Hey, it's great to have you with us for another episode of the Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast, where my goal is to help you become a leader that people love to follow, which is really convenient because today what I'm gonna do is show you a talk called How to Become a Leader that People Love to Follow. If you're new with us in our leadership community, I would love to invite you to hit subscribe wherever you consume this content. We'll drop new teaching on the first Thursday of each month. Speaking of next month, I'm going to be back to kind of our normal format of 20 minutes or so, a very direct teaching. We're either going to talk about your four tiers of effectiveness as a leader, or we might talk about the four enemies of growth. I haven't decided yet. I'm living on the wild side, or I might come up with a whole new concept, but what I promise you is to have content in your inbox on the first Thursday of next month if you subscribe. If you don't, you're just going to have to be guessing and try to remember. Good luck to you. Today, what I'm gonna do is I'm going to show you a talk that I did at the Global Leadership Summit. If you've never heard of the summit, it's most likely the biggest leadership conference in the world. It's broadcast to hundreds of sites and countries around the world, translated into 61 different languages. We will be having the summit this year on August the sixth and the seventh broadcast digitally and to sites around the U.S. and then globally. What I'm gonna do is show you a talk that I did a couple of years ago. I'm honored to serve as what's known as the champion, I'm kind of like the spokesperson, and I did the opening and the closing talks at the Global Leadership Summit. This was the opening talk, and it's all about how to become a leader that people love to follow. It's a little bit longer than normal. If you want to watch it, it is available to watch on YouTube, or you can listen wherever you normally do. Let's go now to the talk from the 2018 Global Leadership Summit. This is the Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast. All right, game on. Let me ask you a question. How many of you have ever worked for a leader that you loved? Raise your hands. If your boss is here, raise your hand highly. (audience laughing) Just a little tip. How many of you have ever worked for someone that you would love to give them a little advice on how to make it better? We all have. I remember in my first real job, I was in sales and I had a sales manager that would yell at us and then hug us, (audience laughing) and he said, I do this because I love you. My theory is he did it because he was a psycho. (audience laughing) It didn't make me feel safe. Then I went to work for a man that I respected, admired, and was honored to follow. He would cast vision, he would help us execute. He trusted us, he gave us feedback. He believed in us. I was like, I'll do anything for you. I'll wash your car, I'll scrub your toilets. I felt empowered, I felt loved, I felt valued, I felt trusted. I read an article in Forbes magazine by Brett Steenbarger and he cited a poll of 4,000 professionals about improving in leadership. What do we need to do to be better leaders? When the managers or the supervisors or the bosses were polled, boss, what do you think you need to improve in to be a better leader? They cited two things. They said, I need to get better at managing finances, and I need to get better at technology. I need to understand cash flow or be able to do a budget or read numbers, and I don't understand Twitter, and I don't know Facebook, and I don't know how to build any kind of technological systems to help our organization go forth, finances and technology. For pastors, I don't know what the top two might be. It might be, I want to get better at preaching or vision casting or caring for people. For a startup entrepreneur, it might be fundraising, it might be delegating. Who knows what, but for these 4,000, the top twos where I need to get better, finances and technology. Then the pollsters interviewed the employees about their bosses and asked what are the areas that your leaders need to improve in, in order to be better? Guess what they did not mention? (audience laughing) Finances and technology. The top two areas that were mentioned were, I wish my boss would be better at leadership, and I wish that my boss would be better with emotional intelligence. In other words, she doesn't really know what she doesn't know about how she's treating us. She thinks she's good, and we all know she needs counseling. (audience laughing) Leadership, what is that? It's the question of where are you taking me. Emotional intelligence is how are you treating me. In other words, what's so fascinating to me is that the team members wanted something from their supervisors. They wanted something from their bosses. They wanted to love and respect, they wanted to trust those who were above them, but what they wanted from their supervisors was something their supervisor didn't even know that they needed to get better at themselves, and that's why I want to talk in our opening session about how do we become a leader that people love to follow. Now, if you'll notice, I didn't say, how do we become a leader that everyone loves. Did you catch that? I said, become a leader that everyone loves to follow, because there's a big difference between a leader who is popular and one who is respected. Just making sure you're with me. Right, there's a big, big difference, and in fact, as a leader, you may be popular if you are respected, but you will never be respected if you're only trying to be popular. We have to understand this. For those of you that earlier raised your hand and said, I've been under a leader that I love, that I admire, that I trust that, that I, I'm honored to serve and to follow, what I can promise you is, if you were under a leader like that, you felt three things. You may have never verbalized it. You may have never written it down, but if you were really, really honest, you would have to admit you felt three things. What are the three feelings that you will always experience when you're under great and trusted leadership? The first thing you feel is you always feel valued. What do you know? You know there is someone that cares about me on this team. You feel valued. The second thing you feel is you feel inspired. You know that you're able to make a difference. You enjoy what you're doing. You know you're using the gifts that you have to make a contribution to something that's larger and something that matters. You feel valued, you feel inspired and you feel empowered. You know there is someone that trusts you, that believes in you. You know that you can influence what's going on around you, and because of that, you can make a difference. You feel valued, you feel inspired, and you feel empowered. If those three qualities are so important for us to have in a leader that we love and respect, the question is how do we as leaders create an environment where our team members feel valued, feel inspired and feel empowered. What are the qualities that we need to impart these incredibly valuable and essential ingredients into our teams? Let me give you at least three things to talk about. The first quality is this. Number one, we need a heart to care. We need a heart to care. I hope that you'll understand. You will never be a leader that others love to follow if you aren't a leader that loves people. Let me say it again. You will never be a leader that others love to follow if you aren't a leader that truly loves people. I like what Maya Angelou said. She said this, she said, "I've learned that people will forget what you said. "People will forget what you did, "but people will never forget how you made them feel." Right. What do we need? We need a heart to care. I can summarize this in four words. Leaders, these four words need to be an essential part of everything that we do as leaders. Four incredibly important words. What are those words? Those words are, I notice. Be like this, I notice, I notice, and, you matter. I notice, and you matter. Every location, could you say, I notice. I notice. Could you say you matter? You matter. Could you look at the person next to you and say, I noticed that you look really sharp today? (audience chattering) Could you look at the person who was your second choice and say, you matter too. (audience chattering) Everybody say, I notice. I notice. Say you matter. You matter. I notice you matter. I notice what you do and what you do matters to me. I noticed the effort you put in and the efforts you put in matters to our organization. Think about it. I don't know if you know this or not, but good employees don't leave organizations. Good employees leave bad managers. Good employees don't leave organizations. They leave bad supervisors when they don't feel like their supervisors notice or what they do matters. The number one reason why people leave companies is because they do not feel valued. That's why as a leader, I have a rule in appreciating people. My rule goes like this. What I want to do is I want to appreciate more that I think that I should, appreciate more, way more than I think I should, then double it. (audience chuckling) Once you've done what feels uncomfortable, once you've done what feels like too much, once you really feel like you're out there showing value to your team members, then you double it and increase the appreciation that you show. I cannot overstate how important this is, leaders. We have to embrace this. In fact, I noticed the value of this in our organization. We are a church that has locations at 30 different places in 10 different states. We have what's known as a central organization, which may be 300 or so incredible employees who their sole goal is to serve what happens at the different church locations. They work very hard, very long hours, and so on Friday afternoon is kind of a flex time. If they're done with their work, we know they've worked a long time. They're free to go pick up their kids early, have a good time, or whatever. Friday is my only day off, but it's not unusual for me to find myself running by the office late on the day Friday to pick something up or to ask a question or something, and so I'd come in there at like 4:45, five o'clock and noticed that there were still some team members that were working when they could have gone home much earlier, and so I started just going around and saying hey, I give them a knuckle bump. Hey, thanks for putting in a hard week, what you do matters, and then I started calling it a gold star and I just, you know, just gold star. Hey, and then I started going, you know, every now and then once every three or four months, Hey, gold star Friday. What was so shocking is, I got thank you notes from the spouses of the team members for a knuckle bump. (audience laughing) It dawned on me just how important this was one time when I had knuckle bumps, 25, 30 people, was walking out to my car, was driving away, looked in the rear view mirror, and there was a girl chasing me going like this, and so I stopped, rolled down the window, she came up and she said, "Pastor Craig, I promise, I promise. "I was in the bathroom, but I was there. "Can I have my gold star?" (audience laughing) And so I asked her, "did you wash your hands?" (audience laughing) And when she assured me that she had, I proudly gave her her gold star. Then I realized after people were posting on social media, Pastor Craig gave me a gold star, thought we need to do more, and so I just told my office, could you find me something, something little, something, something, something. They found a little yellow head, little squishy thing that has feet on it. No, even arms, no arms, (audience laughing) and they created a little tag that just says gold star. So now maybe two or three times a year, I just go around and do something. In fact, we've got a video to show you what it looks like. We call this Gold Star Friday. Gold Star Friday! Beth, Beth, crushing it all week long. Andre. I like this. Kinda looks like you, my man. Awesome, congratulations to you. You can work, but you can't hide. (screaming) Fridays! Fridays! Quieter. Gold Star Fridays. Quieter. You guys all right, ready for the best Gold Star Friday? It's quiet room, it's quiet room. Gold star, gold star, gold star, whoo! Where'd you stop? There's my star. Woohoo! No problem. All of you with a smile on your face. (audience cheering) (audience applauding) What do we need? We need a heart to care. I noticed that you're working really hard. I noticed you put in extra effort. I noticed that you're bringing your best. What you do matters. Appreciate more than you think you should, and then double it. Say it, show it, write it, celebrate it. Never rob your team member of the blessing of knowing that you notice and you care. It's the difference between me-centered leadership and you-centered leadership. I tell our team all the time we are you-centered leaders. What if I said to you today, hey, I'm Craig Groeschel. I'm so glad you came here to hear me speak. I've got a talk on my heart that's really important to me. I think you, hope you like me and what I do. That's me-centered leadership. Instead, what I want to do is say, hey, I'm so glad that you came here. I believe that you are here for a purpose. You have gifts, you have influence, you have, you matter. I want you to understand what is inside of you because when you get better, you can, that's you-centered leadership. I notice, you matter. We are never me-centered leaders. We have a heart to care about the people. If we do not have a heart to care, they will never respect and follow us. I like to say it this way, and you know this is true. Some leaders, when you're around them, when you're talking to them, some leaders will make you think that they are important. The best leaders though, will help you see that you are important. As leaders, what do we need? We need to have a heart to care. The second thing that we need as leaders is we need to have a passion to inspire, a passion to inspire. You may notice that I didn't say a passion to motivate. There's a slight difference between motivating and inspiring. There's nothing wrong with motivating. We want to motivate, but to motivate implies, I'm pushing you to do something that you may not want to do. I'm going to motivate you to get in early, I'm gonna motivate you to stay late. I'm going to motivate you to work out. I'm going to motivate you to eat chicken, instead of a hamburger, you know, I'm going to motivate you, I'm going to push you, but the word inspire, though, is very different. It comes from two words, in spirit, in spirit. Instead of pushing someone, motivating, inspiring is more of a pulling, is pulling out of them what is already inside of them. When we inspire our team, they will produce at such a high level. In fact, according to one study, employees who describe themselves, don't miss this, employees who described themselves as inspired are more than twice as productive as employees who call themselves satisfied. We need a passion to pull out the very best of what is inside of our team members. Now, when I talk about inspiring, chances are you might think of, oh my gosh, I've got to get up and give a rally speech. It's the halftime, give it your all! We can win! It's the Martin Luther King, Jr., I have a dream! It's blue-faced Mel Gibson, Braveheart is for your freedom! (audience laughing) And the moment you think about that as a passion to inspire, you're likely to think, well, that's not exactly me. I'm not really good at that. The good news is that charismatic speeches, they're only one tool that we can use to inspire others. It is not the most common, nor is it the most important tool. In fact, I came across fascinating research done by the Bain Company. Bain Research Group surveyed 2,000 employees, and what they found were 33 different yet consistently mentioned attitudes of leaders that inspire. This is so fascinating to me. They found 33 different consistently mentioned yet distinctly different attitudes that inspire. In fact, we have a graph that I can show you that they put together, and on this graph, you'll notice there's four different quadrants. On the top left, you'll see there's inner resources, developing the inner resources. Bottom left is setting the tone. Top right is connecting with others. Bottom right is leading the team. In fact, if you would like to learn a little more about this, I have a August 2018 leadership podcast that dives into this. What I would do is I would recommend that you work with your team as I have with mine in finding what are the very specific and unique qualities that your leaders have that would inspire others. Let me mention just a few of them to you. One quality is if you have an optimistic outlook. If you come in and you believe that it may be difficult today, but we can lead and make things better, that is something that inspires the people around you. Work with that. If you have a posture of humility, you know, it's not all about you. You don't think you're something you're not, but you believe in the people around you, this inspires pride. It discourages. Humility inspires. Maybe for you, it's just setting the tone. You come in and you say, here's the vision. Here's the direction. Here's what we're gonna do. Even just someone who consistently follows through, that is inspiring. You know how frustrating it is to work with someone that doesn't follow through. In fact, if someone tells you thank you all the time for doing something on time, do you realize that's not a compliment? (audience laughing) What's that saying is, thank you. You didn't do it the last time, so thank you for doing it this time. You know when they stop saying thank you, they've turned, they start to depend on you because they know you're going to follow through. Being generous with recognition is inspirational, just saying you're incredible, I believe in you, thank you. That inspires the people around you. Being consistently empathetic, in other words, being a good listener, caring about your team members, asking about their personal lives, caring about what's going on with them genuinely, not just what do you produce, but what's happening in you. There is one quality though that according to the research stands above all the rest. The one standout quality that inspires more than anything else is not the rah rah speech, but it is a leader that is centered, centered, a centered leader. What is a centered leader? Let me just say right now, you know when you've worked under one and you know when you've not. A centered leader is one who is secure, stable, confident. As my teenagers would say, he's not thirsty. He's not trying to be something that he's not. He's not easily swayed. She's not distracted, she's not trying to prove something, she's not competing against the wrong enemy, she's not trying to impress anybody. She's just secure, she is confident, she's fully engaged. Internally, the values that that leader holds and embraces are consistent with the way that that person leads. They have internal alignment with the values that are matched by the external way that they live, and they care for people and they lead. What is a centered leader? It's a leader that is guided by values, driven by purpose and obsessed by mission. Most employees would never say this. In fact, I would wager that none of you have ever said, oh my gosh, I'm so glad we finally have a centered leader. I mean, I'm so thankful. We've got a centered leader. You never ever say it, but you feel it. The absence of it de-motivates. The presence of it, it inspires. This is a person who knows who they are, stands strong and confident, isn't trying to impress anyone, and they are consistent in what they do. The good news is that you don't have to have any one set quality to inspire. You want to find where you are uniquely gifted and you want to bring that to bear to make a big difference. In fact, according to Bain research, I love this, out of the 33 consistent and different traits, they say that you, all you need, all you need is one or two well-developed strengths to inspire. That's all you need is one or two well-developed strengths, and guess what? You can be an inspirational leader. Let me talk to the business leaders here. I have so much respect and admiration for the business leaders who don't just strive to make a profit, and please, I hope that you do. I hope that you do make a profit, but those who will connect in some form or fashion a higher calling to the organization, it could be as simple as to say, we're gonna provide great jobs and great benefits to help families grow in their leadership and to make a difference or it could be to just say, we're producing some quality, some product, something that makes life better for people around the world, in whatever form or fashion you lead a business. What you want to do is you want to inspire your people to know they're part of something that's just bigger than us, and you honestly have to work at it a little bit harder than someone like I would. In my world, I'm gonna inspire like this. I'm gonna say to our church, we need to understand that we are not spiritual consumers. We are spiritual contributors, that the charge does not exist for us, but we are the church and we exist for the world. I want to pull that out of them. I'm going to say this, that we'll do anything short of sin to reach people who don't know Christ, and to reach people no one's reaching, we're gonna have to do things no one's doing. I don't know, somebody may get excited. Over here, I think they're kind of out of it. Someone may get into, I'm gonna tell him right now that we're not just building searches, but we're filling heaven. I'm going to tell him this, that we are big thinking, bet the farm risk-takers, that we will never, ever insult God with small thinking or safe living. What I want to do is I want to connect with something inside of people and not push them to try harder, but to pull them into a greater vision. What do we need? We need a passion to inspire. What happens? Passion, it transforms a job into a calling. When your team members no longer go to work to do a job, but they're doing something they care about, it's a calling. When passion meets inspiration and obsession is born, we can do something to make a difference. What do we need to be a leader that people love to follow? We need a heart to care, somebody say a heart to care. A heart to care. We need a passion to inspire, somebody say a passion to inspire. A passion to inspire. The third thing that we need, is we need a willingness to empower. We need a willingness to empower. What do we know? We know that the best leaders unleash higher performance through empowerment, not command and control. Let me say this again. It's very important. The best leaders unleash higher performance through empowerment, not command and control. Now as a leader, you may say, but I need to control the results. I need to oversee everything. I've got, I got to make sure it's up to my standards. Listen to me, leader. If that's your attitude, you will very quickly become the lid to your organization. If you think you need to control everything, you are the one getting in the way of progress. I always tell our team members this, that you can have control, or you can have growth, but you cannot have both. You can control what's going on around you, or you can trust to some degree the great people that you have, and you can have growth, but you can not have both. So what we want to do is we want to trust, empower, give a way to our team members so that they'll grow, but it's important what we give to them and how we give to them. In other words, when we think about delegating, someone might think, okay, hey, go get me some coffee. Get it now. That's insulting and that is not delegating. What that is is that's bossy, rude, and arrogant. It doesn't mean you don't ever ask for coffee, but the way we do it really, really matters. What we want to learn to do is not just delegate tasks. Go do specifically what I've asked you to do. Here's your assignment, exactly the way that I want it done. The problem is this. If we delegate tasks, we're actually creating followers. We're creating people that only know how to do what we've directly asked them to do. That's why as leaders, we don't just delegate tasks, but instead we delegate authority. If we delegate tasks, we're creating followers, but if we delegate authority, we are creating leaders. We are creating people who learn how to innovate, who learn how to create, who learn how to take a project and not just do what they're asked to do, but to own it, to internalize it, to make it better. They have more ownership. Listen, if you wonder why you don't keep some of your greatest employees, I will tell you why you don't keep some of them, because you have not let them soar. You've been a lid on them. You've told them what to do, but you haven't given them the freedom to create. When they create, they don't always get it right, but they learn and they get better and soon one day, someone who starts at a level five or level six will grow to a level eight or level nine, and you're at a level nine and one day, you're looking at like, now you're at a level 11 or 12. You exceeded what I ever thought possible because you didn't create a follower in your organization, but instead you created a leader. How do we do this? How do we do it? Very important. As leaders, what we're gonna do is we're going to make the decisions that only we can make and we're going to delegate the other decisions deeper into the organization over and over and over again. Two of your favorite words should be when someone says, hey, what do you think about this? You say something like, I trust you. You're smart. I hired you for this, and then you say, you decide. You decide. Listen, some of your team members, they're gonna freak out on the spot 'cause they've never been told to make a decision. (audience laughing) You need to help them understand, you know what? I believe in you. I trust you. You decide. The better you become as a leader, the fewer decisions that you make. You make fewer and fewer and fewer and you delegate the rest to your team. An assignment for you might be literally to start making 25% of the decisions that you're currently making and empower your team with 75% of them. You make the ones that only you can make and push the rest deeper into your organization and in fact, I always tell our team this. I tell them that the strength of an organization is reflected by how deep into it people have the ability to say yes, how deep into the organization. If you need the top leadership to say yes to some opportunity, there is a bog. There's, there is stuck at the top and you will never be able to quickly scale up that organization because the decision-making power is locked up in one room and that will always be a lid to the progress of your organization. Now, let me read your mind. (audience chuckling) What some of you are thinking is you're thinking, I seen him before. I'm not sure I can trust him. What if I give this to her and she doesn't get it done? What if, what if I need it done on a nine out of 10 and they do a six out of 10? What if, what if I ask them to do it and the quality of is not quite right? What if we try this and they don't quite deliver? Here's the answer. You have to trust them where they are. The best way to find out if you can trust someone, you may want to write this down, this is really important, the best way you can find out who you can trust someone, you ready for it? The best way you can find out if you can trust someone is to trust them, (audience laughing) but what if I don't trust them? Get ready to write this down. If you don't trust your team, you're either too controlling or you have the wrong people. Either way, the problem is yours to solve. (audience chuckling) What do you need to be a leader that people love to follow? You need a heart to care, a passion to inspire, and a willingness to empower. I give you my word that at this conference, we're not going to push the spiritual beliefs on anybody, but I told you I'm a pastor and that just doesn't go away. No matter what, I still glow in the dark. It's just a problem. (audience laughing) Only after I was ordained, before I didn't. See now, so my, my love and admiration, respect for who I believe is the son of God, Jesus, it just, you just can't separate that from who I am. So if you'll allow me for just a moment to talk about Jesus and we'll look at him, just, just through the lens of a leader, think about the qualities of Jesus as a leader. Heart to care, who did Jesus hang out with? Some of you are like going, I can't believe I'm in a church building now. Lightning might strike right now and I'm a really bad person. Let me tell you what, Jesus would come and sit right next to you. He loved to sit next to the worst of the worst, the lowest of the low. He loved to befriend sinners, people who were hurting, people who are broken, prostitutes, tax collectors, who were despised in that day. He would reach out to those that religion rejected and he would care about them and he would show grace, and when someone messed up, he would run off all the accusers and he would kneel down and he would say, sister, where are your accusers? And when she said, there are none that he would speak truth and he would speak love. He would show truth and grace, and then would say, neither do I condemn you. Now go your way, and by the way, don't do that anymore because that's not good for you and not good for anybody. He had a heart to care for those that religion rejected. He had a passion to inspire. You now, this is what He said. It's not about me. It's, I didn't come to be served. I am the son of God and all that, and so I could demand it, but I came to serve others and to lay down my life as a ransom. Level five leadership. Humility and resolve. He's, let me tell you why I came and he cast vision. He said, I have come that you may have life, the best kind of life. I didn't come to make you like, a religious little weirdo. I came that you may have life and life to the full and you can embrace all the good things that God has. Hey, he declared it boldly. (audience applauding) I didn't come for the healthy. I came for the sick. I didn't come for the righteous. I came for the sinners. Passion to inspire, then watch this. He had a willingness to empower. He selected people that everyone else overlooked, a fishermen, tax collector, two bros called the sons of thunder. Dude, I don't know what they got to be called that, (audience laughing) but I want those guys on my team. I want someone who can roll if they have to, right? So he is a leader, and then what does he do? If you look at it from a leadership lens, he onboarded them, he trained them. He cast vision in such a way that they were willing to leave higher paying jobs to go do something that they believe could change the world. He gave them feedback. He trusted them. He let them mess up. He coached them and he helped them get better. Then what did he do? He empowered them, and he said, here's your assignment. This isn't a task, but I'm giving you authority, all authority and power in heaven and earth I give to you and here's your assignment> Go into all the world and preach the gospel, teaching people to obey everything that I've taught them, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy spirit. I'm going to leave and go to heaven, but I'm gonna send my spirit to be with you. So you're not going to be alone. Go in to all the world. Notice what he gave them. He told them the assignment, here's the what, go and preach. He told them where, all the world, but he didn't tell them how. He trusted them with the how, and so here we are. 2,000 years later, so many of us still following him, and that's one of 9 billion, 300 million reasons that I love to follow Him because He cared for me and because of His sacrificial leadership, He led the way and gave His life for me and He trusted me as best I could today to maybe talk about Him in a way that might be a blessing to you. I have four minutes left. I'm going to take two and I'm gonna add a fourth point. This is risky and it's not in my notes. (audience laughing) In other words, right next to me on the screen, you're not gonna see anything 'cause nobody knows this. (audience laughing) What do you need to be a leader that people love to follow? You need a heart to care. You need a passion to inspire. You need a willingness to empower, and then I'm going to make this fourth one up somehow. You need a courage to be real, transparent, vulnerable, not always know all the answers, stand up with humility and confidence and try to get it right, even when you're scared to death and feel like everyone can see through you but you step into the role that you have, believe that you're supposed to be there and you lead with passion, courage, and integrity, and you don't try to convince everyone you know what you're doing, but you just stand up as a centered leader and say, I believe this is what I'm called to do and if I don't get it right, we're gonna try again but if we do get it right, we're going to celebrate and we're not going to celebrate it as me. We're gonna celebrate this as we because we're all here together doing something much better than we could ever do on our own. (audience cheering) Let me repeat that in case you want to write it down. (audience laughing) I'm kind of surprised I didn't put that in my first round, like literally that was not planned until like, I thought about it this morning, because that probably is the most important thing, and as leaders, here's the bottom line. We feel so much pressure to always like, be perfect and strong and right and people aren't looking for that. What they're looking for is just honesty, integrity, vulnerability and so let me just bring it to you. This has been a really painful time and I don't know if I got it right today or not and I don't want you to clap to pretend, pretend like I did. All I want you to know is this, that I'm serving around some leaders and all of us have made mistakes, but all of us genuinely care and we want to get it right, and we're gonna bring the best we can in the best way that we know how, and when we get it wrong, we're going to say we're sorry, we're going to care for people and we're going to aspire because we're about something really, really special. We're going to give it away. Listen to me. We're going to keep on going. We're going to keep on going because the stakes are very, very high in this broken world. It's a time for great leaders to stand up. So I always close out my leadership podcast this way and I want to just land the talk this way and that is this. You don't have to be somebody else. You don't have to be like John Maxwell, although wouldn't that really be cool? (audience laughing) You don't have to be like Angela or Bishop TD Jakes. If I ever come back, I want to be a bishop. He's so much more fun to do. (audience laughing) You don't have to be smart. You don't have to be perfect. You don't have to always get it right, but you do have to be real because people would rather follow a leader who is real than one who is always right. So with that, Father, we thank you for what you're going to do in these next two days. Empower these great people to be a leader that others love to follow. We pray this in the name of your son, Jesus, and everybody said. Amen. (audience cheering) Well, I do hope you take that advice to heart and you take the pressure off yourself and be yourself and you can become a leader that people love to follow. Now, if you're not receiving the leader guide, I want to encourage you to go to life.church/leadershippodcast. Request the leader guide. It's got detailed notes of every talk that we give. You can go over it with your team. You can reteach it if you want to. It's also got application and discussion questions, and I hope that you receive this. Now, speaking of the Global Leadership Summit, this year we'll be broadcasting around the U.S. on August the sixth and the seventh. I'll be doing the opening talk called Leading through the Dip and guess what? Many of our organizations right now, because of COVID-19, we are right in the middle of the dip, and if you'd like to attend digitally or at a site in the U.S. or find information about global sites around the world, you can go to register.globalleadership.org, and we have a discount code for you. For those of you, a part, a part of our community, you can type in CGLP, it stands for Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast, CGLP for a discounted ticket to the Global Leadership Summit this year. If this podcast is helpful to you and I pray that it is, I would love to invite you to share it on social media. If you tag me and I see it, I might repost you. Also, if you haven't subscribed, let's do it and it'll come straight to you each month. It's an honor to spend a little bit of time with you. I can't wait to be back on the first Thursday of next month and we said it already but let's say it again. Take the pressure off, be yourself, because people would rather follow a leader that's always real than one's who's always right. (ethereal music)
