Two Steps Forward

Many of us learned leadership from people who led badly. We watched coaches belittle players in the name of motivation, and we heard leaders demean people in the name of toughness. Without meaning to, we picked up a question. Do I have to choose between being ethical and being effective? Can I be both?In this episode, I tell you about my college baseball coach. He could be tough, but he had built an interior well of goodness, and his words and deeds flowed out of it. That made him safe and trustworthy. Servant leadership starts on the inside like that, and it grows as we work with Jesus to transform our whole being. Today’s practice: Before you lead today, ask yourself one question. From whom am I learning to do life and leadership? Your teacher decides what kind of person you become. This morning, take a moment to reconnect with Jesus.Follow Before You Lead on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.Before You Lead is a free gift from Todd Hunter Ministries. If this episode helped you, share it with a leader you know. Get full access to The Gospel of the Kingdom at bishoptoddhunter.substack.com/subscribe

We go to the conference and take notes on servant leadership, patience and putting others first. Then we fight airport lines, get home exhausted, and snap at someone in our first hallway conversation back at work. Didn’t we just learn this? No, we learned the concept. Insight rarely changes us. Patience and kindness are matters of the heart, not ideas to master.In this episode, I share four questions from Dr. Henry Cloud’s book Integrity that expose how little attention our workplaces give to character. When leaders rely on their position without tending their hearts, power becomes the point, and people get trampled on the climb up the ladder. Today’s practice: Before you lead today, think of one part of your heart you’d like God to change, and invite the Holy Spirit to start that work in you.Follow Before You Lead on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.Before You Lead is a free gift from Todd Hunter Ministries. If this episode helped you, share it with a leader you know. Get full access to The Gospel of the Kingdom at bishoptoddhunter.substack.com/subscribe

Many leaders admire Jesus’ teaching on love and servanthood but quietly doubt that it works in the real world. Under pressure, the “real” way to get things done seems to be throwing your weight around. In this episode, I continue our look at the inner realities that drive our leadership. We rely without thinking on things that have proven trustworthy: a cane after surgery, the stairs under our feet. Jesus invites us to rely on his words the same way. At the end of the Sermon on the Mount, he says his words are “not incidental additions to your life.” They are “foundational words, words to build a life on.”Today’s practice: Before you lead today, name one part of your leadership you’d like to have shored up, reinforced and set on a new foundation: on the rock.Follow Before You Lead on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.Before You Lead is a free gift from Todd Hunter Ministries. If this episode helped you, share it with a leader you know. Get full access to The Gospel of the Kingdom at bishoptoddhunter.substack.com/subscribe

Content note: This episode includes discussion of domestic abuse.Most leaders believe the “real me” is the one with good intentions: the person who wants to do better and has promised never to do it again. But our words and actions show what’s really going on inside, more reliably than our intentions do. In this episode, I share one of the hardest conversations I’ve had in decades of supervising leaders. I sat across from a man whose staff had accused him of abuse, and he kept pleading that his behavior didn’t reflect the real him. He never faced the anger and need for control that drove him. I have never seen anyone grow into servant leadership without being willing to look honestly, and with hope, at what’s going on inside.Today’s practice: Before you lead today, name one thing in your inner world that works against your better intentions. Then ask yourself what the first step might be toward defeating it.Follow Before You Lead on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.Before You Lead is a free gift from Todd Hunter Ministries. If this episode helped you, share it with a leader you know. Get full access to The Gospel of the Kingdom at bishoptoddhunter.substack.com/subscribe

Servant leadership isn’t something we master once and then move on from. Most of us take two steps forward and one step back. We ask for forgiveness, work on our hearts, and try again. That can feel discouraging, as if we should be further along by now. But the stumbling is part of the path. It doesn’t mean we’ve failed.In this episode, I share what decades of trying to lead like Jesus have taught me. God knows about work, workplaces and leadership. He created, and Jesus worked too. With a few women and a dozen men, Jesus started a movement that changed the world and modeled a new way to lead. Servant leadership isn’t a fad. It’s as old as God’s own goodness.Today’s practice: Before you lead today, name the one thing in your inner life you’d most like God to transform, so that your leadership would be transformed too. Then ask God for the grace and power to change it.Follow Before You Lead on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.Before You Lead is a free gift from Todd Hunter Ministries. If this episode helped you, share it with a leader you know. Get full access to The Gospel of the Kingdom at bishoptoddhunter.substack.com/subscribe

Most of us can name a boss who made work miserable. They showed up late and blamed everyone else. They handed out tasks with no context or help. They pulled rank instead of pitching in. Leaders like that don’t just make bad decisions. They teach the people under them to stop trusting leaders at all.In this episode, as we continue our look at servant leadership, I share my son’s experience in his first jobs and ask you to imagine something different, in the words of Paul in Philippians 2: Leaders who do nothing out of selfish ambition, but in humility value others above themselves.Today’s practice: Before you lead today, commit to being the kind of leader who gets the right things done the right way, serving your way into excellence for your team, your mission, or however you measure success.Follow Before You Lead on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.Before You Lead is a free gift from Todd Hunter Ministries. If this episode helped you, share it with a leader you know. Get full access to The Gospel of the Kingdom at bishoptoddhunter.substack.com/subscribe

Few leaders set out to be mean. But a goal that seems vital, like hitting the number, saving the organization or getting the project over the line, can quietly justify almost anything. “Whatever it takes” sounds like commitment until it starts to include harming people. When someone opens with “This isn’t personal,” we all know the next thing they say will be deeply personal.In this episode, I look at where meanness grows. Jesus said a bad tree can’t bear good fruit, and the meanness we fear grows from anger and contempt that leak out under pressure. I name three things a godly leader must not do: win at all costs, manipulate, or grab for power. Jesus didn’t need to grab. He lived in a God-bathed reality, secure in God’s totally competent love.Today’s practice: Before you lead today, ground yourself in a God-bathed reality that settles and secures you, so that you don’t feel compelled to grab, but free to give.Follow Before You Lead on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.Before You Lead is a free gift from Todd Hunter Ministries. If this episode helped you, share it with a leader you know. Get full access to The Gospel of the Kingdom at bishoptoddhunter.substack.com/subscribe

Power-driven leadership wears everyone out. The leader is always grabbing for more control and more leverage, and the team has to live with the fallout. Servant leadership isn’t weak or passive, and it doesn’t turn a leader into a doormat. It still works to shape the future of an organization. It just starts from a different assumption: I’m here to serve first.In this episode, I continue our look at Jesus’ words “not so with you” in John 13. Jesus knew the Father had put him in charge of everything. He knew he had come from God and was going back to God. So he put on an apron and washed his disciples’ feet. When we’re secure in where we come from and where we’re going, we don’t need to grab for power. We’re free to serve.Today’s practice: Before you lead today, take Jesus’ words in Luke 12 to heart: “Steep your life in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions.” Your leadership concerns can rest there.Follow Before You Lead on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.Before You Lead is a free gift from Todd Hunter Ministries. If this episode helped you, share it with a leader you know. Get full access to The Gospel of the Kingdom at bishoptoddhunter.substack.com/subscribe

Many leaders quietly assume they have to choose between being good and getting results. When the pressure is on, it can feel as if the only way to win is to push people around and demand our own way. Jesus disagrees. In the way of Jesus, leadership can be both ethical and effective. We don’t have to sell our souls to pursue results.In this episode, I look at the moment the disciples argued over who would sit at Jesus’ right hand, and his reply: The rulers of this world lord it over people, but “not so with you.” Following the self-emptying Jesus of Philippians 2 means laying down arrogance, ambition and the need to control. Then, after we’ve done our best work, it means leaving the outcomes with God. Today’s practice: Before you lead today, check in with Jesus about where you are on the journey to “not so with you”: toward servant leadership, and toward results rooted in integrity.Follow Before You Lead on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.Before You Lead is a free gift from Todd Hunter Ministries. If this episode helped you, share it with a leader you know. Get full access to The Gospel of the Kingdom at bishoptoddhunter.substack.com/subscribe

No leader wakes up planning to be a jerk at work. But under enough pressure—like a looming deadline, a blown budget or a hard conversation with our own boss—our worst selves come out. Over time, the team stops talking to us. Leaders who ask, “Why am I the last person to know anything around here?” usually don’t like the answer. They’ve become someone no one wants to talk to.In this episode, I begin a conversation about servant leadership. I look at what bitterness toward leaders costs: disengaged teams, broken trust, and frustration people carry home through the front door. I also share Max De Pree’s conviction that organizations need a moral purpose. Servant leadership, modeled by Jesus, is that moral compass. Today’s practice: Before you lead today, invite Jesus to be your teacher and mentor in the practice of leadership.Follow Before You Lead on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.Before You Lead is a free gift from Todd Hunter Ministries. If this episode helped you, share it with a leader you know. Get full access to The Gospel of the Kingdom at bishoptoddhunter.substack.com/subscribe