“One’s friends are that part of the human race with which one can be human.” George Santayana

“He who wants to have friends must first show himself friendly.”

One of my biggest suggesting when a person asks me what they can do to help them become a better leader is to find yourself some genuine friends.  Through there are many aspects of friendship one of the biggest is that they allow you to be yourself.  In a society of constant change there is a tendency to try to make everyone change to be like you but a true friend values the differences they find in others and lets them be themselves.  To have friends you must allow them to be themselves and to be a friend you must do the same.

In your quest to be a better leader today I give you the following suggestions in the area of leadership:

1. Judge others only when you are forced to.  Many times we have to judge a friend is they are unapologetically choosing to live in sin but the majority of time judging is not necessary.  We do not like being judged all of the time and neither do others.  We express unconditional love.
2. Do not try to make everyone be like you.  Because we often feel that the way we live our life is the best way to live we often try to make people be like us.  God delights in verity and we should as well and let people be themselves.
3. Understand and adapt yourself to your different friends.  Because people are different it requires us to adapt when we are with them.  Some friends talk more than others.  Other friends spend the majority of the time listening.  Some are very aggressive and others are extremely passive.  Because we value friendship it requires us to adapt with different people.  Not to the point that we compromise who we are but to the point to be a true friend.
4. Be unashamedly hopeful with your friends.   One of the greatest factors of good friends is that they believe in you.  They have hope that you can succeed, change, grow and love.  No matter what happens they never give up hope.
5. Learn to be a listening ear for those that you consider your friends.   Chances are our closest friends are those who are good listeners.  It is a healthy part of life that a person processes where their life is headed.  To have someone that will listen to you while you are in that processing time and not judge you is priceless.

Start practicing a few of this action steps to be a genuine friend and you will find yourself being surrounded with genuine people.

Questions:

• Consider a few of your closest friends.  Why do you consider them dear friends?
• What are some of the things that they do that makes you say that they are good friends?
• Take a few days and practice the same quality that these friends have and journal how it changes their day.