Self Eval 6: Is Your Bucket Full?

Leadership Straight from Bill Hybels Self Evaluation Question 6: Is Your Bucket Full? When are you at your best as a leader? When your bucket is full. Here is what I mean by this. When your bucket is full I mean that God's love has filled up your heart. You and your family members are in great relationship with each other so you are filling up each other's hearts. Your staff is unified so that is going good. You are on your exercise program. You have recently gotten back from vacation and you are refreshed. What kind of decisions do you make when your bucket is full? You make fantastic decisions. You stay creative. Even if things do not go your way, you can still trust God. Wonderful things happen when you keep that bucket full. Let me ask you another question. What are you like when your bucket is empty? What are you like when you are exhausted? Far from God? Off your exercise and diet program? Staff is mad at you. Your dog runs away because it is afraid of you. What are you like when you are down here? This is not you at your best. I can walk into meetings sometimes around Willow and I take a quick inventory of who is around the circle. And I think, "Those three look as if they are in good shape today. Ooh, Fred is on empty. He is going to be trouble. Fred is going to swear. I am afraid of Fred." You can tell that Fred is on empty. People will tell me... I am not proud of this... but sometimes people, who work very closely with me, will say, "You are running on empty. Aren't you Bill?" I say, "Oh, I tried so hard to hide that from you." They say, "You really cannot hide that. We know you so well. You are easily irritated. You jump to conclusions instead of taking a long time to sort stuff out. You are impatient with other people's performance. You want to get stuff done. You are harder on us when your bucket is empty." So they will plead with me, "Will you please go on vacation? Can you double your vacation?" I know it is not my wife, but if she were here she would probably say the same thing. This is what I teach leaders all over the world. It is your responsibility to keep your bucket full. It is your responsibility to do this. Remember one time King David in the Old Testament. His army was attacked. They dragged away his wife and kids. The people wanted a mutiny on him. It was one of the worst days in his life. It says in 1 Samuel 30 that David was on empty. He encouraged himself in God. He said, "I had better get myself back up to this level or I am going to do something stupid." He encouraged himself in God. He got himself filled back up. Then he made some really good military decisions. He got all the families back together. What are the streams of replenishment? What are the streams of positive energy that you need to pour into your life on a consistent basis so that your bucket stays full and so that you can lead a long time? This is a good exercise for you to do sometime later today or when you get with your team. Ask yourself, "What do I need to pour into my life? God, family, recreation, good reading, adventurous experiences. What are all of these streams for me?" It will look different on your team. What are all of these streams that I need to pour into my life to keep myself full so that I am my best self in making my best decisions.