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One of the central points of Orrin Woodward and my book, Launching a Leadership Revolution, is the key role hunger plays in the life of a leader.  There are a lot of terms that could be used to describe a leader, but hunger is a primary prerequisite. 

Why is hunger so central to becoming a leader?

Because leadership is all about change.  The word lead is a verb describing the influence of others to a place the leader has often not even visited himself.  This requires the ability to deal with change effectively; personally and externally as well as organizationally.  Helping others change and grow is a large part of what leaders spend their time doing.  Through this collective change comes advancement and achievement.  None of this can happen unless the leader has a larger supply of hunger to change than the fear or complacency that threatens to stop him.

As the saying goes, "When the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the pain of changing, you'll change!"  Hunger describes the positive side of the coin that has "pain" on the other side.  In other words, when your hunger outgrows the power that the status quo has over you, you will change and grow as a leader.

Whenever we miss goals, stop advancing, and fall upon stalled periods in our life, it is usually because we have allowed our hunger to flag.  We have allowed the tanks that fuel our leadership engine to run dry.  Try to envision hunger as a liquid fuel you store in your mind.  To keep your engine running continuously, you will need to supply and resupply it with proper fuel.  This is actually a discipline.  As a leader you must build your hunger muscles and keep them strong.  How is this done?  By reviewing your primary motivations on a regular basis, associating with like-minded motivated people, reading good books, studying the scriptures so you keep an eternal perspective on your life's work, having concrete goals, and keeping in constant touch with your purpose and cause.  It also comes from finding someone else to serve and love, and being active in the pursuit of your purpose so you build skills and gain confidence and momentum.  Leaders that fall behind in their results are usually lax in exercising these key hunger disciplines.

Having proper questions to ask yourself also helps.  Here are a few:

1. Who am I going to serve today?

2. What steps am I going to take toward my dream today?

3.  What is my purpose in life?

4. What special skills has God given me that point me to my purpose?

5.  What activities make me "come alive?"

6.  What dreams or achievements can I think about and focus upon to get myself excited about achievement?

7.  What kind of legacy am I leaving with the way I am living my life each day?

8.  What is the highest picture I can generate in my mind's eye of the kind of person God is fashioning me into for His glory?

9.  Am I making the most of my gifts and time?

10.  Ten years from today, what would I wish I had been doing?

Don't expect your leadership engine to run properly if you starve it of fuel.  Give it the good, high octane stuff all the time.  And if you don't, you shouldn't be surprised if it starts sputtering.   

Learning leadership and people skills is necessary to function properly within a team.  A team of people has tremendous power and potential if the participants are aligned in common purpose and dedicated to working toward the collective benefit of the group.  Something wonderful happens as individuals strive together for common achievement and accomplishment: camaraderie. 

As people work together, keeping their egos in check, working for the best ideas and holding back their own personal agendas while searching for an overall group agenda, momentum builds.  The relationships between the team members strengthens, and the production, ideas, and results are greater than the sum of the individual efforts.  As McDonald's founder Ray Kroc said, "None of us is as good as all of us."

The challenge with many people is being able to work within a team.  They lack in the required people skills, confidence, or patience.  They have to have their way, or see their own idea advanced, and become a disruption to the healthy functioning of the team as their position predominates.  After a while, they are either rejected from the team's activities, shunned, or the team becomes their personal dogmatic domain and fails to function as a synergistic group anymore.  Another type of behavior destructive to teams is private conversations, gossip, or people too cowardly to address issues directly and publically with the team or its members.  Instead, they go around behind the scenes voicing their dissent and stirring up "discord among the bretheren."  Political "factions" develop, feelings are hurt, and unhealthy competition for power, position, or prestige within the team develops.  Again, under these conditions a team deteriorates and loses out on the powers of combined efforts. 

I have been involved with both types of teams: those that function well and those that don't.  The difference in the results between the two are not even in the same hemisphere.  What made that difference was the people involved.  Selfless, motivated, humble, energized, patient, caring people make the best teams.  Often, unfortunately, one bad apple can spoil to whole mix.  It only takes a little bit of arsenic to spoil a cake. 

If you are fortunate enough to be involved in a team setting in some aspect of your life, strive to be the best teammate you can.  Be a contributor, not a detractor.  Deal open handedly, not behind the scenes.  Mean what you say and say what you mean.  Listen, and appreciate the differences that others bring to the group.  Be willing to change your opinion about something if presented with new information.  A quote I recently heard said, "The world belongs to those who are willing to change their mind when presented with new facts."  I can't tell you how many times I have gone into a team situation with a certain idea of what should be done or accomplished, but after hearing the great ideas and inputs of others, became convinced that my idea was not the best.  Many times, I became convinced that my idea wasn't even any good!  Sometimes my ideas have carried, but more often than not some amalgamation of everybody's ideas became the BEST idea.  These situations are fun, energizing, and rewarding. 

Working as part of a team can be one of the best experiences people can have, or it can be among the worst.  The only part of the experience you can control is your own contribution and behavior.  Be a team player, and get ready for some rich experiences, and don't be surprised if at some point along the way you are called upon to take the lead !       

Class, character, honor, integrity, discipline, consistency, dependability, selflessness, and servanthood are watchwords for anyone serious about being a leader.  The conduct of a leader springs from the character of the leader.  In other words, what's inside eventually comes out.

In the area of dealing with people, it is a short-term proposition, at best, and dishonest, at the worst, for anyone to simply learn people skills but disregard a heart change.  It's a lot like putting a new dress on an old skeleton, lipstick on a pig, lacquer on a dirt clod, etc. etc.  Too many times people misunderstand the true change of heart that accompanies leadership growth for techniques and skills that are simply "on the surface."

Even so, I am still shocked from time to time at the lack of even basic people skills from would-be leaders.  Inappropriate tone of voice, quickness to be offended, grudge carrying, pouting, gossiping, being critical of others, arrogance, off-color remarks, negativity, complaining, criticizing, condemning, and the like are all too common from people who should know better.  If these symptoms are prevalent, what does that say about what is on the inside?  Where there is smoke, there is usually fire.  The tree is known by its fruits.

Excellent leaders are very concerned for how they come across in their dealings with others.  All the ones I know are sincerely humble, selfless, longsuffering, patient, kind, loving, forgiving, and self-effacing.  Their tone of voice is smooth and kind, their eyes are focused and unwavering, their spirit is soft and other-focused, and their priorities are eternal instead of temporal.  We would all do well to model this behavior.

But beyond the behavior lies the issues of the heart.  Reading good books, studying the scriptures, listening to positive and educational recordings, and attending meetings and conferences all should be used toward the purpose of an ever-growing heart.  We should be prayerful for the Holy Spirit to invade our lives and produce a massive heart change within us.  We should be mindful of our legacy, the impact we have on each and every person with whom we come into contact, and we should make our every interaction as positive and uplifting as possible.  After all, the way we live our life might be the only sermon someone gets to hear.  

We can all grow in the area of our behavior towards and with other people.  But most importantly, we need to grow on the inside.  Our conduct as leaders matters.  Right or wrong, people make judgments about a lot of things based on how they see us behave.  They make inferences about our family, our upbringing, our faith, our God, our business, and our character based upon what they see us do.  As the saying goes, "What you do speaks so loudly what you say I cannot hear." 

So go for a heart change.  And while you're at it, take the time to treat others with class and respect.  The world is watching.

In the novel Ireland, the wise woman told Ronan that:

"What a poem needs by way of a good home is a heart of fire and a spirit of honor.  Poems won’t come to rest in a place of baseness.  No self-respecting poem would think of entering a soul of perfidy."

While this may be insightful as pertains to poems, I believe that it is even more pertinent to leaders.

Recent events have served as a type of litmus test for me regarding leaders.  Tumultuous times reveal character and true motivations more than any other.  And during these events I have seen revealed the deficiencies in leadership of either "Hearts of Fire" or "Spirits of Honor."

What do I mean?

I personally believe that, some-a, USAmericans don’t HAVE maps, (oops, wrong article! :))

I personally believe that leadership is made up of BOTH a "Heart of Fire" AND a "Spirit of Honor."  A Heart of Fire represents Force, and a Spirit of Honor represents Light.  My observations are that there are many, many leaders who are filled with a Heart of Fire, raring to go, pushing their way to the front, courageous and boisterous, climbing toward their goals.  There are also many people, though in the leadership category, I think, perhaps a smaller number, who are Spirits of Honor, decent, kind, nice, selfless, concerned about others, and focused upon doing what is right, simply because it is right, even if it is personally costly.

But rare is the leader who posesses both.

Great leaders need both a Heart of Fire and a Spirit of Honor; in other words, both Force and Light.

Too many leaders are all Force and not enough Light.  And this brings me to my theme: excellent leaders balance the two.  Excellent leaders are just as concerned about doing what’s right, being honorable, honest, and a force for good as they are attaining their own goals and successes.  Excellent leaders conduct themselves nobly, with grace and humility, and are more concerned with being a contributer to the overall team, the overall good, the overall legacy, than they are about their personal gain.  Excellent leaders make decisions that are costly simply because they are right.  Excellent leaders risk personal gain because they have a higher standard of righteous conduct that overrules selfish ambitions.

I could wax on, but I won’t.  Everybody reading this knows what I am talking about: HONOR.

What would the world be like if more of its "leaders" were at least as concerned with being honorable as they are for being successful?  What would the business world be like if its "leaders" were slower to manuever for their own advantage and quicker to consider what is most honorable to do in a given situation? 

Successful people are a dime a dozen.  Gaining wealth is really not a big deal, and usually, not much of an achievement.  Fame is a hollow promise laced with misery.  The only thing that really lasts for a leader is his or her conduct, decency, selflessness, service to others, sacrifice, and honor.  THAT is the legacy of a leader. 

As with poems, leadership won’t come to rest in a place of baseness.  No self-respecting legacy would think of entering a soul of perfidy.

Lead on.  And do it with honor, or don’t do it at all.

Do you ever get run ragged?  Ever grow weary in well doing?

One of the key concepts author Stephen Covey talks about in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People is that of sharpening the saw.  Everybody needs to build a little time into their busy schedules to refresh and restore frayed nerve endings.

I travel a lot.  And with travel comes friction.  Flights are delayed or cancelled.  Weather slows things down.  Crowds are no fun.  Hotels are expensive and have those noisy heater/airconditioner things that can keep you up all night.  But one of the things travel makes me do is shut off the cell phone and read a good book.  Sometimes, my flight time is the only time I can find for my reading!  And for me, reading is one of the best ways to stay sharp and restore myself.

Family time is also theraputic.  Exercise can be magical at bringing your spirits back to life.  Certainly prayer and meditation should be primary, also.  Sometimes just hanging out with some special people in your life can do the trick.

The key is to understand how you are wired and what you need to maintain yourself at peak performance.  Do you know the leading indicators of frazzled nerve endings?  Do you see signs of needing a break?  Do you know what activities best restore you to top form?  Be tuned in to these and book a little restoration time into your schedule.

There is a difference between being idle and resting, just as there is a difference between being busy and being effective.  Idleness and busyness are two sides of the same coin: disorder.  Their opposite is rest (read "rest-oration") and effectiveness, which come from an orderly life.  Disciplined people have a way of both getting things done and resting once in a while.  The two work together like a hand in a glove.

Winston Churchill painted landscapes.  In the middle of political firestorms and a raging world war, he would sit serenely and paint for hours.  Abraham Lincoln read humor books.  In the midst of a calamitous civil war, he would entertain friends with chuckling short stories and witty jokes.  Ronald Reagan would chop wood, ride horses, and clear trails.  He was the leader of the free world and winning the Cold War, but he made time to swing an axe.

What are your methods of restoration?  Do you schedule them effectively?  If not, I’ll bet you are busier than you need be, and less effective than you could be.