In The Life Giving Leader: Learning to Lead from Your Truest Self, Tyler Reagin pleads the case for learning to lead from your unique God-given design to help facilitate a similar pursuit in the lives of others. With forwards by Andy Stanley and Craig Groeschel, the book sets a tone of spirit-filled empowerment, personal acceptance, and living from a place of humility.
It’s broken into four parts; Leading from Your Truest Self, Releasing the Life Giving Leader Within You, Core Behaviors of Life Giving Leaders, and How Life Giving Leaders Change Organizations. As I read, I mentally broke it down to Your Design, Your Being, Your Presence, and Your Impact.
Peppered throughout the book are many scripture references, all from The Message translation.
I was given a review copy of the book by the publisher and am happy to share some overview and personal thoughts in this post. I pray it will help fellow leaders to realize that we are to “…lead as if people’s lives depend on our leadership.”
Leading From Your Calling and Design
Leaders without life flowing into them cannot be life-giving leaders.
But how does that come to be? Does it just happen? No.
Leader, you have a prerequisite. That’s the acceptance of the calling upon your life. With that in place, it’s time to set about developing plans for leading well, because you’ll need to bring life to those around you. To do that, you will need to lead from the place of calling!
With such life-giving flow, there is a reflection of the life that also flows from God to us. The overflow, then, passes from us to those around us. Reagin is pretty clear in that observation, saying that “[t]he entire goal of becoming a life-giving leader is to allow life to flow from you to others.” But that flow is continually disrupting when we are not true to ourselves and who we are designed to be.
What will that take? It starts with intentional investment in yourself. And then there is intentional investment into the lives of others. That may seem selfish at first. But it is not. In fact, Reagin says it may be the most “unselfish thing you can do, because it will benefit the people around you one thousand times over.”
That’s because life-giving leadership begins with self-awareness and self-acceptance. Those are nonnegotiable hallmarks of authentic leadership.
When the identity search ends, there is a beginning of a new leadership season. It’s one that involves becoming aware of yourself. It “requires heavy lifting, but authenticity is worth the discomfort it requires. The deep, inward work of self-acceptance will free you to be life-giving.”
Integrity and The Battleground of Identity
Integrity demands constant attention.
Said a little less succinctly, being a man or woman of your word is priceless. However, it results only from a constant fight to be the person and leader God has made you to be.
This is a very real fact of life. It seems like we are tempted daily to stray from our integrity. It seems like there are countless opportunities for us to be viewed in our circles as hypocrites and liars. Fairly or unfairly, we are expected to be perfect, if for no other reason than to let others think they have permission to be less than perfect as well.
Be confident in your calling. That is not an arrogant statement It’s an affirmation made by a leader who trusts God. it’s one who accepts that God has placed him or her where he or she can be best alighted with the Father.
In The Life Giving Leader, Tyler Reagin pleads the case for learning to lead from your unique God-given design to help facilitate a similar pursuit in the lives of others.
Leading as a Personal Sacrifice
Reagin reminds readers that Jesus talks about sacrifice in Mark 8:34-37 (give it a read real quick). And then he drops on of the most impactful quotes on readers when he says;
What a great perspective! It’s so basic, it’s almost a “Duh statement,” but it’s a truth we all too often neglect. And it’s one that is difficult to get or keep up. But that is the nature of sacrifice. More of them and less of me. “What we need to accept is that receiving allows God to use and grow the giver.”
Further, we find that humility is always a choice a person makes. It’s a choice to let God to take center stage in your life. To steal your show. 🙂
So, the bottom line here, when leading as personal sacrifice, we are not doormats. No, we are intentional about putting other people first, and living for things that are infinitely bigger than ourselves.
Living and Leading From The Now – Without Regret
I love that Reagin shares some stats and research about what people most regret in their lives. It’s not that they didn’t obtain enough or experience more vacations. The #1 life regret people report having is:
[special]“I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.”[/special]
That is something I can relate to quite well. You see, I spent the better part of my life thus far living it and not even realizing it. Reagin expands upon this sentiment in saying that…
“Jesus didn’t die for us so we could live trapped, boring, broken lives. He didn’t teach that abundant life can happen only after you get it together or when you mature into the person He wants you to be. He talks of living to the fullest now, while you’re becoming the person you want to be and He wants you to be.”
This is where our culture has entered into a form of spiritual warfare that we don’t even recognize. Satan wants to convince each of us that we were mistakes. He’s convincing us that the ways we are wired are wrong and that we you should change who we are to match someone else’s abilities because ours aren’t good enough
As leaders, we need to be capable of helping others know they are not mistakes. That they are gifted and created for purposes. And before we can do that, we have to understand that of ourselves.
Lifetime Pursuit of Life and Life-giving
In the latter chapters of The Life Giving Leader, Reagin shows that being such a type of leader requires a constant effort. One that requires a lifetime investment. And, unfortunately, most leaders stop developing because it requires hard work. It also takes many looks in the mirror.
Because self-acceptance is one of the hardest leadership obstacles you’ll ever tackle, it’s going to be brutal. And, many of us, unfortunately “allow a desire for acceptance and the avoidance of rejection to drive us.”
Accepting ourselves so we can help others is a lifetime pursuit.
Final Thoughts on The Giving Leader
“Jesus said to seek first the kingdom and HE will build the church.” – Graham Cooke. We are not the ones who build it. We must surrender and have a correct posture in regard to God’s position and plan. As such, we often work for God, but we fail to spend time with Him. That means we may be building things for Him without knowing if that’s actually what he wants.
This core thought is one you will be prompted to ponder as you read through The Live Giving Leader. You will also face the reality that life-giving leadership doesn’t just happen by chance. It ain’t going to come when you’re sitting on the sideline at work or while on the field. We have to choose daily to give live to others by serving them.
That requires us to learn about your people. Because, how will you serve them if you don’t know them? Similarly, how will you serve Jesus if you don’t take the time to know him?
If I were to offer a critique of the book, it’s a matter of practicality. Reagin spends a lot of time building the case for knowing your calling as a prerequisite for leading well. However, he doesn’t spend a lot of time helping readers know how to achieve an understanding of determining what exactly one’s calling is. Sure, it begins with self-awareness and self-acceptance – but how do we even get there?
Still, while the concept of life-giving leadership is hardly revolutionary, it is one that the world would be well to better adapt. As Reagin so well says it,