08 Jun 5 Deadly Leadership Sins – Part 2
The Five Deadliest Sins of a Leader.
Hello and welcome, Christopher Hart here with Transforming Lives Coaching and Consulting. I’m coming to you live today to bring you another video in our Lead Strong leadership series where we look to massively increase the influence and impact that leaders have on themselves as well as those around them. So for those that don’t know me, once again my name is Christopher Hart, I am an organizational and leadership development coach as well as I specialize in the area of the psychology of success through peak performance.
So if you haven’t been following us, we’ve been working through a daily series where we share content for leaders who are looking to create massive influence in not just the world around them whether it’s their family, business, charitable organization, but in themselves as well because we believe in leadership through our six level leadership model that you must be able to lead yourself before you can lead other people. So if you haven’t been following us please know that we have many video series in our library, you can check them out here on Facebook, you can go to our Youtube channel, we’ll post that link in the comments section, or you can go to our website www.transforminglivescoaching.com, and go to our blog page and check out our videos from that medium as well.
So this week we’re doing something a little bit different. Normally we’re doing different topics daily, well this week we’re doing a series on a much larger topic called The Five Deadliest Sins of a Leader. So if you didn’t catch yesterday’s post, we talked about deadliest sins like what does it mean for it to be quote/unquote “deadly.” Well you’re not going to die for the most part unless you’re in an area of leadership where it is life or death, but for most leaders it’s not a matter of physical life or death it’s a matter of leadership life or death, and what that looks like and what we understand it to be is that leadership is the ability to attract people to your mission, to goals, to your vision, et cetera. And so it’s an element of rapport, and when we talk deadly, if you participate, if you possess these sins of leadership within you it’s going to massively increase your potential to influence other people but what it really does, what the ultimate outcome is you’re going to lose followers and the reason why is because these are the quote/unquote “sins” that we believe cause people to stop following a leader.
Now in much of the world of success when we talk about peak performance what we find with people is they look for the things of what to do in order to achieve, “What do I need to do?” People are great at finding a plan, what they miss are the blind spots. What are the things, the unconscious incompetence which is “I don’t know what I don’t know,” AKA blind spots, what are the blind spots that could cause me to massively fail on this journey to success that could take me off course or just quote/unquote “kill my chances”? So that’s what we’re working through this week for you leaders out there, what are the things that are going to cause you to come off course or to kind of kill your mojo in leading other people?
Yesterday we talked about perfectionism, the deadliest of all sins, the leader that is defined by perfectionism, they hold themselves to accountability of perfection, they hold others to an accountability of perfection. And what we talked about was perfection is unattainable, there’s only one person ever to walk the earth, Jesus Christ Himself, documented in the Bible, to ever be perfect. And we’re born as human beings the Bible says in Genesis One, we’re born into sin and so if we’re born into sin we can’t never be perfect; so to hold someone accountable to a level of perfection is holding them and yourself accountable to something that can’t ever be attained, so it’s the deadliest of all sins. What we said yesterday was hold people accountable to results, quality, achievement, definable, accomplishable elements of accountability. So if you want to learn more about that check out our video in our video series or any of the other areas that I talked about earlier and you can catch up on that video.
Today is the second deadliest sin.
Not as deadly as the perfection one, and if you participate in this one I can promise you you’re going to lose followers, hence the reason why it’s the second deadliest sin of the five. So what is it? Pride. Yesterday was perfection, today is pride. Promise you one thing, this is not a five piece video series, just so happens to be yesterday was a P, today’s a P. So perfectionism, now pride.
What exactly is pride?
Pride is defined as a feeling or deep pleasure, like you possess this feeling or deep pleasure or satisfaction, so feeling, deep pleasure or satisfaction derived from one’s own achievement. Pride becomes about you; leadership is about other people. John Maxwell talks about servant leadership; Jesus talks about servant leadership; leading others to their success so in turn you can achieve your own success, but it’s about serving others. It’s defined as helping people get what they want when they want it. When you put yourself, the feeling, the deep pleasure, the satisfaction before other people, that’s not leadership, that’s self gratification, self service. It’s not a gas station in the south. Leadership is about other people. Pride puts you in front of other people, and when people are looking at you as a leader to help them get what they want when they want to so in turn you can get what you want, when you put your own feelings, deep satisfaction and pleasure of your own achievement ahead of them, no bueno; I promise you you will lose them. You will lose them, that’s just a harsh truth.
So what we understand about pride is pride literally disassociates us from leadership, you no longer become a leader because you’re putting yourself before other people, it becomes a point where you are using other people, using, leveraging them for your own success, you care more about them, your own feelings, your own deep gratification, so you can come on Facebook, you can come on Twitter, you can come on Instagram and brag about how great your team is doing and how much you have sold and how proud you are, and it’s you, you, you, you, you.
Here’s how you tell a prideful leader: Look at their language, they speak “I, me,” they don’t speak we, it’s “me, my, and I;” they speak very individual language. What we understand about the psychology of success is what comes out of someone’s mouth is what’s contained in their brain. In the model of PTF, they are where programming affects thoughts, feelings, actions and results, which we understand to be the structure by which all human behavior exists, our words are nothing more than external communicated thoughts. So if they’re speaking about themselves those words are revealing their thoughts which are coming from their program, it’s programmed into them that they are more important than their people. The interesting part about pride is the Bible actually has over 30 Bible verses that speak to pride. You think God wanted us to know something about pride? You think that… you think maybe God wanted us to be aware that pride is a very destructible element/sin to those that are looking to influence and impact others and the world?
Let me read you a couple of Bible verses related to pride. Actually a majority of the Book of Proverbs…I don’t want to say majority, much of the Book of Proverbs actually references pride, and here’s two that I want to share with you:
Proverbs 16:5 says “The Lord detests all the proud of heart; be sure of this, they will not go on punished.” That’s Proverbs 16… Chapter 16 Verse 5.
Scroll down a little bit and Proverbs Chapter 16:18 where He then turns around and says, “Pride goes before destruction; a haughty spirit before a fall…a haughty spirit before a fall.” A haughty spirit is defined as a arrogantly superior and disdainful spirit, when it’s about you, when you pride yourself in what you have accomplished when you’ve leveraged other people for you, for you to brag and for your own accomplishments whether externally communicated or in your heart what God is saying through the book of Proverbs is He detests that; 16:5 – “The Lord detests all the proud of heart. Be sure this, you will not go on punished.”
Now what’s He saying here?
What He’s saying here is… what He says in 16:18, Proverbs 16:18, “Pride goes before destruction.” If you are prideful you are looking for destruction; destruction is going to come behind it. A haughty spirit, which is a disdainful and arrogantly superior…an arrogantly superior spirit of disdain comes before a fall. It becomes the deadliest sin, or the second deadliest sin of the five that we know about, not because I say so, I mean who am I? I’m just here to help you on your journey of leadership success, but the Bible tells us so in the Book of Proverbs. And there’s many more, like there’s Proverbs 16:5; Proverbs 16:18; Proverbs 16:19, the very next verse. “Better to be lowly in spirit along with the oppressed than to share plunder with the proud.”
What is God telling us? You are better off to walk among the depressed, the non achieved individuals than to try and elevate yourself above the rest through pride. He detests it, He hates it. So there are some stark truth here to understanding pride. And here’s what we need to know about pride, nobody wants to follow a leader who thinks they are better than everyone else, that’s why you’re going to lose. You’re going to lose in God’s eyes and you’re going to lose in your people’s eyes; and what you’re going to find is you’re going to be very lonely.
Leaders if you’re out there and you find yourself lonely at the top, a leader should never find themselves lonely at the top. Why? Because a leader should be building a team, a team where together everyone achieves more. If you find yourself lonely at the top you don’t have a team because you’re not a part of everyone and the togetherness, and leadership is about bringing people with us, like we elevate them so they elevate us. So quite frankly you should never be lonely at the top it should be “Hey everyone’s at the top and they’re pushing me along with them and this is a fun ride, this is a fun climb. It’s challenging but we’re all doing it together.” But if you find yourself lonely at the top you might be finding some pride because it separates you from your people. Why? Because nobody wants to follow a leader who believes they are better than everyone else; and when you’re prideful, full of pride, you’re making it about you and you’re not making it about your people.
So leaders, how can we separate ourselves from pride and move on the path of successful leadership? You humble yourself. The answer, the counter to pride is humble. The opposite of pride is humble. Be humble. God speaks more about being humble than He does about pride. In over 30 Scripture verses in the Bible He talks about pride but then He talks more about being humble. Why? Because the humble at heart are the ones that have favor in God’s eyes.
So whether you believe in God or not, whatever your spiritual beliefs are, understand if you are humble, yes you are going to seek favor in God’s eyes; but I promise you, you will see favor in your people’s eyes as well. Those around you will want to follow you because they understand that your heart is on them, you make yourself lesser so they can be greater, and by them, your people being greater, you will be lifted up. I promise you, your people will lift you up, and if they don’t then you most likely are serving prideful people, you have the wrong team. I can help you with that. I actually help people build organizations and helping them select hire, train and lead great organizations through hiring, selecting, training and leading great people. We’re all built great but it’s just a matter of being the right match for the job, for your organization and its culture as well as your leadership personality style.
So what we come to understand is pride is a very deadly sin, it will separate you not only from God but from your people as well. It will cause you to feel lonely at the top. The counter, the answer to pride is being humble, putting other people, raising them up so in turn they pull you up. But if you put yourself before them, promise you one thing, you’re going to lose not because I say so but because the Bible says so and I believe in the truth of the Bible, hopefully you do as well.
So hopefully this content brought value to your life and your business in the way that we understand that. As much of what we understand about these leadership principles and tenets that we talk about helps us on this parallel duality journey of life and business, that life will affect the business and business will affect life. You must be able to lead yourself before you can lead other people. You must be able to lead …the Bible says you must be able to lead your own household before you can go out and lead other people. So it’s about leaving yourself, it’s about leading your life, your family and your own household before you can go to work and pretend like you’re leading other people to success.
If you’re struggling with any of this. if you feel like you’re not leading yourself to being the best version of yourself let me know, let me help you out. If you’re not leading your family as high as a level as you’re leading your business we need to talk. Hit me up on the comments, hit me up on private messenger or hit me up on e-mail at chris@transforminglivescoaching.com.
So leaders here’s my question for you, are you leading in a prideful manner or are you leading in a humble manner? Are you putting yourself arrogantly superior to other people or are you humbly putting yourself behind those and that you’re serving them? What is the one thing that you are doing to be a humble servant leadership for your people that’s lifting them up? We’d love to hear from you, we’d love to learn from our community as well. This is not all about me, feel free to share your comments.
If you have questions post them in the comments section, we’d love to continue the coaching process and help you along your path of achieving impactful and influential leadership in your life and in your business. So thank you for joining me today, remember one thing, God loves you, so do I. Lead strong and have a powerful rest of your day. Take care.
About the author:
Over the course of 8 years, Christopher Hart went from an enlisted Private First Class to a Commissioned Officer-Captain. In 2005, Christopher chose to move on from his military career to focus on starting a family and embarking in the world of entrepreneurship. Christopher’s passion is now working to help others be the BEST version of themselves and helping them Lead others to the same!
To learn more about Christopher Hart or to get in touch with him regarding a coaching program you can email him at Chris@TransformingLivesCoaching.com
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