Listen Before You Lead
A lot of leadership problems are not caused by a lack of answers. They are caused by giving answers before we understand the problem.
Men are wired to fix things. Someone tells us what is wrong, and our mind immediately starts building the solution. But your wife, your children, your employees, and your brothers do not always need you to fix something first. Sometimes they need to know you actually heard them.
Listening takes discipline. It means putting down the phone. It means resisting the urge to interrupt. It means asking another question when you think you already know the answer.
There is strength in being the man who can sit with another person long enough to understand what they are carrying.
You do not lose authority by listening. You earn trust.
Who in my life have I been trying to correct or fix when I may need to understand them first?
God, slow me down enough to hear the people You have placed around me. Give me patience when I want to interrupt, humility when I think I already know the answer, and wisdom to know when to speak and when simply to listen. Amen.
In one important conversation today, do not offer advice until you have asked at least two genuine questions and listened carefully to the answers.
Keep walking through the fire
Forged by Fire is a book about the cost of isolation and the power of brotherhood. If this hit something, the book goes further.