or form, uh you you're you're in leadership and you need to know what that means and what that looks like. And so just like I said in the intro, a lot of people think that leadership is all about the position you have or the authority you have or the influence you have. But really, um, even though all of that, those, those three things, they they play a role in leadership, if you don't understand the beliefs behind leadership, then you're never really going to have a solid position. You're not going to have any sufficient authority, and you're not going to have any noticeable influence in a positive direction. If your beliefs are off in this, your leadership's going to be off because you're going to have this negative or this flawed view of leadership. You're going to have a flawed understanding of what leadership is all about. And so, just like I said uh in the ep or in the introduction, like I said, we're going to be uh talking about these three um beliefs that that every leader has to carry. And it doesn't matter where you're at, where where you're at in your leadership. So, hey, let's just dive right into it, okay? Um, number one, let's talk about this. Leadership is responsibility. It's not a privilege, okay? Leadership is responsibility. This is what I want you to understand. This is the core belief I want you to grab around this. I am not responsible. I'm sorry. I am responsible for what's been entrusted to me. I am responsible for what's been entrusted to me. Weak leaders ask, what do I get? What does this benefit me? From me leading you, what am I going to get from this? That's how weak leaders are. Weak leaders are always looking for what they are going to get out of it. Instead, a strong leader is going to say, What is mine to carry so I can lead better? What are my responsibilities so that I can help this person, so I can help that person grow, so I can help that person uh become who they need to be. Leadership is not about being served. I love this idea. I teach this idea all the time, and I try my hardest to lead this way because I go by what Jesus said. Jesus says, I did not come to be served, but I came to serve. So leadership is not about being served, it's about stepping up when other people step back. You see, good leaders are not going to stand around and wait for perfect conditions. If I can tell you anything about this idea of the core bel core belief of leadership today, it would be that I can tell you that from multiple experiences in my life, I have understood that you cannot sit around and wait for the conditions to be perfect. If you are a leader and you are waiting around on everything to align, like you're waiting on the stars to align. They've got to align just perfectly. Before things run smoothly, you're wasting yours and everyone else's time. You're wasting time. The perfect time for the strongest leadership is when things are not going smoothly. I mean, just think about it. Who needs a leader when things are running smoothly? This may sound like an oxymoron, but things are only running smoothly because there's a good leader in place. Okay? I know I just said that who needs a leader when things are running smoothly? People are not going to be running to a leader or looking for a leader when things are running smoothly. If things are running smoothly, that means that there has been someone courageous enough who stepped into a chaotic situation and helped bring a little bit of order there. That's what a good leader does. Good leaders are not derailed by challenges. Good leaders are not derailed by unmet deadlines. They're not thrown off by people who don't show up. Understand that. Good leaders are going to keep, they're going to keep moving. They because they have learned how to pivot, they have learned how to readjust, and they have learned how to move forward. So if you're going to be a good leader, you cannot wait for the perfect conditions to be met before you start leading. You must lead now because people need you to lead now. Next, you don't play the blame game. Good leaders do not pass blame. Good leaders do not look for opportunities to point the finger at someone else and say, oh, well, that was their fault. Instead, good leaders take responsibility and they accept blame for what has happened. A good leader can be identified by their actions in the good times as well as the bad times. And believe me, there are going to be plenty of bad times in your leadership. For example, if the team fails, okay, you have a team and a deadline has been set, there's a job that must be done, whatever it is. It doesn't matter. If the team fails, a good leader accepts responsibility. A good leader regroups, a good leader retrains, and a good leader equips his or her team for the next uh assignment, you know, learning from the past experiences. That that good leader is going to be able to adjust with all of these things. If you're a leader who always accepts the praise but always passes blame, you're not going to be a leader very long. People are not going to stick with you. People are not going to follow you. Get into the habit of accepting responsibility, regrouping, retraining, and equipping your team to move forward at the next opportunity. Next, you don't avoid hard decisions. Leadership is riddled with hard decisions. If you are afraid of facing those hard decisions, you are not going to be a successful leader. I heard this uh before and I did a little bit of search to try to figure out who was credited with this quote. And from the best that I can find, it seems like Annley Stanley, Andy Stanley was given credit for this, and they call it the cost of great leadership. There are three things that uh leadership, great leadership will cost you, and I want to give those to you right now. First of all, uh you must make decisions that negatively affect those you care about. So great leadership comes with a cost, and you will have to make decisions that negatively affect people that you care about. Number two, you'll be disliked despite your best attempt to do the best for the most. There will be people who will dislike you no matter how hard you are trying to do the best thing for the most people. And lastly, the cost of great leadership is that you will be misunderstood and you will not always have the opportunity to defend yourself. So if you want to be a leader, you need to understand that there is a cost to good leadership. But I want you to understand this. This is from a biblical point. I want you to just consider Jesus' leadership model. I want you to think about the way Jesus led and how that he did not back away, even though he knew the difficulty that he was going to be faced with. Jesus didn't avoid the cross. He embraced the responsibility of his calling. You can read that in Luke chapter 9. You can read it in Matthew, you can read it in Mark, you can read it in John. You can go through all of those gospels and you can read about that. But Jesus didn't avoid it. And he and the same's going to be with you that if you want to be a good leader, you're not going to be able to just try to avoid the landmines of difficulty or hard decisions. You're going to have to walk through those things, but you're going to have to learn how to pivot, regroup, realign, do whatever you need to do, and keep making decisions as you go along. So as I look at this and I think about this very first point, the point that we're trying to make here of leadership being a responsibility and not a privilege, I want you to kind of think about this from a practical application. And I want you to think about it just as a man, okay? Own uh first of all, own your home spiritually. Like go ahead and take responsibility of it. But you know, the Bible tells us that you have been, as a man, you have been called or you have been created to be the head of your home. Men didn't just wake up one day and say, hey, I want to be the man, I want to be the head, I want to, I want to be the one that's in this, in this leadership position. God created you to be that way, and you had no say-so in it. God created you to be the head, and he wants you to be the head of your home. So own it and stop running from it. You'll have to make some tough decisions uh in your home as a leader, and you need to understand this. Your children will not always like you for it. They will not always like you because of the decisions that you make. You have to understand that. But in the end, they will love you. Next, you need to learn how to own your mistakes quickly. Just because you're a good leader doesn't mean you won't make mistakes. If, if, you know, I would I would even go so far as to say that if you're not making mistakes, you're probably not leading very well. That goes back to what the guy told me when I was fishing for crankbaits. Remember what I said in the last episode or one of the one of the recent episodes where uh I was telling a guy about the crankbaits I had lost, and he said, Well, son, if you're not losing baits, you're probably not fishing very much. I think that goes along the same lines with leadership and making mistakes. If you're not making mistakes, you're probably not being a very effective leader. Good leaders are going to make mistakes because good leaders become great at recovery. If you don't make a mistake, you never learn how to recover. And it's the recovery process that develops great leaders. So never give the impression that you get everything right all the time. Don't ever do that. Instead, let everyone around you know, everyone that you lead, let them know that when you fail, you will admit it. That shows humility uh in your character. And whenever you admit it, you realize that you've made the mistake. Assure everybody that you'll correct it and you'll do a better job of leading next time. I'll never forget what I heard Craig Grochel say. Craig Grochel said, people want real overright. And what he meant by that is that he he said that people will follow someone who is real over someone who always thinks they're right. So remember that real overright. Every single time people want someone who's real overright. So on the outcome, even when the thing that happened is not all your fault, as a leader, you have to step into the line of fire and you have to protect your people. Now, I'm gonna kind of just dig in just a little bit right here about owning the outcome. I cannot tell you guys uh from a from a leadership position. Now, I've led in in multiple things, okay? Primarily my leadership has been as a pastor. I've been a pastor um for over two decades, and uh I've enjoyed it. I've not always enjoyed it. It's not always been fun, but it's always been rewarding. And I can tell you that as a pastor, I have had to own the outcome many times when it was not fully my fault. I did it because I was the pastor, and I knew that by taking responsibility, um, I was going to benefit my congregation in the long run. And so I would, I would just take the fall for some things, or I would just claim the fault of it, and then I would move on. So as a leader, you have to step into the line of fire, take responsibility, take claim, allow the fault to fall on you. And you do that to help protect other people that you are leading or potentially hoping to lead. I want you to catch that, okay? There are people who are going to be out there who are going to that those that you are already are leading, and then there are going to be those potential followers, those people who want a good leader and they're looking for someone to lead. So there's going to be your supervisors, they're going to be looking at how good you can lead. There are going to be people who are around you looking at how good you can lead. Matter of fact, for all the single guys out there, there are going to be women, single women out there looking for a man who knows how to lead. And they're going to be inspecting all of these different things, evaluating your character and your ability to own the things that are that are happening. Okay. So let me just kind of digress on this for just a moment. How this is this is a double-edged sword, okay? This goes back to the point I made earlier about making the hard decisions. If you are a team leader and there's someone on your team who is consistently missing the mark and causing everyone else to fail, causing everyone else to fall behind, making the team miss their deadlines, whatever that may be. All right. You're trying to lead them in the right way. You've taken the fall, you've you've owned the outcome, you've you've done this over and over and over, but this person is consistently missing the mark. With that person, you cannot continue to take the heat for them. You, as a leader, as a good leader, you are to call them to be more effective, you are to call them, challenge them to be more efficient in their performance, and you must expect them to do their job. All right? If they do not, if they cannot, as a good leader, your job is to let them go. If you do not let them go, you are enabling them and you are not leading them. That is a hard decision. I've had to make some of those hard decisions in my time, not only in church leadership, but even in the job as a supervisor, as a foreman, um, different things, even as a boss. So you have to understand that there's going to be times when you have to make those tough decisions. But if you do not let that person go, you are enabling them to continue to be a failure. And that is not what good leaders do. All right. So as a leader, I want you to remember this. If it's my world, if I'm leading in this in this area, it's on my shoulders. That's what I want you to remember. If it's in my world, if it's in my leadership, if it's in my wheelhouse, so to speak, it's on my shoulders. And we're not going to point the finger at somebody else. Number two, let's move on. Leadership is influence through example. Leadership is influence through example. This is the core belief I want you to get. People will follow what I do, not what I say. People will follow what I do, not what I say. Leadership is caught before it is taught. So, in other words, people are going to pay attention to what they see. That's why videos are so good, right? We like to make videos. Think about you trying to fix something, learn something, you go to YouTube, uh, you wanna you want to watch somebody do something instead of reading the instructions. The reason is because you're a visual learner. You you're able to pick up on those things. This is what, this is what men do. This is why when an attractive lady walks by and and we're out on the prowl, you know, like we're we're looking, we're single guys looking, and all of a sudden visually, we're we're attracted and we watch and we look. That's that's part of the way God created us. So whenever you're thinking about leadership, use use the things that you normally do, the the um the instinct that you normally have. Let this be a guide for you whenever you're thinking about being a leader. As as as um, I guess as vulnerable as you might be to uh visualization, also understand that the people you lead, they're they're doing the same things. They're gonna watch what's going on and they're gonna pay attention to what's going on. So this leadership that we're talking about, it's caught before it's taught. So you can't demand discipline if you're lazy. Let's just understand it. You you can't sit there and ask everybody around you, those that you're trying to lead. You can't expect them to be to be disciplined if you're lazy. Just think about it. How well uh did you follow the instructions of someone that you knew was lazy and didn't have good discipline themselves? You you may have done what they told you to do because your paycheck depended on it, but at the end of the day, you didn't respect that guy. Be for be honest. Do you do you want to be a respected leader or a tolerated leader? I don't want to be a tolerated leader. I want to be a respected leader. Therefore, I want my life to reflect the characteristics of a respected leader. You can't demand respect if you're a harsh leader, okay? You just can't. If you're a harsh leader, you snap, you bite, and you react from a position of insecurity, and no one under you respects you. You're being tolerated and you're on your way to being being replaced. You're just, you're just kind of buying your time right now. I'm telling you this because I know what it's like to be a harsh leader. I've been that guy. I've been that person, not only in the in the marketplace, in the workforce, but I have been that guy even in my home. As I've tried to lead my home with my kids, I would snap, I would have a short temper with my wife or whatever. And man, trust me, God has brought me a long way. But you're not going to lead well and you're not going to lead very long if this describes you, right? So you can't demand integrity either if you are a person that likes to cut corners. You know, think about it as a leadership. You know, how can you expect, how can you expect those that are that are following you to be honest and to be trustworthy and to be integral whenever they witness you cutting corners and halfway doing things most of the time. I want you to kind of think about what Paul said. Whenever Paul was speaking to the Corinthians, this is over uh in 1 Corinthians chapter 11. He said, follow me as I follow Christ. That was a bold statement by Paul, but that is what leadership looks like. Okay. Paul is saying, hey, Jesus is the great leader. Jesus is the one who we all should follow, and I'm following Jesus. Jesus called me, he personally called me as an apostle. Therefore, you follow me because Christ has called me. I'm going to follow Christ and you follow me as I follow Christ. That should be our leadership strategy, no matter where we're leading, right? You should be following Christ. I should be following Christ. Therefore, those who are following us should be gleaning truths of Jesus through the life that we live. And so, in a practical way to apply this, I want you to think about these three things. Be the first one to show up and the last one to quit. If you're going to lead, lead well. Give your people something to follow. Stop dragging in late. If you've been hired and you are expected to be there at a certain time and don't give me, well, I'll make a salary. Don't no, don't, don't give me that. Just understand that if the workday starts at a certain time, you need to be there before it's time to go to work because you need to give a good example for those that you're trying to lead. Next, you need to model repentance and not perfection. I teach you guys this all the time. Repentance is key. I'm going to do a podcast pretty soon on the differences between practicing forgiveness and practicing repentance. I'm going to lay that out for you and give you the biblical explanation of what that means. But understand this model repentance and not perfection. Again, you need to be able to own your mistake, make it right, and keep leading. You are not perfect. You've made mistakes, you're going to make mistakes, own them, correct them, move forward. And then you let your lot your private life match your public works and your public words. Like the old saying says, practice what you preach. You can't expect to say one thing and then live another way and then have people respect you as a leader. It just doesn't work. I mean, I want you to think about it. Me as a pastor, any of you guys that that um allow me to be your pastor, I want you to just think about how effective of a pastor would I be if I stood up Sunday after Sunday after Sunday and I preached and preached and preached and I spoke on all the things of the Bible. I preached holiness, I preached all these things, but yet you catch me at the bar drinking, you catch me cheating on Katrina, you catch me talking dirty, bad, whatever, laughing at dirty jokes, whatever it might be. You see that all of a sudden, the concept that you had of me, where I may have been a guy who rated with his leadership and his trustworthy and his honor and his integrity up here, all of a sudden it has fallen and it is no good anymore. Because it takes a long time to build someone's trust, but it takes one moment to lose every bit of it. People want someone they can depend on, they want someone they can trust, they want someone they can look up to in every area of life, not just on Sunday mornings, right? And I can say this especially as pastors. We don't need to just be good people on Sunday or when we're preaching or when we're around our church people. We need to be good people, good examples, good men of character all the time. My life is the loudest message I will ever preach. The things that you do speak way louder than the words that you say. So in my life, I believe that my life is the loudest message that I'll ever preach. And if I do not live my life above reproach, as Paul wrote to Timothy over in 1 Timothy 3 10, if I don't live my life above reproach, that means where everybody else thinks that there is this median line where everybody can can live their life and they'd be okay. As a man of God, as a pastor, I have to live mine above that. I need to be above that because I don't want to do anything that would cause anybody else to stumble and fall. And if I do those things and I'm I'm aware of those things, it's my responsibility to make them right. So I need to live my life above reproach. I'm not I'm not leading with the idea that that um how do I how do I say that? I'm trying to I want to think through this a minute because I won't I want to get it right. When Paul told Timothy over in 1 Timothy 3 10, he said that here are the requirements for pastors and elders in your church. And he said they have to be men of that that are above reproach. And if I don't live my life that way, then I'm not I'm not living my life thinking that everything I do matters and it glorifies Jesus Christ. Does that make sense? I I hope that makes sense to you. I wanted I want to relay that in a way that that's that's clear. I want to live my life every way, every day in every area of my life so that it glorifies God. And if I'm not living my life above reproach, then that means I'm gonna get into some area of my life and I'm gonna I'm gonna fall and I'm I'm gonna be I'm gonna be way down on the ladder because I'm not doing everything as unto the Lord, as Paul speaks about uh in his in his writings. So number three, let's move on to number three and we'll get on down to wrapping this up. Leadership requires courage, not comfort. Okay. I have I have seen this um so many times. Unfortunately, I've seen it um I've seen it in pastors, and and it it really breaks my heart when I see it in pastors. I have seen people, um, I want to be careful. I've seen people who are are just flat out lazy people. They seek to be pastors because they think that it's just going to be an easy way to make a living. I I hate to say that, but it's the truth. There are people out there who who do that. I know some people who have done that. They didn't make it very long, but I know some people who have done that. Uh they were in it just for the money, they were in it just for the uh vocation, and and they found out that it wasn't as easy as they had hoped for. But good, strong leadership, it requires courage. It's it's not about the comfort. And this is the core belief I want you to take away from this. The leader says, I will choose what is right over what is easy. Leadership will not put you always in comfortable positions. More than likely, leadership is going to catapult you into very uncomfortable places. I'm telling you, leadership will put you in some uncomfortable positions. As a leader, you're going to have hard conversations. As a leader, you're going to make unpopular decisions. As a leader, you will often stand alone. You'll you'll be left standing alone. But this is what you have to remember. Cowards are the ones who protect comfort. Leaders are the ones who protect truth. Which one do you want to be? Do you want to be a coward who just protects the comforts of life, protects everybody's feelings all the time, or the one who leads in a way that protects the truth? I promise you, truth is what will last the longest. I want you to think about what Joshua said over in Joshua 1.9. I'm in my Bible study, my yearly Bible reading right now, and I am uh in Joshua. I just got into Joshua. I think I'm about seven or eight, nine, ten chapters in. I can't remember. But uh, in the very beginning of Joshua's, one of my favorite verses is Joshua 1.9. It's where God is speaking to Joshua before they cross over the Jordan, before Israel crosses over Jordan into the promised land. And God says to him, Be strong and courageous. This is the word Kazakh that's there. Be strong and courageous, for I'm gonna be with you. And he was like, haven't I commanded you to be strong and be courageous? This is what leadership is about. It is about courage. And courage is not the absence of fear. Just because you're courageous doesn't mean that you're not gonna have some fear, some unsettled things going on inside of you. But courage says, I'm gonna be obedient in spite of fear. Just because I have fear in me or that the devil's trying to use fear against me, it doesn't mean that I'm not courageous and that I don't, I don't want to move forward because I do. All right. So as a as a leader, you're you have to understand that courage is a necessity. It is, because the enemy is going to use fear against you. So how do we put this into application? Practical uh application in our life. Number one, just say the hard things when they need to be said. Now, if you are new to leadership, you're gonna struggle here just a little bit. But the struggle should not take you away from leading, okay? You can't have the word leadership without also having the word struggle. It just don't happen. Leadership is a struggle, and you have to understand that there's going to be the struggle, but you you can't allow the struggle to keep you from leading. Remember, if everything was running smoothly, why would anyone need leaders in the first place? Okay. They need good leaders because there are some things that are running rough and they need them to be smoothed out. So, next, stand your ground when the pressure comes. If you are going to lead, pressure is going to come. If you lead with integrity, if you lead with grit, if you lead with grace, you will be able to stand under pressure without bending because you know that your leadership has been for the best outcomes of those you lead and those that you're trying to help. Keep your motives pure, gentlemen. If you will keep your motives pure, your backbone will remain as solid as steel. But if your motives are flawed, if your motives are twisted, if your motives are corrupt, you will snap like a twig. So lead even when you feel unqualified. I promise you this you will feel underqualified most of the time as a leader. And questions are gonna come and you're gonna wonder, like, why are these people coming to me for the answer? The reason they're coming to you for an answer is because they see a leader in you. They see leadership ability in you. So don't squander that opportunity, don't take that for granted because those people have built some sort of trust with you or in you, and you don't need to squander that and take it for granted. So develop yourself uh in this leadership uh position. Be prepared for the leadership challenges that are coming your way. Because if you are noticing people coming to you, they're asking you questions, they're saying, hey, what about this? What about that? They see leadership in you and they know that you have the ability to give the answer. So comfort never built a leader. Never. Comfort never built a leader, but courage does. If you have courage to get out there and lead, you will learn how to be a leader, but you have to believe it. You've got to believe these things about being a leader. So leadership doesn't start when someone gives you a title just because somebody says, hey, I would like for you to be the superintendent. That doesn't automatically mean that you have become a good leader. You see, they may give you a good title. They may say, hey, we want you to be, and then they give you that position. That's not what makes you a leader. What makes you a leader is when you take responsibility, number one, whenever you live the example, number two, and whenever you choose to be courageous, number three. So here's the question for you as we get ready to close this out. What belief about leadership do you need to change today? What is it about you, the belief that you've had about leadership up to this point, what is it that you need to change? Because whenever your beliefs shift, your leadership follows that belief. And if you are willing to shift that belief, you're going to become a leader that other people will be glad to follow. Strong men aren't born, gentlemen. They're built through the beliefs, they refuse to compromise. And my prayer for you today is that you will refuse to compromise these beliefs about leadership. So until we meet again, God bless. Go out there and lead with integrity, grit, and grace. Hey guys, thanks again for listening. Remember, share, like, and subscribe. If you think this podcast could help someone else, please share it with them. Check us out on Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook at the IronPursuit. If you're interested in my personal or marriage coaching, send me an email at theironpursuit79 at gmail.com. Thanks again for listening. And remember, never run from the clashing because that is where the iron is sharpened.