If you are just following this series, let me encourage you to read the other posts first to understand this project better…

Truth #5: If the desert needs rain, your local businesses and leaders are the Mojave.

If the world looks like a desert, I suddenly located a Mojave. The people MOST in need of encouragement are small business owners and community leaders. If you’re not one, then you may not realize that people are FAR more liberal with criticism than complements – especially today and especially to these. Both privately and publicly. Folks… small business owners and community leaders are pretty bruised right now. And there are a LOT of self-sacrificing, good ones SO hurt they are borderline ready to quit. Sometimes it seems like Americans REVEL in the idea of taking leaders ‘down a notch’. “What makes THEM so special?!” It sometimes feels like our favorite sport. “Let’s find someone who rises up to do something and knock them down a peg or two.”

I’m not saying they should not be held to high standards, but it’s possible this has gotten SOO far that our leaders don’t even have a booster seat to sit on, let alone a pedestal for standing.  Most great leaders rise because people see the GOOD they are doing and decide to help lift it. Do you realize HOW MUCH fortitude and energy and sacrifice it takes to do GOOD things right now? To have dozens of people complaining and not a single thank you? I hear many crying out right now for a leader to trust. The irony is, very few want the job because instead of seeing the GOOD they are doing and helping them, a VERY vocal number of people choose to focus on their flaws and assume their intentions. Leaders are beaten down, run over the coals and made to have microscopic cameras placed on their daily lives. But they are simply people, just like us, and MOST are pretty unselfish people trying to serve others.

Social media has emboldened us in scary ways. Thanks to social media, we now have a license to destroy someone from the safety of our digital screens. Suddenly we have a public forum, and we’re not afraid to use it. This is a great free speech platform and a powerful tool. However, does anyone else feel like manners have been lost in the efforts to wield it? People are actually people in real life AND their digital world. NO ONE likes their mistakes aired to the world. There are right and wrong ways to approach the mistakes of others, including leaders. In seeing the beaten up faces and responses of leaders, I have been forced to ask myself what motivates this and how can I help.

In our enthusiasm for our favorite sport, we are facing the consequences of a wasteland. Leadership has always required a bit of moxie. It requires the ability to stand up to those who might disagree with you in order to accomplish good on behalf of others. As the saying goes, you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs. I like that America ‘chooses’ its leaders by deciding who they will support. I like that we have a lot of voices. However, it sometimes feels like we are no longer picking the good we want to support and instead using flaws to find ways to abandon, belittle and isolate. After what I’ve seen, I fear we’re in danger of requiring our leaders to have more than just moxie. We may be requiring them to have an iron heart. I don’t think I want the only people willing to lead things publicly to be those who have callouses thicker than their hearts. I don’t want the only ones remaining to be only those with enough fortitude or ignorant bliss to either stand against a raging crowd or be ambivalent to its angry voice. What’s more, I don’t want to set an example to my kids that authority should be ANYTHING LESS than respectfully treated.

What is worse, our vitriol is driving an ENTIRE economic engine in media advertising. Our favorite sport has enough power to influence entire countries and people groups to divisions so deep and rivals so strong that the chasm between them feels insurmountable. We WANT to find something bad about someone else SO much that click bait has a name for itself. The money this generates ensures our news feeds are cluttered with angry, horrible things about people. Our reporters line their pockets 10-fold for negative vs. positive headlines and leaders are worth triple points. I say that we’ve reached a place where many of our news sources no longer deserve to be called hunters of truth. They are instead, vultures for self-righteousness. Many take cheap shots from the bleachers and get paid to do so. From this day forward, I am making a choice about negative news. Not so much as to bury my head in the sand, but enough to at least try to balance the scales. I’m not finding a lot of positive news reporting to click on these days, which is emphasizing this point for me lately.

My friends, the DESERT needs rain, and if we ever want to get out of the Mojave we must start with us. Leaders are NOT perfect people, but it is time we focus on finding good in what others are trying to do. It is time that we give good people an opportunity to put their best foot forward by being our best selves. This is not a call to be sheep to a dictator, but it is a call to start actively supporting good people in their weak moments. This is a call to change the way we respond to weakness in others. Rather than shoving a knife in the wound, we should become the band-aid for making them better. Be someone willing to mend the holes in order to accomplish something great. It will take humility when we do not agree with them on everything. But can we find at least SOMETHING to build on rather than resort to tearing down?

Good leaders are created by us. We are all, in fact, leaders of some kind whenever we find a job that needs doing and it takes more than one. We start the job, and we ask others to join in the good we’re trying to do. I learned that it is time to stop tearing down people trying to do good things by criticism. It is time to help them by using our strengths where they are weak. Building up their ideas into something better rather than immediately dismissing them. I learned there is significantly more value in giving leaders a chance to work issues out privately, than blowing them up publicly. I am committing to finding leaders doing good things and practicing what it means to be supportive. It doesn’t mean that I like ALL the things they do or even most of the things. I don’t even have to really like them. However, it is a renewed commitment to emphasize in others what makes them good. I am choosing to spend more time feeding the GOOD things in others and less time punishing the wrong. In doing so, I hope to discover Christ’s definition of leadership… the servant kind (John 13). The definition that makes us all the leader’s leader.