I was one of those high school students that teachers pulled aside and said, “You’re a natural leader…” The next sentence would usually be an invitation to partner with that teacher in some sort of classroom takeover.

I don’t know what it was they saw in me – whether it was my fearlessness in front of my peers or my willingness to participate in any sort of takeover plot. What I do know is that it planted a seed that grew into a grown-up me thinking I always have words to say (and that those words are worth listening to).

I ended up pursuing a career (and I use that term loosely to describe the general direction my professional life has gone) that is all about connecting to people. I graduated with degrees in psychology and communication and my joke has been, “Basically, I got a degree in figuring people out and then talking to them.” Every single job I’ve had – from printing shop to administrative assistant to guidance counselor to paint crew to service coordinator – has been about relationships. The most important moments (professional and personal) have always happened in conversations.

Somewhere along the way, I realized that all those times my teachers and family members and friends said, “You’re really one of those ‘natural’ leaders” kind of got under my skin and convinced me I had something to say and that people should listen.

That’s what born leaders do, right? Lead people.

Yes. But it’s both more and less. The secular world has its way of preaching its own religious message and this business of leadership is a popular sermon. There is a tendency, when people come to me for advice, to speak from my own pulpit – to guide and direct and advise from my own experiences and knowledge.

Along the bumpy and unconventional “career path” I’ve been walking, I have learned something very important about leadership and advice and relationships. It really boils down to one very simple thing.

Give me Jesus.

This is the sermon Paul preached to himself in Corinthians and Galatians and it summed up his life and ministry. He even later cautioned his listeners to filter out any worldly advice that might sneak in to sabotage the original message of the Gospel.

“And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.” (1 Corinthians 2:1-5, ESV)

Paul was intensely aware of His need of the Gospel – his dependence on God’s grace shaped the way he spoke and listened and preached and led. His leadership did not look like more of his words or his knowledge or his expertise. His leadership looked like more Jesus. Because the more he filled his life with Jesus, the more it became the only thing he could give to others.

Give them Jesus.

Maybe there are natural born leaders – people who have the characteristics and personality to be presidents and prime ministers. But the longer I live, the more I’m convinced that the best leadership comes from people who are most concerned with following Jesus.

When we feel like we are failing as leaders or as communicators or advisors, we don’t need to work to be better at those things. We need to ask the Lord, “Give me more Jesus, so that I can give them more Jesus.”

I read this little nugget from Tim Keller in my devotional this morning. I like to think about my heart being melted by His love and that love overflowing to others. That’s the kind of leader I want to be.

“If we find ourselves unloving, the solution is not to seek to love better or more; it is to look at Christ, who gives us an unlosable, unshakable acceptance from the Father, and as we dwell on our hope, we will find our hearts melted by His love, and overflowing with His love to others.” Tim Keller in “Galatians for You”