The True Nature of Leadership with Christopher Swing

Summary

In this episode, Christopher Swing explores the multifaceted nature of leadership, emphasizing that it is more than just a position; it is a responsibility to serve, grow, and inspire others. He discusses the importance of influence in leadership, core leadership qualities, and practical steps to become a better leader, including self-reflection and mentorship. The conversation also touches on the intersection of leadership and faith, highlighting the significance of humility and transparency in effective leadership.

Takeaways

Leadership is more than a position; it's a responsibility.
Influence is the essence of leadership.
Core leadership qualities include integrity, communication, and commitment.
Creativity and innovation are essential for problem-solving.
Self-reflection helps identify personal leadership strengths and weaknesses.
Mentorship is crucial for personal and professional growth.
Daily habits can significantly improve leadership skills.
Faith impacts leadership decisions and interactions.
Transparency is vital but must be balanced with clarity.
Leadership is a continuous journey of improvement.

Sound Bites

"You can be a leader."
"We do what we say we're gonna do."
"We need to find someone to learn from."

Chapters

00:00 The Essence of Leadership
08:38 Core Leadership Qualities
11:41 Becoming a Better Leader
15:10 Engaging with Leadership Experiences

Faithful - https://faithful.buzzsprout.com/
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61571226598690

Please feel free to check out the organizations that support us:

Vantage Surgical Solutions - https://vantage.healthcare/
Vantage Surgical Solutions Careers - https://vantage.healthcare/careers/
Chris Contact Info - https://www.linkedin.com/in/christopherswing/

And the ones we support:

Missions:
Developing Kids Ghana - https://developingkidsghana.com/
Eastern Dominican Christian Mission - https://easterndominican.org/
Broadway Christian Church - https://broadwaycc.churchcenter.com/home/
57/70 Task Force: https://5770taskforce.org/

Chapters

• 0:00 The Essence of Leadership
• 8:38 Core Leadership Qualities
• 11:41 Becoming a Better Leader
• 15:10 Engaging with Leadership Experiences

Transcript

Christopher Swing (00:02)
Welcome back to Faithful. I'm so glad that you guys are tuning in to hear about different leadership topics in order to grow better in your leadership every day.

So want to talk about the overarching theme of this particular podcast episode is leadership is more than a position. It's a responsibility to serve, grow and inspire others. I think the thing that's easy for most of us is what leadership doesn't look like. I can think of multiple bosses in the past, multiple managers that were just absolutely terrible.

Just absolutely terrible. It gives me a bad taste in my mouth just thinking about them.

So let's focus on what leadership is about.

And first, let's talk about leadership as influence. According to John Maxwell, leadership is influence, nothing more, nothing less.

It's interesting, isn't it? Leadership is influence. Nothing more, nothing less.

So leadership isn't about titles. There's nothing in there that says that leadership is about your boss's influence on you or whatever.

It's about impact.

You know, when I think of leaders, especially good ones in my career, most of the time, the people that come to the top of my mind are leaders or are managers of me. They were my manager. They were my leader. But it doesn't have to be right. I mean, I think about volunteers and community leaders.

and mentors. I mean, I have people in every one of those categories that come to the front of my mind when I think about leader.

think John Maxwell hit it the nail on the head because it's about influence. So no matter where you're at in an organization,

whether you're the most important person or the least important person or somewhere in between.

You can be a leader. You can increase your level of influence.

you can have that enthusiasm.

that Joe Jively was talking about. You can have that impact.

You can run with the vision of the organization tied to a bit of enthusiasm and suddenly you're creating an amazing group of people looking to accomplish something.

You know, when I think about biblical leaders that led through influence...

You know, probably the easiest one that comes to mind for a lot of people is Moses or Nehemiah or the Apostle Paul.

those people.

had amazing influence.

I as part of leadership, you know, I go back to the Matthew Porter episode. You have to stand for something, right? Both personally and professionally.

So let me just walk you through the core leadership qualities advantage. Integrity.

We do what we say we're gonna do.

We build a foundation of trust in leadership.

By the way, Matthew says you shouldn't have that as a core leadership quality or a core value, but.

I want to make sure that it's clear for my team.

for my customer.

for all my other stakeholders exactly what we stand for. Communication.

Communication is a tough one because there's so many modalities and within them there's pros and cons of each one.

So I think when we focus on communication and in core leadership qualities or core values, let's focus on clarity and honesty in our vision and our expectations. So where are we going?

And how do we get there?

It has to be clear.

in order for everyone else to have enthusiasm.

in the vision that you're casting for them.

has to be clear.

concise and consistent.

Commitment

We gotta show up and do the work, even when it's hard.

creativity.

We've got to be able to solve problems. mean, that's what we do as leaders, right? That's what we do as managers of organizations. We solve a lot of problems. I always like to say, I like to take barricades out of the way of our employees. Sometimes I don't see them first, so don't misunderstand. I'm not running in front of them and trying to take barricades away, but what I do is I try to deal with those barricades that are put up unnecessarily.

Because it's the way we've always done it. Or it's because that's the way that this particular business operates. Or that's what our customers expect of us. Is it?

I don't know.

We also need innovation. Innovation in our products, innovation in our leadership, innovation in our management.

innovation in our business process.

Excellent.

We're striving for the best. That's not perfection. Don't misunderstand me. It's progress.

think these values have led us well. They help us to continue to innovate. They help us to continue to challenge ourselves. They help us to continue to truly solve problems. I'm not talking about band-aiding them. I'm talking about the old five why, straight to the source.

What are yours? What are your core values? What are your core leadership qualities?

I want to talk about how leadership and faith intersect, which was really the brainchild of this podcast.

Some people call it faith, some people call it values. I believe it's faith. And I think faith is the core of your being. And if something is the core of your being, it's gonna affect every decision that you make. It's gonna affect how you treat people, it's gonna affect how you view people, it's gonna affect...

how you view the organization that you are operating or operate within.

I also like to think about, and we talk about pretty regularly, advantage, servant leadership.

And Jesus was the ultimate leader of servant leadership.

He did it. He showed it.

The other thing I think we need to think about is how do we balance our humility and confidence?

Why is that important?

People don't want to follow people who they don't have confidence in.

but it's really hard to engage the multitudes of people without some level of humility.

I also think the humility is acknowledgement that we aren't perfect and that we don't expect anyone else to be either.

We want them to be their best.

but perfection is an unattainable level.

You know, one of the biggest challenges I think Christian leaders face in business today is the appropriate level of transparency because

You don't want to mislead someone. You don't want to misguide them. But you also don't want to paralyze them. And an inappropriate level of knowledge or clarity around a particular problem provides different people on that spectrum.

Either the motivation to work harder.

or paralysis.

So I wanna talk about three things that you can do to immediately become a better leader.

Self-reflection.

Evaluate your personal leadership strengths and weaknesses.

While you're doing this, think about your own self-deception.

your own intentions.

Why is it we want to be a good leader?

Mentorship.

You need to find someone to learn from and you need to find someone to pour into.

You will get more value out of this than anything else, in my opinion. If you find the right mentor, and you are the right mentor to another person, you will see so much clarity in who you are as a leader, especially if you're honest and transparent, both ways.

and the daily habits, small consistent actions that build your leadership character. Think about it as how do I improve 1 % per day? And I'm not gonna do the math for you, but it's significant in a year, just improving 1 % per day.

You can probably do it investing as little as 15 to 18 minutes every single day.

you'll become a master, probably better than 95 % of the population in leadership by investing 18 minutes every single day.

So remember, just like John Maxwell said, leadership is influence, nothing more, nothing less.

What are your core values? What are your core leadership qualities?

How does your faith affect your leadership?

How should it?

How are we going to improve?

What are some steps we're willing to take in order to be better at leadership?

And one thing I want to just remind you, and I know you know this.

Leadership is a journey, it's not a destination.

You can't just master it.

you have to continue to improve.

So here's what I would like you to do. I want you to share your leadership experiences with me.

Here's how want you to do it. Connect with me on LinkedIn if you're not there. Email me if you have my email. Or after you connect with me on LinkedIn, can access my email and send me an email. Give me your thoughts. Comment on my post.

If you're not...

ready to do that yet. you're not ready to share your perspective with the world, send me a message in LinkedIn or send me an email.

Be more proactive. Start to think about who you could share this podcast with.

Who's looking to grow as a leader? Who's falling short of what you would hope a leader to be?

I won't tell them if you don't, which way you perceive them.

Thank you for joining the faithful. I hope you have a great week.

I'll see you next week.