EP 143 Leading Your Family with Principles

We are living in a confusing culture. 

As mothers, we feel the weight of it in a unique way because we are not just navigating it for ourselves. We are leading children who will inherit whatever kind of world we help build.

If you have ever wondered how to lead your family with confidence when everything feels unstable, this episode is for you. 

In this conversation, we unpack:

• Why we are living in what Robert Greenleaf called an age of the anti-leader
• The leadership vacuum in our culture and why education is not preparing people to lead or follow wisely
• Why the real enemy is not evil people or broken systems but fuzzy thinking
• How your home is a small society and you are already leading it

Listen to episode 143 of The Mission Driven Mom Podcast, “Leading Your Family with Principles” here or wherever you listen to your podcasts. 

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Introduction

Welcome back to the podcast. I am Audrey Reba, author of the Mission Driven Life and founder of the Mission Driven Mom. Now you and I both know that we are living in a very confusing, contradictory culture, and that mothers especially feel the weight of that every day because we are not only taking on the job of mothering, and we do not just have that responsibility going on, but we have the weight of what we were not given educationally and the perceptions that are out there about mothers in the culture.

The feminist movement and all the other things, besides which it is declining, and all the things. And so if you have ever wondered, like I have so many times, how you are supposed to lead your family with confidence when everything is unstable, then this episode is going to be for you. We are going to dive into that.

Moms Want a Better World

Now, I have said this before. I am going to say it again. We as moms want a better world. Now, maybe everybody does, but we have this special string connected to us called our child, and that child is going to inherit the world that we leave behind. And so we feel an added measure of responsibility and motivation to try to make the world a better place.

We know that this is a confusing culture, and we know that it lacks proper leadership, and that is one of the major problems. We are struggling to navigate it. We worry about what is going on and how to build the good society, and leadership is a big part of that.

I want to talk to you for a minute today about some things that several individuals said about the concept of servant leadership, how servant leadership is lacking, why it is lacking, why it is the answer, and what you and I can do about it.

Robert Greenleaf and the Crisis of Leadership

As moms, Robert Greenleaf was a huge mover in this kind of modern day movement of bringing back this concept of servant leadership. He had an organization and one of the most popular books called Servant Leadership. He researched, it is the definitive book, you could say that, about this concept.

And he defined the problem in a way that I find very ironic because it is the problem that I keep talking about, and he says it really well. He says, alas, we live in the age of the anti leader and our vast educational structure devotes very little care to nurturing leaders or to understanding followership.

This is also something very fascinating that he focuses on in his book. We have a responsibility to be leaders, but also to be good followers and to be trained to know who to follow and how to follow them, and that both of those skills and abilities are necessary to have the kind of culture that we want.

He says, if there is any influence, formal education seems to discourage such pursuits. Educators argue, especially, I believe, that such preparation is implicit in general education. So educators claim that they teach people leadership, but they actually do not.

He says, if that is true, how can it be that we are in a crisis of leadership in which vast numbers of quote educated people make gross errors in choosing whose leadership to follow, and in which there is so little incentive for able and dedicated servants to take the risks of asserting leadership.

If we really, in our educational systems, are teaching people how to be good followers and how to be servant leaders, then why are we in this conundrum today. His point is we are not doing that, and that is a key part of the problem.

The conclusion I reach is that educators are avoiding the issue when they refuse to give the same care to the development of servant leaders as they do to doctors, lawyers, ministers, teachers, engineers, and scholars.

And he is right. Leadership is one of the most important things. Leadership is everything. Leadership makes or breaks us, and it is a vital skillset that should be taken as seriously as a medical practice, or as judges and attorneys, or any other major ability that is trained in individuals.

He continues. Even schools of administration give scant attention to servant leadership. I have spent a great deal of time and energy trying to persuade educators to accept the obligation, and I am certain that generally they recognize neither the obligation nor the opportunity. Thus far, in my experience, they appear unpersuadable.

An occasional gifted teacher will take some initiative, but the institutions rarely sanction the effort. The outlook for better leadership in our leadership poor society is not encouraging.

Amen.

The Leadership Vacuum in Our Culture

And that is at the root. We talked about this in one of the episodes recently about hacking at the branches or hacking at the root. Servant leadership, there is a vacuum. There is almost no good leadership out there.

This is why servant leadership is a big chunk of like half of our focus in level three in the academy, because it is a skillset we desperately need.

This is a problem. We see this problem. If we were going to say, we look out on our society, we look at the nonsense going on social media, we see all of the, look, I try to go to the movies and I look at what is in the theater and over half of it just looks like junk.

It just looks like, why. It is not going to lift me, it is not going to elevate me. It is probably not going to teach me anything.

Now, maybe I am making too quick a judgment and maybe there is more that I can gain from some of these things that I turn away from. But frankly, there is much in our society that is not worth consuming, and there is much that gets put out in the name of entertainment that good leadership would quell.

We need people in all industries, in all parts of society, leading us closer to truth and goodness and beauty, infusing virtue back into our culture, if that is the kind of culture that we long for.

And as mothers, we have a part. We have a very important role to play in this.

You Are Not Powerless

And I know that we often sit at home and feel powerless and think society is what it is, and I am not a leader and I am never going to be one, and I am not going to hold the reins of government, so there is nothing I can do.

And actually, we can do everything. And I am going to tell you why that is the case.

Who Is Holding Us Back

So later on, Greenleaf has this to say, which the first time I read this, I was floored. I read it and reread it. I shared it with people that I knew. I put sections of this book in level three because it is, anyway, just listen to what he has to say.

So we are looking at the society, right, and we are super dissatisfied and we are like, what is going on in our culture. And we can maybe have the insight to recognize that the vacuum of leadership is a core root problem.

But then we might ask this question, which is the question he asks. Okay, if this is a situation we find ourselves in, then who is the enemy who is holding back more rapid movement to the better society that is reasonable and possible with available resources.

So we have all this technology, we have all this ability. What is holding us back. Why can we not get there. We will not be a perfect society, but we could be a way better society. So why are we not arriving. Who is responsible.

He goes on. For the mediocre performance of so many of our institutions, who is standing in the way of a larger consensus on the definition of the better society and paths to reaching it.

Not evil people. Not stupid people. Not apathetic people. Not the quote system. Not the protestors, the disruptors, the revolutionaries, or the reactionaries.

Are you surprised by what he says. That is quite a claim to make. That is pretty surprising that he is calling this out.

He sees the problem. He is obviously trying to do something about it. He is writing books, he is running organizations, he is training people.

He is saying we have a vacuum of leadership. We have a big, huge problem here. We have everything that we need to build a better society. We have natural laws and rights and a wonderful constitution and all the things.

What is holding us back. What is keeping us from doing it.

And it is not these things. The evil, stupid, apathetic people, or the system, or the protestors, the disruptors.

And he says part of the reason for that is because until we get to utopia, which we may never get there, those people will always exist in society. They cannot be the reason. They cannot be what is stopping us, because they will always be part of society.

He says no. Here is what it is.

The Real Enemy Is Fuzzy Thinking

He goes on. This is so mind blowing. Moms, the real enemy is fuzzy thinking.

This reminds me of this really awesome article by Mortimer Adler that I love, where he talks about how our inability to think clearly, to reason things out, to think in terms of principle, is at the heart of most of the problems that we find.

And this is a guy who has done his homework and is the leading expert in this field, and he has brought it down to wrong thinking.

Just like we talked about a couple episodes ago, how we changed your thinking about being a people pleaser, just by identifying one principle.

And so the real enemy to the good society is fuzzy thinking.

He goes on. Fuzzy thinking on the part of good, intelligent, vital people.

That is you and I. That is just the truth. We are good, vital, intentional, intelligent people who want a better, more virtuous world.

So we are, and it is our fuzzy thinking that is the problem. It is keeping us from having the leadership that we need to have that would bring about a better society.

Let me read that sentence again and finish it out.

The real enemy is fuzzy thinking on the part of good, intelligent, vital people and their failure to lead and to follow servants as leaders.

Our inability to identify the people who we should truly follow and champion, who can lead us to a better world, and our unwillingness to gain the ability to think clearly, to be true servant leaders and to lead, is the problem.

The people that can do it, that do not, are the problem.

Too many settle for being critics and experts. There is too much intellectual wheel spinning. Too much retreating into quote research. Too little preparation for and willingness to undertake the hard and high risk tasks of building better institutions in an imperfect world.

Too little disposition to see the problem as residing in here, and not out there.

I am going to talk to you about that in just a minute.

In short, the enemy to the better society that we all long for is strong natural servants who have the potential to lead but do not lead, or who choose to follow a non servant.

They suffer. Society suffers.

And so it may be in the future.

This is quite a little lecture, quite a hand slapping that we have had from Robert Greenleaf, but I absolutely agree with him.

The Only Way to Change a Society

You and I have the potential to know how to follow the right people and to become the leaders that we could be.

And our inability to think in terms of truths and principles, our fuzziness about what really needs to be done, as I say in the Seven Laws of Life mission, bringing principled solutions to real world problems, being mission driven servant leaders, is the problem.

Greenleaf also says the only way to change a society is to produce people, enough people, who will change it.

This reminds me of something that Jordan Peterson teaches often.

He spent many years thinking and pondering and studying about communism, especially as it played out in the far east nations like China and Russia.

And he kept asking himself, why. Why. Why did this happen. How do we stop it from happening again.

And he went through all the books and he had all the conversations and he thought and pondered endlessly until finally he came to one very simple truth. And that was that the only way to stop it from ever happening again was to produce people who would stop it from ever happening again.

To have more Ten Booms, to have more William Wilberforces.

And that is why in the Mission Driven Life, I talk about how ordinary people can do extraordinary things.

Because you and I feel very ordinary, but we can do extraordinary things, and we can be servant leaders, and we must be.

And I am going to tell you how to start in just a minute.

The Problem Starts In Here

Greenleaf goes on to say this as well.

The servant, that is you and I striving to be servant leaders, views any problem in the world as in here inside themselves. That is what he means, inside oneself, and not out there.

He says this goes back to our principle with the boundaries in the recent podcast, right.

We thought the problem was out there and everybody was just giving us a hard time. And then we said, okay, maybe I should just put up more fences.

And then we realized, actually, if I will change my nature, if I will live according to principles, good, solid principles of boundaries, then things will just change.

He goes on. If a flaw in the world is to be remedied, to the servant, the process of change starts in themselves, in the servant, not out there.

This is a difficult concept for the busy, modern person. The busy modern woman. The busy modern mom.

Your Family Is a Little Society

Now I want to bring this home, because I have been talking for the last few minutes about the big picture of the culture and the society and all the things that feel so nebulous and out of our control.

But guess what.

Your family is a little society.

If you take all the big problems and questions that are out there in the world and you think and ponder for a minute about your little home, you will recognize that almost everything is reflected in the small society of the family.

The leaders. The rules. The laws. The choice and consequence. The relationships. The negotiations.

So many of the things that we have to do as a society, we also have to do in our homes.

And you are a leader right now.

You are a leader in the little society of your family.

And so since you are the leader, I want to ask you, how is it going.

What kind of world are you creating in your home, and maybe even more importantly, in your own head and in your own heart.

Leadership is always happening. It is just either good leadership or bad leadership. It is either servant leadership or it is selfish narcissism.

And since we are already leaders, we owe it to ourselves and we owe it to our families, and we owe it to the society that we now govern to be the best leaders we can be.

And so everything that Robert Greenleaf was talking about applies to you and I today. Right now.

Who are those individuals, those mothers, those women, that are going to change our society by changing the societies in our homes, starting with ourselves.

He says that we need natural leaders who have the potential to be servant leaders.

That is you.

Servant Leadership Requires Clear Thinking

You have the potential to be a servant leader, and I know that you are already doing some of that.

I know that you adore your family. I know that you try to serve them. I know that you try to put them first.

But this is like so many other things.

We hear words like servant leadership and we think we understand. We think we know. We think we get it. We think that it means doing more of this or that.

But until we slow down and think, until we get rid of the fuzzy thinking and we get into the principled thinking, it is going to be very difficult to course correct properly, to understand what actually is going well, what is not going well, and how we can course correct to live more truth in our homes.

And of course, how is this best done. It is best done through principles, of course.

Leadership Is Character in Action

Another book that I love is called The Servant. That one is by James Hunter. It is a beautiful analogy that teaches some really fantastic leadership principles.

And he says that leadership is very simple. It is one phrase.

Leadership is character in action.

We have been talking about character this month. We have been talking about Stephen Covey.

Remember that he said that there are basic principles of effective living, and that people can only experience true success and enduring happiness as they learn and integrate these basic principles into their character.

That is what the character ethic is.

And if character is everything in leadership, and character is developed through integrating principles into our nature, then we have our marching orders.

We know what we need to do.

As James Hunter says, you need to gain the skill for identifying the principle and moving it from your head.

So you are going to get rid of your fuzzy thinking and learn to identify them, and then gain the skills to move those principles from your head to your heart, to where you have true understanding and conversion to that truth, and into your habits so that it becomes a way of life.

It is just who you are. It is just what you do. It is how you talk. It is how you live. It is how you lead. It is how you govern those little people in your home.

The Only Thing We Are Teaching Is a Principle

And of course, Jack Barsin, who is a brilliant guy that I absolutely love, teaches all kinds of incredible things.

He said, and he is right, and I could give you a million other quotes around this. He said that the only thing we are teaching anybody is a principle.

And why would he say that.

Because it is true, because there are a million ways that we can live out any principle.

That is why you give them the truth and then the truth makes them free.

So how can we do that in the first place. How can we teach people principles if we do not know them ourselves. How can we lead with them.

How can our leadership be character in action if we are not truth seekers, if we have not become experts in our own life, if we are not discerners of truth, if we cannot build the small societies in our own heads and in our own homes based on true principles.

When you do this, it changes everything, because when there is proper leadership, everybody thrives.

Invitation to the Free Class

In the next week, I am teaching a free class called How to Stop Feeling Powerless and Become the Expert in your own life.

And I really want you there.

It is the culmination of what we have been talking about for the last few weeks. It is going to be the deep dive that you really need. It is going to be a springboard for you to stop that fuzzy thinking, to start to dig into that character ethic, to begin to understand these ethereal, abstract things called principles and harness them.

Send your lasso out and grab them. Identify them, write them as actionable, and put them to practice in your own home.

So if you are ready to stop guessing, if you are ready to stop having other people tell you what to do, if you want to lead with confidence, then please join me. Register at the link below in the description, and I will see you there.