At some point in my childhood, I can remember hearing my parents tell me:

“Do your best. Remember, you’re a leader.”

As a kid, the “you’re a leader” part threw me for a loop, because I pictured leaders as army generals and guys in marching band uniforms with the tall hats and batons.

Cut me some slack. I was a kid.

All that to say that my definition of “leader” was a little fuzzy.

These days, I see things a little better. I understand that I do have leadership roles, some of which I have chosen and some of which I’ve sort of matured into.

The intentional family is fertile ground for leaders. To stop the flow of culture and say as a family, “No, we’re doing it our way” will build the character and leadership of everyone in the family.

With that in mind, here are five things I know about being a leader:

I need to show the path. Most of what I do in my professional life and in the community is about taking people from where they are currently to where they want/need to be in the future. I never expect someone to take the entire journey in one step, but that’s probably what they think I’m going to ask them to do. I’m most effective as a leader when I show a clear picture of a destination but then show the specific path toward that destination and ask for one step at a time.

I need to make decisions. In my mind, I have this awesome study with ceiling-high bookshelves and a few windows and a nice big desk with a big fat Mac for writing. That’s where I go to figure out hard problems or work on decisions that need more research than I can give in just a quick moment. The only trouble is, the study is fictional and the time to figure out hard problems and research things is fictional, too. They don’t exist. I constantly put things off until later thinking I’ll be able to make a better decision under better circumstances, but I never go back and make the decision or the better circumstances. For the things that don’t need the counsel of my wife, the best thing to do is just make a decision and move on.

I need to value people with my time. How we spend our time with people will communicate a lot to them. They’ll see whether we’re fully present, whether we’re generous with our time or whether we treat our time as something to be earned. For the sake of relationships, time is best used as something to be given freely for the benefit and building up of the other person.

I need to look for who’s next. Good leaders attract other leaders and good leaders raise up other leaders. So when you see an organization with one leader, you’ve got to wonder what’s really going on there. It’s a mark of success and maturity to bring up people in professional and community contexts to move into the roles I occupy now. In the context of family, it means pouring into the kids to give them eyes to see in increasing degrees the opportunities and responsibilities all around them.

I need to grow. The only reason I know any of this stuff is because God has seen fit to put me in places where I can see it playing out. I’m growing into these things as I see good leaders do them. But these aren’t the only things leaders do, so I need to maintain a student’s heart in the hopes of seeing more.

Those are five things I know about being a leader. What one thing would you add?