Relationships Series

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.