At the end of the day, leadership is all about stewardship. Each of us has a divine design — the God-ordained purpose for our lives. Realizing this purpose as a leader requires proper stewardship. In short, your divine design is God’s gift to you, and how you steward your life is your gift to God.

The tools for stewarding your life are known as disciplines. A discipline is any systematic management of different spheres of your life to prepare and position you for your divine design.

The most successful leaders in the world don’t try to accomplish everything; instead, they discipline themselves to steward the right things. To achieve true success in leadership, we must learn when to say “yes,” and when to say “no.”

This article series will outline the disciplines for managing three key areas of your life: self, others and calling.

Stewardship of these areas is essential for reaching next-level leadership. Learning to manage them well can help prepare and position you for your divine design!

Stewardship of Self

You can’t lead out of what you don’t have. Leaders who project well-roundedness yet neglect inward flaws will inevitably slip up. Without self-stewardship, it’s a matter of time until you run out of steam.

Authentic leadership stems from healthy stewardship of self. In fact, leadership always starts with you. The first person you must be able to lead is yourself. This involves taking care of your body, mind, soul and relationships.

The Discipline of Self-Management

Years ago, my doctor startled me with this news: “You have diabetes, and it’s bad.”

I still remember the way those words rippled through my mind. High blood sugar can cause heart attack, stroke, vision problems, nerve damage, kidney problems and other serious issues.

Basically, I was a ticking time bomb! I had two choices: either continue being a one-dimensional leader, or introduce self-management into areas that I was ignoring. I needed to win the battle against my own bad habits. I needed to get out of a dangerous cycle that could eventually kill me.

This realization transformed more than my diet and workout routine. It challenged me to approach my time, talents, resources, influence, leadership and family through a disciplined lifestyle.

If any part of our self-management is out of sync, it can have drastic consequences on other aspects of our lives. Life balance is key to well-rounded, enduring and effective leadership.

The Discipline of Self-Awareness

Benjamin Franklin once said, “Experience is the best teacher.”

Yet you can’t learn anything from an experience unless you are aware. Awareness comes by disciplining ourselves to reflect on our experiences — the good and bad, the triumphs and trials, the physical and the spiritual.

A well-prepared leader develops new growth before success runs out.

Ask yourself three self-awareness questions when reflecting on an experience:

• How challenging was the experience?
• What was the impact of the experience on people around me?
• What did I learn from this experience?

The answers to these questions will give you awareness of your most important asset as a leader: your giftings. Recognizing the gifts you have, and working within your gifts, allows you and those you lead to work together.

When we work outside of our gifting, at least two people suffer: you and the person who really should be doing that task. As a leader, you have the responsibility to take advantage of your gifts and to empower those you lead to use theirs as well.

The Discipline of Self-Preparedness

The future always favors those who are prepared. I like the story of a young man who once approached a logging crew foreman and asked for a job.

“Let’s see you chop down this tree,” replied the foreman. The young man stepped forward and took down a large tree. Impressed, the foreman said, “You can start on Monday.”

The young man reported to work faithfully each day, but on Thursday afternoon the foreman went to the young man and said, “You can pick up your paycheck on the way out today.”

The young man was surprised and asked, “Don’t we get paid on Friday?”

“Yes, we do,” replied the foreman. “But I’m letting you go because you’ve fallen behind. Our productivity charts show that you’ve dropped from first place on Monday to last place today.”

“I’m the hardest worker here!” objected the young man. “I arrive first, leave last and have even worked through my breaks!”

The foreman could see the young man’s sincerity. He hesitated for a moment and asked, “Have you been sharpening your ax?”

The young man stood quietly and said, “No, sir. I’ve been working too hard to take time for that.”

As a leader, you must take time to sharpen your ax. You must continually hone your skills, steward your gifts, expand your thinking, increase your resources, empower your team and search for new trends to avoid plateauing.

Once you plateau, decline is nearby. A well-prepared leader develops new growth before success runs out.

Learning how to steward yourself through the disciplines of self-awareness, self-management and self-preparedness provides the foundation for leadership. Discovering or reinforcing these ideas is the beginning of reaching your next level as a leader. After all, leadership always starts with you.