I am reading a book right now by Brad Lomenick (a leadership consultant and founder of Catalyst) called H3 Leadership. The thesis is simple. Good leadership takes 3 ingredients: Be Humble. Stay Hungry. Always Hustle.

I shared these three concepts with our staff last week.

If you are a leader, pastor, church planter, business leader, blue collar worker, or stay at home mom – these three H’s are essential to success and effectiveness in life.

Be Humble – Humble people aren’t always the quiet people. Humble people ask lots of questions, ask for help, look to always learn, investigate, find better ways, pray a lot, try not to be the hero of every story they tell, and listen to others to get perspective on themselves. They admit they don’t have answers to every question. People generally like humility more than arrogance, and are drawn to humble leaders and humble people.

Stay Hungry. This is lacking a ton in the church world. In the business world people have hunger for financial gain, a promotion, etc., but in the church world these incentives do not exist in the same way, so what I find is a large amount of people who just kind of got into ministry – sometimes because they aren’t very good at anything else. They were floaters, liked warm spaces, drinking coffee, and not a lot of heavy lifting, so… ministry! But they aren’t necessarily hungry to move forward, expand, reach more people (or do what it takes to reach more people, which is change, adapt, live with complexity and stress and challenge), so they take it slow, and coast. They are happy with who is around, and their heart doesn’t break for the lost among them. At least not enough to cause them to go the extra mile, work a little harder, or make the sacrifices no one else can make. All because many are not hungry enough. They settle, and are satisfied.

Always Hustle. A guidance counselor at a local Bible College recently told a new student that of all the churches he could work at, to avoid Village Church because we would work him like a horse. He immediately left the office and came to Village looking for a job. Why? because he knew that’s the best thing for him. He is that high quality. An H3 leader never mails it in. They always go over and above. They don’t punch clocks. They don’t ask about vacation time in first job interviews. They put their head down, and work tirelessly for the cause. And 9 times out of 10 that work gets rewarded, and they get ahead. Not because hard work equals magic, but because hard work equals better work, which usually equals getting ahead.

Years ago I asked a person working for us to go and do something that I didn’t have time for that day. They responded that it wasn’t in their job description. It took me a minute to realize that they weren’t kidding. I spent the next few weeks helping them re-think how they view their work hoping to instill in them as much hustle as possible.

The reason I would want to take the time to do that is because we don’t really view people as employees but rather as leaders. And good leaders don’t approach things like that. They stay humble, while being driven by a hunger, and hustle in all they do.