Over the years, I’ve written a lot about servant leadership. I was recently reviewing Ken Jennings and John Stahl-Wert’s book, The Serving Leader (Berrett-Koehler, 2003 and 2016) when I realized how much I like the term serving leader—it makes the point that leadership is about doing something, it’s not just a philosophy. When you are […]
Let’s Clear Up Some Misunderstandings about Servant Leadership
When people hear the phrase servant leadership, they are often confused. Their assumption is that it means managers should be working for their employees, who in turn would decide what to do, when to do it, where to do it, and how to do it. If that’s what servant leadership is all about, it doesn’t […]
Moving from Success to Significance
Several years ago, my friend Bob Buford wrote a great book called Halftime (Zondervan, 1997). One of the key points he makes is, later in life, most people like the idea of moving from success to significance—from getting to giving. But you don’t have to wait until your life is half over. If you want […]
The Glass Is 100% Full
As humans, we often tend to look at the dark side of things. For many of us, the proverbial glass is always half empty. This is unfortunate because research has shown that what we place our attention on tends to grow stronger in our minds and in our lives—for good or bad. My daughter-in-law, Madeleine […]
Life Is a Very Special Occasion
I can’t believe how fast this year has gone by. I like the joke about how life is like a roll of toilet paper—the closer you get to the end, the faster it goes! Of course, everyone’s year is 365 days long. But for a lot of us, it feels like the years go by […]
Love versus Stuff
Over the past week, those of us living in southern California have had a whole new complication thrown into our busy holiday schedules: wildfires. For me it’s a reminder of the lesson I learned ten years ago, when our long-time family home burned to the ground in the massive Witch Creek fire of 2007. The […]
Gratitude: A Great Stress Buster
Having just experienced a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend, I’ve been reflecting on the relationship between thankfulness and stress. Recent research indicates that when you’re stressed out, if you stop and count your blessings and what you are thankful for, your stress will go away. Turns out that you can’t feel stress and be thankful at the […]
Blessings in the Rubble
Last week marked the ten-year anniversary of the massive fires in San Diego that took our family home. When Margie and I reflect on that time, we try to focus on the good things that came out of it. You might not think that makes sense. Of course, it was a tragedy—but there were many […]
The Leadership Compass
A few years ago my good friend Bill Hybels, founding pastor of Willow Creek Community Church, came up with an interesting concept about how leadership is like the face of a compass, with four points—south, north, east, and west. When people talk about leadership, they are usually talking about the compass pointing south. When you […]
Your Words and Actions Matter
We’ve all seen the image of the ripples created when a pebble is tossed into a pool of still water. The ripples radiate out in ever bigger circles—all from that tiny pebble. In a sense we’re all like that pebble. Our words and actions—whether positive or negative—ripple out and impact the world around us. I […]