How This Guide Is Different — Read This First (Q only)

The leader brief, in one line: get men to name where they are already leading — not where they wish they were, and not where they have a title. Most men in your circle badly undersell their own influence, and a man who doesn’t think he’s leading anyone doesn’t bother to lead them well.

A note on the chapter. We have never run Q2.2/Influence in this AO, and it is the exact chapter for this QOW because Maxwell’s line isn’t a nice quote here — it’s F3 doctrine. The QSource defines Influence as “Igniting A Palpable Desire For Movement,” and it defines Leadership as “Influencing Movement to Advantage.” Strip the title, the org chart, and the paycheck out of that definition and there’s nothing left but influence — which means the only real question tonight is who is moving because of you. Q2.2 also hands you Eisenhower in QSource language: the HIM “employs persuasion rather than compulsion,” because “Movement must be voluntary for it to result in a true Advantage.” And it hands you Maxwell’s knows-goes-shows in five words: the HIM Influences by word and deed.

The trap in this QOW. Two of them, actually, and they pull in opposite directions.

• Trap one — the denial. “I’m not really leading anybody.” This is the most common answer in a room of good men and it is always false. Do not argue with it. Ask a different question: who copies you? Somebody’s kid holds a fork the way he does. Somebody’s new guy at work learned how to handle a bad Monday by watching him. Influence is happening whether he’s managing it or not.
• Trap two — the résumé. The other half of the room will name the flattering arena — the team he runs, the board he sits on, the committee he chairs. Fine. Then ask the follow-up that matters: and who’s following you at home? A man who leads well everywhere except his own house has not succeeded at leadership; he has succeeded at being seen. Paul is blunt about the order of operations: “if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God’s church?” (1 Timothy 3:5, ESV).

Four rules for the Q running this:

1. Demand a name, not a category. “My team” is not an answer. “Marcus, my second-year guy” is. The whole second half of the QOW — one way to serve them better — is impossible without a specific human being attached to it.
2. Refuse the abstraction on the service half. “Be more encouraging” is not a way to serve someone. “Call Marcus Tuesday morning before his review and tell him what I actually think of his work” is. Every commitment gets a person, an action, and a day.
3. Make it one. One area, one person, one act. A man who lists four is buying himself an out — nobody can check four, and he knows it.
4. Go first and pick home. If you open with the arena where you look competent, every man after you will do the same and the hour is wasted. Name the person you lead who would be most surprised to be served by you this week.

The prompt, if you need to reset the room: If the person you lead most saw how you served them this week — would they know it?

The close: Leadership is not a title. It is a daily decision made toward the people in front of you. You are already leading someone. Go make one move this week that proves it. Make every man say his one move out loud, with a name and a day in it, before he leaves.

One caution on tone. This QOW can slide two ways. It can become a quiet bragging session about spans of control, or it can become a guilt pile about fatherhood. Neither one moves anybody. The target is the middle: sober recognition that you already have influence, followed by one small, specific, unglamorous act of service. Small is not the problem here. Vague is. Christ set the bar at a basin and a towel the night before the cross, and nobody has raised it since.

Facilitator Notes under each question tell you what you’re listening for, how to restart a stalled room, and where to push. You will not use all fifteen. Pick 6–8 and let them breathe.

Q1: Name one person — an actual name — who does something differently because of you. Not someone you supervise. Someone who imitates you.

Facilitator Notes:

• Listening for: a name, and specificity about the behavior. “My son” is halfway. “My son says ‘yes sir’ to adults because he heard me do it” is the answer.
• If the room stalls: flip it. “Forget influence. Who’s picked up one of your mannerisms, your phrases, your habits — good or bad?” Men will find it faster through the side door.
• Push deeper: “Did you teach him that on purpose, or did he just take it?” The unintentional transfer is the honest one.
• The setup: this name is the raw material for the entire hour. Every man should leave Q1 holding a person, not a concept.

Answer: Start with a name because leadership without a name attached is a theory, and theories don’t get served. The QSource is blunt that Influence happens “primarily through example, by the way he talks and the things he does” — which means you are transmitting whether or not you have signed up to transmit. Jesus stated the mechanism plainly: “A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone when he is fully trained will be like his teacher” (Luke 6:40, ESV). Not will know what his teacher said — will be like him. Paul was confident enough in his own life to make it an instruction: “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ” (1 Corinthians 11:1, ESV), and the writer of Hebrews tells a congregation to look at their leaders and “consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith” (Hebrews 13:7, ESV). The outcome of your way of life is the curriculum. The words are the syllabus nobody reads. Concrete step: write the name down on paper right now, at the top of a blank page. Everything else tonight goes underneath it.

Why This Matters: You can’t serve a category. The men who leave here with “I should be a better leader” will do nothing, and the men who leave here with a name will do something by Wednesday. Get the name on the table in the first ten minutes or the rest of the hour has nowhere to land.

Q2: Where are you leading without a title? Name the arena — and be honest about which arena you named first.

Facilitator Notes:

• Listening for: the gap between where a man has authority and where he has influence. They’re rarely the same place.
• Common arenas once the room warms up: the crew he’s the informal foreman of, the group text he sets the tone in, the sideline he coaches from, the family he sets the temperature in, the AO he shows up to.
• Push deeper: “You named work. Who’s following you at home?” Ask it kindly and don’t let it slide.
• Watch for: the man who names the arena where he looks best. The one he skipped is usually the one that matters.

Answer: Titles are given by an organization; influence is granted by people, one at a time, and only the second one moves anybody. The QSource calls the man who leads without waiting for permission a Sua Sponte Leader — a man who has been freed to lead of his own accord — and notes that the most influential men it describes were marked by “an apparent unwillingness to go along to get along.” That means the arena where you lead most is usually the one nobody assigned you. It’s also worth noticing which arena came out of your mouth first, because men default to the one with a scoreboard. Scripture puts the unglamorous arena first on purpose: a man is qualified to lead God’s people only if “he must manage his own household well” (1 Timothy 3:4, ESV), and the instruction to fathers is relentlessly domestic — teach “when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise” (Deuteronomy 6:7, ESV). Concrete step: name the arena you didn’t say out loud first, and put that one under the name you wrote in Q1.

Why This Matters: Every man here is competent somewhere, and competence is a comfortable place to hide. The arena where you feel least effective is almost always the arena where your influence is highest and least managed. That’s not an accident — it’s where you stopped performing.

Q3: Reagan said the greatest leader isn’t the one who does the greatest things, but the one who gets the people to do them. When did someone in your orbit do something great — and what was your actual role in it?

Facilitator Notes:

• Listening for: men who can’t tell the story without making themselves the subject. That’s the diagnostic.
• If the room stalls: “Think of a time you watched somebody do something you couldn’t have done. Were you in the room? Did you push them into it?”
• Push deeper: “Did you tell anybody it was you? Did you need to?”
• Good follow-up: “What did it cost you to let him have it?”

Answer: Reagan’s distinction separates the producer from the multiplier, and most high-capacity men are stuck being producers because producing is faster and the credit is cleaner. The QSource identifies this as the difference between having IMPACT yourself and building an LDP — a process by which a group makes new leaders — and it’s the whole reason F3 measures a leader by what happens after he leaves. Paul’s succession plan was four generations deep in one sentence: “what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also” (2 Timothy 2:2, ESV). Paul’s metric was not what he built; it was who could build without him. And John the Baptist, at the peak of his own following, said the thing almost no leader can say: “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30, ESV). Concrete step: this week, hand one task you’re good at to someone who isn’t good at it yet, and stay out of it long enough for him to do it badly once.

Why This Matters: A man who does the greatest things gets a good decade. A man who gets people to do the greatest things gets a legacy. The bottleneck in almost every arena in this room is a competent man who hasn’t figured out that his competence is now the ceiling.

Q4: If the people you lead described your leadership in one sentence — to someone you’d never meet — what would they say? And would you like it?

Facilitator Notes:

• Lighter door, same room. Good if Q1–Q3 landed heavy.
• Listening for: the gap between intention and reception. Men lead from their intentions and get judged on their impact.
• If nobody bites: make it concrete — “What’s the word your kids would use? Not the word you’d want. The word they’d use.”
• Push deeper: “Who could actually tell you the answer, and when did you last ask?”

Answer: Every man leads out of his intentions and is experienced through his behavior, and the distance between those two is invisible to him and obvious to everyone else. The QSource’s word for closing that gap is Candor — “graciously telling the hard truth and demanding to hear it from others” — and note the second half, because most men here are far better at delivering candor than at requisitioning it. The Proverbs promise is aimed at exactly this reception gap: “The righteous who walks in his integrity — blessed are his children after him!” (Proverbs 20:7, ESV). Note it says walks, not intends. And Jesus aims the visibility of a leader’s life outward rather than inward: “let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 5:16, ESV). The point of being watched is not that you look good. It’s that they see something worth following past you. Concrete step: ask one person you lead, this week, “what’s one thing I do that makes it harder for you?” Then say nothing but thank you.

Why This Matters: You already have a reputation as a leader. It was assigned without your input and it’s being used to decide whether people bring you problems or hide them. You can’t manage what you refuse to hear, and nobody volunteers it.

Q5: The QSource says a HIM influences by word and deed. Which of those two is carrying the load for you right now — and which one is quietly undermining the other?

Facilitator Notes:

• Listening for: men who lead almost entirely by output (“I just work hard and hope they notice”) and men who lead almost entirely by talk (“I’ve told him a hundred times”).
• If the room stalls: give them the two failure modes by name. “Some of us are silent examples nobody can read. Some of us are great speeches nobody believes. Which are you?”
• Push deeper: “What has your deed taught somebody that your word would never have said out loud?”
• Watch for: the man who says both are fine. Ask him what his M would say.

Answer: Maxwell’s three-part definition — knows the way, goes the way, shows the way — is the QSource’s word-and-deed in a different order, and almost every man is strong in one leg and limping on another. The silent worker assumes his example speaks; it doesn’t, or at least not with any precision, because an example without articulation can be misread for years and usually is. The talker assumes his instruction lands; it doesn’t, because the people around him are running the tape of his behavior against his sentences and believing the tape. The QSource says the influential men it studied had words that “were clear and uncompromising” and deeds that “were unselfish” — both, together, from the same man. John writes the test: “let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth” (1 John 3:18, ESV), and Paul, without false modesty, puts both halves in one line: “What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me — practice these things” (Philippians 4:9, ESV). Heard and seen. He knew both channels were transmitting. Concrete step: pick your weak leg. If you’re all deed, say one thing out loud this week that you’ve only been demonstrating. If you’re all word, do one thing this week that you’ve only been recommending.

Why This Matters: The people you lead are running a constant audit between what you say and what you do, and they resolve every discrepancy in favor of what you do. Whichever leg you’re limping on is the leg they’re using to decide whether you’re worth following.

Q6: Eisenhower said you don’t lead by hitting people over the head — that’s assault, not leadership. Where have you used pressure lately because persuasion was going to take too long?

Facilitator Notes:

• Listening for: the honest admissions — the raised voice at home, the deadline used as a club, the guilt trip, the silent treatment, the “because I said so.”
• If nobody bites: narrow it. “Not your worst moment. Your most efficient one. When did you get compliance instead of buy-in and take the win?”
• Push deeper: “What did it cost you the next day? Did he move because he wanted to or because you made it more painful not to?”
• Don’t skip: this one implicates every father and every boss in the room, which makes it safe to make everyone answer.

Answer: Compulsion is faster than persuasion and that’s exactly why men reach for it — the results arrive today and the bill arrives later. The QSource is unusually direct here: the HIM “will resist that temptation because he knows that it will not work. He has learned… that Movement must be voluntary for it to result in a true Advantage.” Force produces motion, not movement; the man complies and stops the second the pressure lifts. Peter uses the sharpest available language for shepherds who lead this way: “not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock” (1 Peter 5:3, ESV), and the exercise of oversight is to be “not under compulsion, but willingly” (1 Peter 5:2, ESV) — free on both ends of the relationship. Ezekiel’s indictment of Israel’s shepherds ends with the phrase that ought to stop a hard-driving man cold: “with force and harshness you have ruled them” (Ezekiel 34:4, ESV). Effective, possibly. Virtuous, no. Concrete step: identify the one relationship where you’ve been getting compliance instead of buy-in, and this week ask for what you want once, plainly, and then leave the choice with him.

Why This Matters: Pressure works right up until the person can leave — and then he leaves, and he takes with him every good thing you might have built. Your kids get to choose whether they call you at thirty. Your best people get to choose whether they stay. You are spending your leverage now on outcomes you’ll want back later.

Q7: Maxwell said people buy into the leader before they buy into the vision. What is it about you, specifically, that makes it easy — or hard — for people to buy in?

Facilitator Notes:

• Listening for: self-awareness without self-flagellation. You want an honest inventory, not a confession.
• If the room stalls: split it — “Give me one thing that makes you easy to follow, and one thing that makes you hard to follow. Everybody’s got both.”
• Push deeper: “Is the hard thing a skill problem or a character problem? Those get very different fixes.”
• Great follow-up for a strong room: “Whose buy-in have you lost, and do you know when you lost it?”

Answer: People do not evaluate your vision on its merits; they evaluate you and then decide how seriously to take your vision, which is why a great plan from an unreliable man goes nowhere and an ordinary plan from a trusted one moves a whole group. The QSource makes this the fault line between the two kinds of leader: “Effectiveness concerns actions performed, while Virtue is about character possessed,” and it lists the five Leadership Virtues — Candor, Commitment, Consistency, Contentment, Courage — as the things that make a man followable rather than merely capable. Its observation about influential men is that they “were not compromised men… They spoke from the heart because their hearts were pure.” Paul’s own leadership was built on giving people access to him, not just to his message: “we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us” (1 Thessalonians 2:8, ESV). And he kept the spotlight off himself while doing it: “what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake” (2 Corinthians 4:5, ESV). Concrete step: name the one inconsistency that costs you the most credibility — the promise you routinely break, the mood people brace for — and fix that single thing for thirty days.

Why This Matters: You have been trying to sell the vision. Nobody’s buying the vision because they haven’t finished deciding about you. Fix the thing that makes you hard to follow and half the persuasion problems in your arena disappear without a single additional conversation.

Q8: Where are you currently asking someone to move in a direction you are not moving yourself?

Facilitator Notes:

• Listening for: the specific hypocrisy, named without theatrics. Every man has one.
• If nobody bites, go first. Name yours. The room will match your altitude and not exceed it.
• Common answers: phones at the table, the temper, the gym, the drinking, the prayer life he tells his kids to have, the marriage he advises other men about.
• Push deeper: “Does he know? Kids always know. What does he do with the information?”

Answer: Maxwell’s middle term — goes the way — sits between knowing and showing because it’s the one that can’t be faked and the one men skip. The QSource’s picture of Influence is a dam holding back potential energy, and the HIM’s job is to “unblock the dam and let the river flow” in another man; but a leader who isn’t moving himself is not a floodgate, he’s a wall with a sign on it. Nobody was ever persuaded into motion by a stationary man. Jesus reserved his hardest words not for failure but for exactly this gap: “they preach, but do not practice” (Matthew 23:3, ESV), and James warns those who take the teaching role that “we who teach will be judged with greater strictness” (James 3:1, ESV) — the standard rises with the influence, not with the title. Paul’s phrasing for keeping himself inside his own instruction is physical: “I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified” (1 Corinthians 9:27, ESV). Concrete step: pick the one thing you’re asking of someone else and start doing it this week — visibly, where he can see it — before you ask him again.

Why This Matters: The gap between what you require and what you practice is the exact size of the discount applied to everything else you say. You don’t get to choose whether they notice. You only get to choose how long it stays true.

Q9: The QSource says Influence is igniting a palpable desire for movement — the other man still chooses. Who in your orbit is stuck behind a dam right now, and what would it take to open the floodgate instead of pushing him through it?

Facilitator Notes:

• Listening for: a specific stuck man — the buddy in a dead job, the son who won’t try out, the guy at work who’s quit without resigning.
• If the room stalls: define it for them. “Stuck isn’t lazy. Stuck is a man with real potential who has no idea how to release it.”
• Push deeper: “Has anything you’ve said to him worked? What have you never tried — going first, in front of him?”
• Watch for: men who want a script. There isn’t one. The QSource is explicit that the methods vary man to man; the means don’t.

Answer: The QSource image here is worth carrying out of the room: potential energy is water impounded behind a dam — real, enormous, and completely useless until something opens the gate. “Through Influence, the HIM helps people release their deepest desires for action. He unblocks the dam to let the river flow.” Notice what that is not: it isn’t pumping water uphill, and it isn’t dynamiting the dam. You are not the source of another man’s movement. You’re the reason he finally believes his own is possible. The QSource distinguishes the man who can’t move — broken, needing help before challenge — from the man who won’t, who is clinging to a Status Quo he already knows is inferior; the second man doesn’t need information, he needs somebody to go first in front of him. Paul’s instruction covers both: “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2, ESV) for the man who can’t, and “through love serve one another” (Galatians 5:13, ESV) for the man who won’t. Concrete step: this week, invite the stuck man into something you’re already doing rather than advising him about something he isn’t. An invitation outperforms a lecture roughly every time.

Why This Matters: Most men try to lead by supplying information to people who already have it. The stuck man in your life knows exactly what he should do. What he doesn’t have is a live example standing close enough to make it look survivable.

Q10: Missionality says your Daffodil is the people-category you were born to serve. Who is yours — and does your calendar agree with your answer?

Facilitator Notes:

• Listening for: the honest mismatch. Almost every man will name one group and describe a week spent on another.
• If the room stalls: “Whose problems do you find yourself thinking about while driving? That’s your Daffodil, whether you picked it or not.”
• Push deeper: “What are you doing outside your D2X (the intersection between your dolphin – your unique gift – and your daffodil – the people you were born to serve) that’s stealing the hours your Daffodil needed?”
• Useful caution: not everything outside the D2X is a mistake. The QSource calls the necessary exceptions Diaper Changers — jobs nobody is built for that still have to get done. Don’t let a man use that as a blanket excuse.

Answer: The QSource splits a man’s High Impact Zone into his Dolphin — the thing he does better than he does anything else — and his Daffodil, “the people-category that a man is born to Serve,” with his D2X sitting where the two intersect. That framework answers the first half of tonight’s QOW with unusual precision: the area where you’re leading is not the area with your title on it, it’s the place where what you’re good at meets who you’re built to serve. Your Daffodil is not who you like; it’s who you were built to serve. It also explains a specific kind of exhaustion in this room — the man serving faithfully far outside his D2X, doing acceptable work at high cost while, in the QSource’s phrase, boxing out the man who was built for it. Scripture calls this stewardship rather than ambition: “it is required of stewards that they be found faithful” (1 Corinthians 4:2, ESV) — faithful with what you were handed, not with everything that gets asked of you. Peter frames the gift as given for others: “As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace” (1 Peter 4:10, ESV). Concrete step: look at last week’s actual calendar and mark the hours that went to your Daffodil. If the number embarrasses you, move one recurring commitment before Friday.

Why This Matters: Serving people better is usually not a motivation problem. It’s a placement problem. A man spread across four groups he wasn’t built for has nothing left for the one group that needed him, and he’ll call that faithfulness right up until something breaks.

Q11: The QSource separates the Effective Leader — actions performed — from the Virtuous Leader — character possessed. Which one are you strongest in, and which one are the people in your charge actually feeling?

Facilitator Notes:

• Listening for: men who realize they’re being graded on results by their boss and on character by their family — and are passing one exam.
• If the room stalls: use the QSource’s own examples. An effective leader without virtue can move people to disadvantage just as easily as advantage; a virtuous man without competence produces inertia and calls it patience.
• Push deeper: “Which one is easier for you to fake for a month? That’s your weak side.”
• Don’t let it get abstract: bring it back to the name from Q1. “Which one is he getting from you?”

Answer: The QSource’s central warning in Lead Right is that we grade leaders as “good” or “bad” when the real axes are competence and character, and they are independent. An effective man without virtue will move people — sometimes straight off a cliff — and a virtuous man without skill will hold a group in place for years and call the stagnation integrity. Both fail the people under them; they just fail differently. Nehemiah is the rare biblical portrait of both at once: he rebuilt a wall in fifty-two days, and he refused the governor’s food allowance because “the fear of God” wouldn’t let him lay heavy burdens on people he was leading (Nehemiah 5:15, ESV), then worked the wall himself (5:16). Christ’s own description of leadership puts character first and never sacrifices competence: “whoever would be great among you must be your servant” (Matthew 20:26, ESV). Servant is the job description, not the entry-level position. Concrete step: ask the man you named in Q1 which one he’d say he gets more of from you — results or care — and don’t defend the answer.

Why This Matters: Most men are being promoted for effectiveness and remembered for virtue. The organization will keep rewarding the half you’re already good at, which means the other half is on you and nobody is going to schedule it.

Q12: Sinek says leadership is taking care of those in your charge. Name one person in your charge whose actual condition — not their output, their condition — you could not describe right now.

Facilitator Notes:

• Listening for: the flinch. Most men can report on everyone’s performance and no one’s state.
• If the room stalls: make it concrete. “Do you know what he’s worried about? Do you know how he slept? Do you know what happened at his house last week?”
• Push deeper: “When did you last ask him a question you didn’t already know the answer to?”
• Watch for: men who confuse frequency of contact with knowledge of condition. You can talk to somebody daily for a year and know nothing.

Answer: Sinek’s line is a modern restatement of the oldest leadership instruction in Scripture, and the Hebrew image is agricultural and unromantic: “Know well the condition of your flocks, and give attention to your herds” (Proverbs 27:23, ESV). Know well. Not check on. Not manage. Know. Ezekiel’s charge against Israel’s shepherds is a list of conditions they failed to notice — “the weak you have not strengthened, the sick you have not healed, the injured you have not bound up, the strayed you have not brought back, the lost you have not sought” (Ezekiel 34:4, ESV) — and every one of those requires knowing something about a specific person before you can act on it. Peter tells elders to “shepherd the flock of God that is among you” (1 Peter 5:2, ESV); the phrase among you is doing real work, because proximity is a prerequisite for care, and most of us have optimized our lives to lead people from a distance. Concrete step: pick the person whose condition you couldn’t describe and ask him one real question this week, then be quiet for a full thirty seconds after he answers.

Why This Matters: You have detailed data on everyone’s performance and almost none on their state, and the state is what’s driving the performance. The man who knows his people’s condition sees the problem three weeks earlier than the man reading the scoreboard — and by then it’s still fixable.

Q13: The night before he died, Jesus washed feet. What’s the foot-washing task in your arena — the job beneath your position that you’ve quietly decided is beneath you?

Facilitator Notes:

• Listening for: the specific unglamorous task. The dishes, the early setup, the apology, the paperwork, the ride to practice, the phone call he’s been avoiding because it’s uncomfortable.
• If the room stalls: “What’s the thing in your house or at work that gets done by whoever cracks first — and it’s never you?”
• Push deeper: “Who’s been doing it instead of you, and have you ever thanked them for it?”
• Go first here. Name yours honestly. If you pick something noble, the room will pick something noble and nothing will change.

Answer: John records that Jesus washed feet knowing “that the Father had given all things into his hands” (John 13:3, ESV) — the towel came out of full authority, not the absence of it, which destroys the idea that servanthood is what you do before you get promoted. Position is the prerequisite for foot-washing, not the exemption from it. Then he named the transaction explicitly: “If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example” (John 13:14–15, ESV). Paul traces the same descent in Philippians — Christ “did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant” (Philippians 2:6–7, ESV) — and Mark gives the summary sentence that is our key verse tonight: “For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45, ESV). The QSource has a plainer word for this same category — the Diaper Changer, the task that is in nobody’s D2X and still has to be done by somebody. Concrete step: do the foot-washing task this week without announcing it, and without the sigh that makes sure everyone knows you did it.

Why This Matters: The people you lead are not evaluating your title, they’re watching where your hands go when something unpleasant needs doing. One unannounced act of low-status work will buy you more credibility than a year of good intentions — which is why it can’t be done for the credibility.

Q14: Paul says to count others more significant and look to their interests, not just your own. Name one interest of the person you lead that is genuinely competing with yours right now — and be honest about how you’ve been resolving that.

Facilitator Notes:

• Listening for: real conflicts, not fake ones. His schedule versus yours. His development versus your convenience. His need to be heard versus your need to be finished.
• If nobody bites: offer examples — the promotion that would cost you your best guy, the sport your kid loves that you find boring, the conversation your wife needs at the exact hour you’re spent.
• Push deeper: “Who’s been winning those, and how long has the streak been running?”
• Watch for: martyrdom. The QSource is careful here — unselfish deeds are not a “flinty martyrdom” performed for a reward. If a man’s answer is a highlight reel of his own sacrifice, redirect him.

Answer: Philippians 2 is more demanding than it first sounds because it doesn’t say ignore your interests: “Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others” (Philippians 2:4, ESV) — both stay on the table, and you’re now responsible for a set of interests that aren’t yours. The preceding verse names the enemy precisely: “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves” (Philippians 2:3, ESV). Selfish ambition rarely looks like villainy in this room; it looks like efficiency. The QSource describes influential men whose “deeds evinced a consistent and disciplined desire to subordinate their own will to the Group’s Advantage” — disciplined, meaning it was a repeated decision and not a personality trait. Paul’s version of the cost is unsentimental: “I will most gladly spend and be spent for your souls” (2 Corinthians 12:15, ESV), and Romans gives the competitive framing men understand: “Outdo one another in showing honor” (Romans 12:10, ESV). Concrete step: take the one competing interest you named and resolve it his way once this week — deliberately, not as a favor you’ll mention later.

Why This Matters: Nobody notices the ten times you won the quiet conflict. They notice the one time you didn’t, and they remember it for twenty years. What you’ll be remembered for teaching is almost never the thing you set out to teach — it’s what you did the day your interests and theirs collided.

Q15: One area. One person by name. One way you will serve him better before next Friday. Out loud.

Facilitator Notes:

• This is the close. Every man answers. No passes, no jokes, go around the circle.
• Enforce the format: the arena, the name, the specific act, and the day. Four parts. Missing any part, send it back.
• Enforce the “one”: a man who names three has named zero. Make him choose — the choosing is the discipline.
• Write them all down. Read them back before you pray, put a reminder in your phone for two weeks out, and actually ask.

Example answers — what real sounds like:

• Home: “Thursday I’m taking my oldest to breakfast before school, phone in the truck, and I’m asking him what he’s worried about instead of telling him what I think.” / “I’m apologizing to my wife for the thing in March that I’ve been pretending we both forgot.”
• Work: “Marcus gets twenty minutes Tuesday morning where I tell him exactly what I think of his work — the good parts first, and I’ve never said the good parts out loud.”
• Team / crew: “I’m doing the Saturday setup myself this week and I’m not telling anybody I did it.”
• Friendship: “I’m calling Dave — not texting — and asking how he’s actually doing since his dad died, and I’m not filling the silence.”
• AO: “I’m asking the FNG to grab coffee, one on one, and I’m doing the listening.”

The test: a real answer contains a name, an action, and a day, and the person on the receiving end would be able to tell it happened without being told it was intentional. Push on these:

• “Be more present” → With whom, doing what, on what day?
• “Serve my team better” → Which person, and what does he get that he didn’t have before?
• “Communicate more” → Say what, to whom, out loud, by when?
• “Be a better dad” → Which kid, and what would he notice by Sunday?

Watch for the man who names the easy person. He’s protecting the hard one. Ask directly: “Who’s the person you decided not to name?”

Answer: Leadership is not a title and it is not a season — it is a daily decision made toward the people in front of you, which is why it can be started this week by any man here regardless of his position. You are already leading someone; that was settled before you walked in. The only open question is whether the influence you’re already spending gets aimed on purpose. Jesus set the standard in a sentence that has never been improved on: “whoever would be first among you must be your slave, even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve” (Matthew 20:27–28, ESV). And the scale of the move doesn’t matter as much as men think — “One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much” (Luke 16:10, ESV). A twenty-minute conversation on a Tuesday is not a small version of leadership. It is the whole thing, at actual size. Concrete step: say your arena, your name, your act, and your day out loud right now, and give the man next to you permission to ask you about it in two weeks.

Why This Matters: Every man here will walk out into a week that has already scheduled itself. Nothing out there will remind you to serve the person you just named. What survives contact with Monday is the sentence you said in front of men who wrote it down and intend to ask.

“F3 is not a religious organization but we do ask that you believe in something higher than yourself. I am a Christian, so I will lead us out in a Christian reflection and prayer.”

Closing Prayer

Father, thank you for the men and women you’ve entrusted to each of us — and for putting their names in front of us today. Thank you that you didn’t wait for us to be worth following before you served us — Christ took the towel to wash feet and then the cross while we were still arguing about who was greatest. Forgive us for the times we raised our voice because it was faster than making our case. Give each man the humility to name one person and the discipline to make one move before next Friday. Let the ones closest to us feel it first. In the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.