When we are looking for a new staff member or high level lay leader at Village Church we look at 4 things (Character, Competency, Chemistry, and Capacity). The first is the most important.You can teach skills to people, teach them about your organization, and train them to manage their time well but their character? That is the ground floor upon which you build everything else.

This is why when the Apostle Paul is detailing out his list of requirements for the highest level of leadership in the local church, an Elder – he doesn’t start with a list of skills but of character qualities: “Now the overseer is to be above reproach, faithful to his wife, temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not given to drunkenness, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. ⁴ He must manage his own family well and see that his children obey him, and he must do so in a manner worthy of full respect. ⁵ (If anyone does not know how to manage his own family, how can he take care of God’s church?)^… He must also have a good reputation with outsiders” (1 Tim. 3:2-6).

The point here is obvious. If you aspire to leadership in any form in life don’t focus simply on polishing up your skills but work on yourself. Your honesty, authenticity, love for people, etc., This is what good leaders look like. And why even the secular business world says that humility is one of the most important features of a “level five leader” (Jim Collins, Good to Great, ch. 2).

The reason all of this is important in your life, your family, your business, or your church, is because of what John Maxwell calls the the law of buy-in, “People buy into the leader, then the vision” he says. So if you want to influence, become the kind of person people want to be, not the kind of leader people will want to follow.

Recently I was speaking with a Pastor and he asked me whether I thought the people in his church bought into his vision. My response was simple: “First, tell me this, do your people buy into you?” That’s the key.

So, do your kids buy into YOU? Does your staff buy into YOU? Does your boss buy into YOU? Not just your ideas, or plans, or vision. If not, become the kind of person people will buy into and they will follow you to the gates.