Our religious leaders, our esteemed paragons of virtue, while attempting to lead us into the intimate worship of the Almighty, too often trip up struggling with illogical wishes to be God. To “follow” is to engage, to move toward, to pursue with commitment. To “worship” is to regard with great admiration and devotion, to honor, to revere. In short, to worship is to “honor;” to follow is to “engage.” These two words have powerful implications for leaders, religious or otherwise, and it’s uncannily easy for leaders to confuse these two words. Leadership is simply the result of following. If people follow you, you are leading, regardless of whether you have a leadership position or appointment. Leadership does not respect titles. On the other hand, if people worship you, you become nothing more than another useless deity with a small “d.” The adoration you receive may feel great, but in its intoxication you are deluded into weakness, poor productivity and demise. Leaders’ choices create paths toward others’ following or worshipping. Inspiring followers is the path to productivity; engendering worshippers is the route to disengaged adoration.

I got a call from Nick while I was about to travel home from some client work. I had some time before my flight, so we met for a quick lunch. Nick was the senior pastor of a mega church in one of the largest cities in the southern United States. His multimillion-dollar organization had thrived for years and people just adored him, but Nick was frustrated by the lack of ownership and engagement of the people in his church. It seemed to him that everyone was content with coming to hear him speak and “tipping” him by throwing some money in the collection plate. However, if he really wanted to get anything meaningful done in his organization, he had to hire staff to accomplish it. He used the words “confined” and “trapped” to describe how he felt when trying to get the thousands of people that attended his church to actually collaborate together to do something good in the world.

As I listened to Nick explain his situation and his feelings, it became clear to me that he had created the world in which he lived. He was no victim; he was the architect. He was also gripping tightly to his viewpoint of reality. He had not often embraced disagreement and divergent points of view, even on minor issues. He liked control; he had strong desires to be liked and feel important. When I asked about the things he feared most, rejection was the first thing to come out of his mouth. When I asked him to describe his ultimate definition of love, he talked about giving honor, respect and admiration to the one being loved. Within a few minutes, it was clear: Nick was a paragon locked in a paradox. He was addicted to receiving the glory, honor and power. While he was intending to direct all those sentiments toward God, he somehow unconsciously grabbed a bunch of it for himself. A deep sadness enveloped Nick as I explained that he had been manipulating his entire congregation to revere him as a god without realizing the disenchanting side effect of disengagement. While Nick thought he was pointing people to God, he was mostly pointing them to himself. Nick is an all too poignant example of religious leader paragons stuck in the paradox of confusing worshipping with following.

The reality is that most of us have deep unmet needs and desires for love and acceptance. As a human living with other humans, it usually just works out that way. Many leaders attain leadership positions to fill their deep needs to be regarded in a loving and accepting way, or at least in an honorable way; and, herein the problem begins. These unmet needs really get in the way when influencing people to actually engage, or follow. Thus, the current milieu is that many leaders are unconsciously striving for others to worship them instead of follow them. Compounding this, countless followers enable these leaders because they are looking for surrogate parents or gods they deem worthy to both worship and blame. All too often leaders are too willing to take all the blame in order to receive the elixir of adulation, and followers are all too willing to trade meaningful contribution in order to have someone to blame when things go wrong.

Submitting to the seductions of worship is a weak attempt to fill our unconscious dark-side voids of acceptance, significance, and competence. To flawlessly lead, leaders must first expose, discuss, and navigate their needs to be worshipped, and then embrace their own irrelevance in service of purpose. Once they address and work through these issues, they can powerfully engage their followers in the business of following, and guide followers back to the uncomfortably productive place of personal and mutual accountability. Flawless leadership requires great confidence and optimism, yet it also requires profound humility; humility that respects and honors all human life as equal. When leaders violate this sacred principle by accepting worship as a defense against maturely resolving vacuums of emotional health, they dehumanize others and themselves in the process.

Productivity in the worshipping organization dwindles for two reasons. First, that personal and mutual accountability has been exchanged for obeisance to the leaders, a trade that just naturally sucks the initiative and intensity out of completing meaningful work in a cooperative fashion. The second reason is the time displacement factor: there are only twenty-four hours in every day, and the total time and effort of collectively and collaboratively serving a worthy purpose is diminished by all that manipulative regarding and honoring of the leader.

Flawless leaders resolve to appropriately reject and redirect the unhealthy admiration of others because they serve a worthy purpose from a place of emotional wholeness. The emotionally weak and principally undisciplined accept, encourage, and sometimes force worship. The flawlessly strong, through connection to and understanding of their vulnerabilities, redirect the energies of undue admiration into cooperation, accountability, engagement and service. A flawless leader’s foundational strength is emotional health and maturity. Flawless leaders are simply self-healed flawed leaders, leaders who learned to heal from the wounds of past rejections, broken relationships, dishonorable betrayals, and voids of self-respect. To respect and honor all human life as equal is healthy; to worship one life as if it is above others is eventually destructive.

When is worship most seductive for you? What voids and vacuums does worship promise to fill for you? What shifts must occur to eliminate others worship of you and enhance their following?

Leaders often choose blindness to unseen matters. Consciously or unconsciously, that which is not task accomplishment is too often ignored. Years ago, when I was contemplating a key strategic move in my own organization, a trusted advisor asked me why I was hesitant to operate in the world of the unseen, “God operates there; why shouldn’t you?” This feedback helped to expose my unhelpful assumptions (which I was unconsciously choosing) that would have eventually reduce my firm’s value. Since then, I have found the same advice applies extensively to leadership. Leaders often avoid the unseen.

There are many layers of the human system in which we lead: the most blatant is the content – the “what” we are working on, the area where most leaders start and most get stuck. Some leaders multi-task and also work on the process, the “how” we are working together. This applies to both the content and the efficiency and effectiveness of the human system, the extent to which we optimally interrelate. Still, another layer of leadership is the level of paradigm, the basis for action and reaction, the “why” we do what we do and how we do it. Discerning, understanding, and leading paradigms are “career critical” for flawless leaders. Paradigms cannot be seen, and like the eighty percent of the iceberg that is beneath the surface, they comprise the vast majority of the arena for leadership. Paradigms give us clues to the various meanings and purposes that resonate in followers. Flawless leaders are not blind. They see the entire arena of leadership, including the normally unseen areas. Flawless leaders help to give sight to the blind by articulating the unseen, yet important. Flawless leaders do not allow task execution to eclipse their full leadership calling and responsibility.

In a large company’s lunch area I overheard two employees talking about an ambitious Vice President, Howard. One employee asked the other, “Do you know what the difference between Howard and God is?” The other, obviously in on the joke, replied, “Yes, God doesn’t think He’s Howard.” I instantly recognized Howard’s classic leader flaw: unknowingly trapping value through blind ambition. Our ambition to be significant and relevant can be our most limiting factor as a leader. In learning to reject blind ambition, flawless leaders embrace their irrelevance by submission to worthy purpose. Consequently they appear endearing, not arrogant. People are drawn to them instead of repelled away from them. And they engender full engagement instead of witty quips behind their backs in the break room. Flawless leaders are living proof that real leadership is not commerce and compromise but deep relationship and meaningful service.

There are unending ways in which we all limit our potential and trap the release of our value in the world, but leaders commonly default-choose failure like Howard did, by opting for self-protection wrapped in ambition. For leaders to avoid certain failure, the trick is they must do that which they strive so strenuously against: surrender. Leaders fail when they refuse to surrender to purpose, for what they haven’t learned is that surrender is more powerful than conquest. Conquest alone cannot bring significance; only contribution offers the possibility of significance. Conquest takes; contribution gives. Conquest destroys; contribution creates. There is always a lavish generosity resulting from a leader’s powerful surrender to meaningful purpose. The question with which flawless leaders must wrestle constantly is “what purpose is worthy of my surrender?”