Habits of a servant leader

- People often ask me well how do I behave in my good intentions? I get in my heart that I want to be a servant leader and I think I understand the concept in my head and all, but how do I make sure that I behave in my good intentions? It really has to do with your habits. What do you do on a daily basis to recalibrate who you want to be? And I think it has to do with how do you enter your day. I'm convinced we have two selves, we have an external task oriented self that's used to getting jobs done, and then we have a thoughtful reflective self. Now which of those two selves do you think wakes up quicker in the morning? It's the task oriented self. What happens, the alarm goes off and my friend John Artberg says what an awful term for that, why isn't the opportunity clock? Or it's going to be a great day, no the alarm, and you jump out of bed and you're trying to eat while you're washing, you know you jump in the car and you're on your car phone, you get to the office, you go to this meeting, that meeting and you know you get home at night, you're absolutely exhausted seven or eight o'clock at night. You fall into bed, you don't even have any energy to stay goodnight to anybody who might be lying next to you. And boom you're into the next day the same way. And you're caught in a rat race, and I love the great Hollywood philosopher Lily Tallman, she always said the problem with a rat race is even if you win it, you're still a rat. And so what you really have to do I think is enter your day slowly and start by opening your thoughtful, reflective self. I like to put my hands on my knees, sit on the side of the bed and think about what am I going to do today, what are my concerns. And I just quietly kind of lie those down and then I put my hands in an upward state and just kind of quiet myself and think about who do I want to be today, you know. Or how do I want to behave, what do I want to do and I always end up reading my own mission statement. And then I've written my own obituary you know, a lot of people say you're a little sick Blanchard, but if you know any of the story about that Alfred Nobel, his brother died in Sweden and he went to read the obituary of his brother and they got he and his brother mixed up. And he got to read his own obituary, you know, and he was involved in making dynamite and all. They talked about destruction and all those kind of things, and he thought oh my God, that was awful. And he decided how could he rewrite his obituary, so he would be remembered differently. The other people, around they said what's the opposite of destruction? They said peace so he redesigned his life, so he'd be remembered for peace. And boy that's what your obituary is, how do you want to be remembered? And then what are your values? My values are spiritual peace, integrity, love and joy. And I read my values and I've defined those. So I know who I want to be in the world, and then at the end of the day what do you do with that? My friend Bill Hybels who has a wonderful church outside of Chicago, Willow Creek, he was a chaplain for the Chicago Bears when Singletary was there, and he would do his bible study the day after they would play a game. And after the bible study they would all look at the game films and they would first start up, what do we do well or we want to continue to do. And then they would say okay, what did we do not so well, we want to do differently. And he went whoa 'cause he had never written a journal and so he and I and other people write a journal at the end of the day. It says the date and you say first praisings, what did I do today that makes me really feel good about myself and is consistent with who I wanted to be? And then after that, redirections. What did I do today that I wish I had an instant replay, I could do over again? And so if you keep track of those things over time you'll start to spot the things you maybe need to work on. And you can pat yourself on the back for the things you're doing good 'cause you got to be your own best friend. If you're not that, you're in trouble. If you don't blow your own horn, somebody else will use it as a spittoon. And so you got to do that, but you also want to be honest about what you want to continue to work on. And so boy, if you have an intention and a habit of entering your day slowly and then ending it with some assessment on how well we did, you're really going to do. And Socrates said years ago, a life you know, unexamined life is not worth doing. And if you want to be a great servant leader you got to have an examined life and you got to set goals and visions in the morning, and then evaluate how well you do it. And you know you can do it. I'm all for you, we need you out there. So do it, get in the habit of entering your day slowly and then get out there and live a life of service.