(upbeat music)
- Leadership is not about temperament, but about character.
Leaders are not born.
They're made because they have practiced character.
- If you ask the average man,
are you a good leader and protector and provider
of your family?
The vast majority of men are doing their best.
They are trying to lead and protect their families.
But the goods of the material world are temporary.
If we really want to do the best for our wives
and for our children, we have to lead them to eternity.
(upbeat music)
- This term, servant leader, is important for us
men to understand.
Jesus is a servant.
He came to serve, not to be served.
Jesus is leader, "Come follow me."
So we who follow him, we have to be both.
(upbeat music)
If we are just leader, we're susceptible to pride.
If we are just servant,
we also can be susceptible to mediocrity.
I must hold them both.
- Often we hide behind this false notion of humility.
It becomes a certain spinelessness.
To be a pushover, to abdicate the public sphere.
Service is strong, it is meekness
and zeal combined together.
That you serve a cause that is higher than yourself.
We are all called to be leaders,
to really achieve greatness in whatever sphere
that you are called to.
(upbeat music)
- Culture tells us that it's all about you, you know?
"Do what you want."
"You deserve to be happy."
"You deserve this, you know?"
"Buy this, buy that."
That "it's all about me."
Talk isn't cheap.
Talk is free. Talk is nothing.
I care about you, I love you, right?
But then, if I'm taking care of myself first
and everybody else second, doesn't matter.
- Being a man is about service, right?
It's about living our life for another.
To be a servant leader is to love the other person,
and to love the other person, you have to die to self.
- I kind of equate this to martyrdom,
a lot of guys are like,
"I'd be willing to die for that."
But they're not willing to live for it.
And guess what?
If you are not willing to live for it,
you probably won't have what it takes
to die for it eventually.
(upbeat music)
- So as fathers, I think you can have two extremes.
You can have the extreme of
I just bark orders and expect you to follow.
Or this idea of I'm just not connected,
I just kind of go through the motions.
And that idea of servant leadership,
looks at the virtue, the middle ground, of saying,
"What do I need to do to help my children excel,
"to know Christ, but how?
"So how do I shape them as a human being?"
And so it's really looking to say,
"What do I need to do to serve?" and then doing it.
(inspirational music)
- Oftentimes, the concept
of servant leadership is used as an excuse
to abdicate the strength and authority
that's required of genuine and authentic leadership.
Whereas we need to understand
that leadership itself is a service
because leadership itself is humility
and magnanimity in action.
That is to say, "Pursuing and achieving greatness
"by bringing out the greatness in those that I lead."
- For me, the most important thing is not really the idea
of service, it's fundamentally the idea of greatness.
Which is, there is no servant leadership
where there is no greatness.
You know, Aristotle used to say that
a magnanimous man is a man
who considers himself worthy of great things.
Well, when you think about that in terms of Christianity,
you see what the people
that really considers themselves worthy
of great things are the Christians
because you're a son of God.
There cannot be something higher than that.
(gentle music)
(pensive music)
- So I left home in 1977, got on a plane for the first time.
Went to Colorado Springs.
Then I entered the Air Force Academy.
Lucky enough to go to pilot training,
and so that was really the beginning of my career.
Got to fly fighters for thirty years.
I got to fly the A-10, the F-117, the F-16.
Got to command at the squadron level.
Got to deploy to Saudi Arabia with 300 people.
I commanded, overseas, about 10,000 people.
So, you go from someone who was just, you know,
very much focused on the machine,
and maybe your pilot brothers, you know,
those who operate machines
with you, to the broader organization.
It's the most rewarding part of your career is
when you see people thrive.
(gentle music)
Servant leadership in the military, I mean,
you can use your authority to lead,
or you can use your leadership ability
to get people to follow you.
You have to smell like the sheep.
You have to spend time with them.
I wouldn't ask anybody to do anything
that I wouldn't do myself.
If I say, "Hey, you have to go to church every Sunday, son."
Then, I ought to be the one who does it first.
You gotta talk the talk and walk the walk.
I can remember at Aviano one time,
we had this wicked storm that came through,
and it knocked down trees all over the place.
Didn't do a thing the next day.
Didn't do any flying at all
'cause we had to clean the place up.
And so I picked up a chainsaw and, you know,
so I was, you know, doing that kind of stuff
and throwing wood in the back
of trucks and cleaning things up
and doing those kinds of things.
So it's willingness to do those unpleasant tasks.
To sweat, and bleed, and suffer with others.
Saint Francis of Assisi gave up everything
to be among the common people to beg.
Basically, gave his life, a very comfortable life up,
up to serve Christ.
Mother Teresa of Calcutta.
I mean she would go out in the streets of Calcutta,
find people that were in gutters,
with maggots and stuff in their wounds
and hug them and clean them.
Padre Pio, one of my favorites, would stay for hours
hearing confessions and doing everything
to bring people to God.
Christ died on the cross, and I think
that's the ultimate example of servant leadership.
(gentle music)
I think God made us all capable to do things
that we never in a million years thought
that we were going to do,
and in fact, there is that saying, "Let go, and let God."
I think, that applies a lot to leadership.
Have the courage to get in that situation,
step into the breach.
Leadership implies that you're bringing people with you.
Sometimes, you can lead from the front.
Sometimes, you can lead by example.
Sometimes, you just have to slam dunk and say,
"We're gonna do it this way."
(gentle music)
As long as you respect the other, you know,
those who are coming with you, people over the long term
will follow you even if you have to do things
that are unpleasant for them over the short term.
(gentle music)
(inspirational music)
- Often, we confuse leadership
with merely being in a position of power.
These are the leaders because they have power,
or these are the leaders because they have influence.
This isn't true leadership necessarily.
Leadership is the virtues specifically
of magnanimity and humility.
Magnanimity is the habit of striving for greatness.
It's the recognition that you are made worthy
to accomplish great things.
And humility is the habit of living in the truth.
Which means the truth about myself,
and the truth about others.
That is to say self-knowledge,
which can then flow through my skills, my talents,
my gifts, and my virtues into service of the other.
- First in magnanimity, to say,
"I'm not a sinner, I'm a son of God.
"And I want to live out my divine sonship.
"And I want to help people to discover
"this divine sonship in their lives."
We love the word "service,"
but we don't understand what greatness is about.
We become small.
Small in our breathing, of thinking, of doing things.
And we have to rediscover the virtue of magnanimity.
- When I think of Christ, and I think of servant leadership,
I think of Holy Thursday.
I think of when he takes off his robe
and he puts the towel around his waist
and he washes the feet of his apostles.
- What was the main mode of transportation back
in the time of Jesus?
It was walking.
They were a pedestrian society.
So when he got to somebody's house,
who came and washed your feet?
The lowest ranking servant.
And what does Jesus say?
"If I don't wash your feet, you can have no part of me.
"I have not come to be served but to serve."
So headship is rooted in service.
A man is the head of his family precisely
because he is the chief servant of his wife and children.
- Jesus shows us a fundamental truth,
which is the most important level
of leadership is self-control.
And so you need to have men who are living the virtues.
(inspirational music)
- Self-mastery is about restraining evil passions
and desires.
But also, I need to energize noble passions.
If you simply restrain, you become boorish and tasteless.
You need to be able to yourself be excited and be driven
because then, you can draw other people along with you,
and help them achieve truly great things.
(inspirational music)
Life is short and eternity is long.
We may like the idea of virtuous leadership.
We may be inspired by the idea of going into the breach.
But, so long as we remain sitting in our chairs,
and not jumping in, we remain just spectators
and we're not engaging in the fight.
I'm reminded, particularly,
of a quote by Archbishop John Ireland
of the late 19th century.
"The need in the Church today, the need in the world,
"is of men among men who can rise higher,
"who can see further,
"who can strive more nobly than others.
"They need not be many, they never were many.
"But, though the few, they will rise,
"and bring with them the whole of humanity.
(inspirational music)