Relationships,
1 Cor 13:1, 1 John 4:7-12, 16, John 17:20-23
June 16, 2003
I. John Maxwell made one of the greatest statements that I have heard in a long time in his book " The 21 Indispensable Qualities of Leadership." "People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.
A. Theodore Roosevelt said, " The most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people."
B. Both are true and both lead to one of the greatest factors of Leadership, and that is relationships.
C. If you’re not a physician You’ve probably never heard of William Osler. He was a doctor, university Professor, and author who practiced medicine and taught until he died at that age of seventy in 1919.
D. His book, Principles and Practice of Medicine , influenced the preparation of doctors for more than forty years in the entire English speaking world and in China and Japan.
E. But that wasn’t his greatest accomplishment, he worked at putting the heart back into the practice of medicine.
F. Osler always showed an uncanny ability to deal with people, and everything he did was aimed a building relationships.
G. He became a Doctor and founded the Association for American Physicians, and as a teacher he changed the way that medical schools functioned. He brought the students out of the lecture halls and into the hospitals to interact with patients.
H. He believed that students learn first and best from the patients themselves. He wanted to teach future Doctors compassion.
I. He once said to a group of students, " There is a strong feeling abroad among people-you see it in the newspapers, that we doctors are given over nowadays to science: that we care much more for the disease and its scientific aspects than for the individual...I would urge upon you in your own practice, to care more for the individual patient...Dealing as we do with poor suffering humanity, we see the man unmasked, exposed to all the frailities and weaknesses, and you have to keep your heart soft and tender lest you have too great a contempt for your fellow creatures."
J. His compassion can be seen in the way he treated his patients. Usually he limited his work only to hospitals but during a influenza epidemic in 1918 he treated many patients in their homes, and the mother of one little girl talked about how he visited her young daughter twice a day, playing with her to entertain her and gather information about her symptoms.
K. Knowing that she was nearing death he brought her a rose from his garden, the last one of the year and told her that even roses couldn’t stay as long as they wanted in one place, but had to go to a new home, to try to help her deal with dying.
L. She was comforted by what he said and died a few days later.
M. Osler died the next year and one of his colleagues said of him, :So passed into history, untimely, even though he had attained unto the allotted span, the greatest physician in history. And above all it is as a friend that during his lifetime we regarded Osler; as one who possessed the genius of friendship to a greater degree than anyone of our generations. It was his wonderful interest in all of us that was the outstanding feature...It was from his humanity , his extraordinary interest in his fellows, that his other powers seemed to flow."
II. The ability to work with people and develop relationships is absolutely indispensable to being and EFFECTIVE LEADER. If you don’t have the ability to relate to people then do what it takes to develop it if you want to be a good leader.
A. As leaders of people, PEOPLE is the most important word.
B. A survey of employers was taken in 1991, to see what employers looked for most in employees, and the number one answer was the ability to relate to people. Eighty-four percent said that being able to relate to people was the number one trait that they looked for and only forty percent listed education and experience in their top three.
C. Though some people can have good people skills and not be a good leader, no one can be a good leader and not have good PEOPLE SKILLS.
III. So what can we do to develop and cultivate good relationship as a leader?
A. HAVE LEADER’S HEAD - UNDERSTAND PEOPLE!
1. The first quality of leader who leads relationally is the ability to understand people, how they feel and how they think.
2. If you work with others and you take the time to try to understand others you find that all people, whether they are leaders or followers, have some things in common.
a. They like to feel special, so sincerely COMPLIMENT them. Don’t try to snow them, but learn enough about them that you can truly compliment them where they’re good at things.
b. They want a better tomorrow, so show them HOPE. Give them something to put their hope in, help them see a way toward something better than they have.
c. They desire direction, so NAVIGATE for them. Help them learn to accomplish and see the way to make a difference.
d. They are selfish so speak to their NEEDS first. If we don’t overcome our own selfishness enough to see the needs of others we can’t lead, because we are not supplying what they need.
e. They get low emotionally, so ENCOURAGE them. If we deal with the person before the goal, then we have to accomplish something in them before we can expect them to accomplish something for the goal.
f. They want success, so help them WIN. Everybody wants to be a winner, and it is up to us as leaders to help them win.
3. Even recognizing these things, a leader must still be able to treat people as individuals. The ability to look at each person as an individual, and UNDERSTAND them and CONNECT with them is a major factor in success as a leader.
4. That means treating people differently, and not the same as one another, and that is the reason that I teach about personalities in church. If we treat all people the same then we will be able to relate to about 25% of the people that we come into contact with, because there are four different personality types, but if we treat people according to their personality then we will be able to relate to and work effectively with all people.
5. We have to adapt the way we lead, to the person that we are trying to lead, to be successful, because people don’t care how much you KNOW until they know how much you CARE.
B. We also HAVE TO HAVE A LEADERS HEART-LOVE PEOPLE.
1. President and CEO of Definitive Computer Services Henry Gruland has a good handle on this idea. He says, " Being a leader is more than just wanting to lead, Leaders have to have empathy for others and a keen ability to find the best in people...not the worst...by truly caring for others.
2. You can’t be the kind of leader that people want to follow unless you learn to LOVE people.
3. As Christians the most important thing that we can develop is love. Love is the greatest of all virtues. (1 Cor 13:1 NIV) If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.
4. As leaders and especially leaders in service to God we have to remember that its PEOPLE that we lead and to lead people we have to LOVE people. Jesus is our greatest example of that and it is Him that we are to strive to be like.
5. Unity is the one thing that Paul writes about more than any other, and that is because unity can only come when loving people comes before all else and love is the thing that makes us most like God.
(1 John 4:7-12 NIV) Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
(1 John 4:16 NIV) And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him.
6. Sometimes I wonder if people have trouble loving others because they haven’t accepted that God loves them enough, to be able to love themselves.
7. As leaders in our families, and in our profession, and in our service to God if we can’t love others we will never be the leaders that we are intended to be, because God is Love, and to lead we have to reflect God.
C. Another thing that we have to do is EXTEND A LEADERS HAND-HELP PEOPLE.
1. Le Roy H. Kurtz of General Motors said, "The fields of industry are strewn with the bones of those organizations whose leadership became infested with dryrot, who believed in taking instead of giving...who didn’t realize that the only assets that could not be replaced easily were the HUMAN ones.
2. People will respect a leader who they feel keeps their interests in mind. If people don’t feel that you have their best interest in mind then they won’t come to you if they have a problem, and if they won’t come to you if they have a problem they won’t truly FOLLOW you.
3. If your focus is on what you can put INTO people rather than what you can get OUT of them, they’ll love you and respect you- and that is the foundation for building relationships and for success in anything.
IV. To improve your ability to relate to others you can.
A. Improve your MIND. If you have problems understanding people then read books about relating to others. Come to the next New members class that we have and learn about personalities, and what is important to others.
B. Strengthen your HEART. If you are not as caring toward others as you need to be then get the focus of what you do, off of you. Make a list of things that you can do add value to other people. Don’t wait until you feel like it to help others, act your way into feeling.
C. Repair a HURTING relationship. If you have a long term relationship that is hurting do what you can to repair it. Get in touch with that person admit your fault in whatever damaged the relationship and apologize, and try to better understand and love that person.
D. In a short story called , "The Capital of the World" Nobel prize winner Earnest Hemingway tells about a father and a teenage son whose relationship went bad.
1. After the son runs away the father begins a journey searching for him, and finally he puts and ad in the paper in Madrid. The ad reads, "Dear Paco, meet me in front of the newspaper office tomorrow at noon...all is forgiven...I love you."
E. The next morning in front of the newspaper office there were eight hundred men named Paco wanting to restore a broken relationship.
F. The people in our lives, are the greatest ASSET that we will ever have. The people who follow us are the greatest RESPONSIBILITY that we will ever have. If we are going to be the leader that God wants us to be, we have to put people first.
(John 17:20-23 NIV) "My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.
G. As Christians and as leaders who say we are Christians, our greatest accomplishment in reaching the world with the message of the Gospel, is them seeing unity in our relationships to each other.
H. Only as people see the love of God in the way the we as Christians relate to each other will they believe that the love of God really exists for them.
I. As leaders there is no substitute for relationships. People don’t care how much you KNOW until they know how much you CARE.
