Leading When You’d Rather Hide: Influence You Can’t Escape

Trying to hide from leadership only proves how much influence you already carry. We dive into the uncomfortable truth that people follow your life more than your words, and we unpack what that means for parents, coaches, creators, managers, and anyone whose daily choices set the tone for others. Titles don’t make leaders—habits do. From how you show up in tension to how you own mistakes, your quiet patterns are already shaping culture at home, at work, and online.

We lay out a practical framework for leading with purpose: clarity of vision that cuts through drift, consistency of character that builds safety and speed, courageous vulnerability that invites real trust, and committed service that aligns power to the common good. Along the way, we challenge the myth of neutrality—silence reads like consent—and explore the river vs. reservoir metaphor to reveal how motion nourishes people while stagnation drains them. If you’ve ever felt watched, you are; and that’s not a threat, it’s an invitation to steward your influence with integrity.

Grounded in timeless wisdom and real-life examples, we show how wise counsel keeps leaders humble and effective, why earned trust outlasts charisma, and how small practices—keeping promises, sharing credit, telling the truth faster—compound into a reputation you can’t buy. Whether you lead a team, a classroom, a family, or an audience, this conversation offers a clear path from hiding to healthy impact.

If this resonates, tap follow, share it with a friend who’s ready to step up, and leave a 5-star review so more purpose-driven leaders can find the TCMMY Inspiration Station. Then tell us: which principle will you put into practice this week?

Chapters

• 0:37 Welcome & Intent for Today
• 0:49 The Problem: Leaders Avoiding Leadership
• 1:13 You Can’t Escape Influence
• 3:10 Leadership Beyond Titles and Offices
• 4:38 Someone’s Always Watching Your Life
• 5:54 How You Lead vs. If You Lead
• 6:21 Scriptural Lens on Responsibility
• 7:53 Stewardship: What Are You Entrusted With?
• 9:27 Silence Isn’t Neutral
• 11:29 Rivers: Flow or Stagnate
• 13:35 Why Are People Dry Around You?
• 14:44 Four Principles of Purposeful Leadership
• 16:55 Clarity and Consistency in Practice

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:37

Welcome back to They Call Me Mr. You and the Inspiration Station. Thank you again for making us a part of your week. We are happy and grateful and blessed to be back with you today. You know, one of the things that I've been noticing that I want to get into is the idea of leaders who try to avoid leading. It's a strange phenomenon, but I want to get into it today. So we're going to spend the entire episode kind of discussing this. I even posted a newsletter on our LinkedIn platform regarding this several days ago. It's crazy to me. And what I hope at the end of this that you get from it is that not only are you a leader, but you're valuable to your community. You have something of worth to give to your community. Doesn't matter how your community makes you feel every day. It doesn't matter if your community offends you sometimes, you still are a valuable asset to your community. I want you to get that if you're gonna get anything else from this episode today. But I'm pretty positive you get much more than that. Have you ever tried to hide from influence, leadership, or responsibility, and you found that it follows you no matter where you went? I mean, come on, you can try your best, but the reality is you're not escaping this. You just can't avoid being a leader. It is a God-given responsibility, it's in your DNA. Even if you don't even serve or believe in God, even if the Bible is a book you've never read, that leadership inside of you is of a divine DNA, if you will. Whether you're a parent, a coach, a content creator of some sort, a team member in an organization, or you just walk them through life trying to figure this thing out. Your character, the daily habits that you employ, your disciplines, the decisions that you make always and inevitably influence other people. There's a quote that someone said, I'm not even sure who it's attributed to, but it said that people don't follow your words, they follow your life. I'm gonna say that again for those in the back. I don't want you to miss that. People don't follow your words, they follow your life. Leadership isn't about some kind of title or formal role or position. I know people think that. We've been trained to think that the world around us teaches us that horrible message. But leadership is not about that because if you don't have your name on the door, or if your cubicle doesn't have a nameplate on it, you may think you're not a leader because your organization hasn't acknowledged you as such. But leadership is way more than a cubicle and a nameplate, or a name on the door, or a corner office. It's relational, it's behavioral. Even in your silence, your presence speaks leadership. Even in your posture, in the most uncomfortable situation, it speaks leadership. People don't follow your words, they follow your life. I found this out real early in my career. Had somebody tell me that they were watching me. I immediately thought about that 80s, I think it was in the 80s, that Rockwell song. Always feel like somebody's watching me. They said they were watching me. I'm like, watching me? What kind of creeper nonsense is this? But what I learned from that was that I can't just try to stand on the radar and hope nobody pays no attention to me. No matter what I was saying or doing, I was being watched. And I really believe this to be a concept that is true for all of us every single day, and a great cautionary tale for us. Somebody's always watching you. I know you think that your life may not matter, you may think it's not that important, but somebody is always, I mean, always watching you. And it could just be for those people who are listening that are people of faith who talk about Jesus Christ and they talk about holy living and a spiritual lifestyle. Some folks may not right away kind of buy into what you're saying. They may watch to see if your life resplits, excuse me, that your life displays and reflects what you say you believe. So they're watching you from a safe distance, not close enough to be involved or to be touched by what you're talking about, but far enough away to see and examine if what you say matches up with the lifestyle that you lead. So the question really isn't about whether you lead or not. The question is how you lead. Now we get into deeper waters here because we all have some level of influence. How are you using yours? Are you defaulting to some kind of fear or maybe some kind of ego because you know you have influence? Or are you recognizing that you know what? You got to have integrity and grace in your leadership because that perhaps is how you were led too. Leadership in every way I can imagine and think of is unavoidable. There's a responsibility in how we lead. Just a couple of passages of scripture I want to share with you guys. Not to bog you down with scripture, but I want you to understand some things. James 3 and 1 says, Not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly. Luke 12 and 48 says, Everyone to whom much was given of him, much more will be required, and from him to whom they entrusted much, they will demand the more. In layman's terms, the more influence you carry, intentional or not, the more called you are to guard your heart, to walk with integrity, personally and privately, to steward what you've been entrusted with. What have you been entrusted with that you steward well? Your first answer may be your children, but beyond that, what have you been stewarded or entrusted with that you steward well? Excuse me. I love in Matthew 20, 26 to 28. We may not read that one, but Jesus also framed leadership in a way that it spoke to service and not some kind of domination or lording over other people. I'll go ahead and read it. It says, Whoever will be great among you must be your servant. And whoever will be first must be slave of all. You can try, but opting out of leading, you forfeit the opportunity to set the tone, to set a healthy direction for people who may be following you. In my opinion, silence is the same thing as complicity. When you say, I'm not saying anything, I'm not speaking to that, I'm gonna keep my mouth shut, I'm not gonna use my voice, you're saying that you agree with the thing that you won't speak against. You can't be Switzerland when it comes to leadership, you can't be neutral when it comes to leadership. No can do. You can't do that. And as a what I believe is an added consequence in this, you could also be indirectly responsible for somebody who's following you and cause them to fall. Yeah, truth be told, you were unaware they were following you, but the bottom line was they were following you, they were following your example, and at the end of the day, you are held accountable for the example that you set. Whether you know somebody's following you or not. You know, there's there's really kind of two kinds of rivers that I think are present in life. One that flows and and and flows through the landscape of life and and waters the soil and and moves and and creates valleys and just kind of just moves and functions as it's supposed to. There's another kind of river that just stays stagnated. They won't move. They kind of just decide to be something other than what they actually are. They become more of a reservoir than they are a river. We gotta decide which one we want to be. Because we can't refuse to lead, because that's the same thing as stagnation. When we decide to lead and really commit ourselves to it, even if we don't fully understand all that we're doing, which is something I think all of us, myself included, can relate to. We operate and flow with purpose. We change the culture around us. We give strength to those that are around us that are dry. How many know somebody around them that's dry right now? They're lacking purpose, they're lacking vision. They're getting ready to give up. Those people are around you. Ask yourself why they're not being nourished by being around you, why they're not encouraged by being around you. If you raised your hand or you acknowledged that the people around you that's dry, answer me that question. You can drop it in the comment section. I want to hear your thoughts on it. Even share your stories as well. Why are they dry when they're around you? A river that's flowing with purpose and vision and fulfillment. Why are they dry around you? How is that possible? Think about that. And I want to kind of uh bring us to toward a close with this, with just four principles that I spoke about in the news that I want to share with you guys today. Four leadership principles. I think you can own that and kind of start aligning yourself with the understanding of what this means and start putting it into action. So if you're taking notes, I know a lot of our listeners love to take notes and jot stuff down. Uh, hopefully not while you're in the car driving. I didn't hear about that. Not cool. Stop doing that. At least which you had to stop light first, at least. But seriously, number one clarity of vision. If you don't define your direction, people are gonna default to what they know, which is confusion, maybe a lack of movement altogether, maybe a drifting off into some place that you know, wherever I end up, where is wherever I end up, that kind of thing. So having a clear vision is important to lead with purpose. Secondly, consistency of character. We're not getting past that one, folks. You can't be a jokester and a clown within the organization, and then when it's time for you to go to work, when it's time for the presentation, when it's time for the event, when it's time for the whatever, you want to turn it on and get serious, like, you know what? I'm all about this business, I'm all about this kingdom, I'm all about this life. That's not how it works. Your character gotta be consistent. And over time, that integrity, those habits, that discipline, it creates an influence that you couldn't buy it if you had all the money in the world. It's a beautiful thing when it's earned. I'll just put it like that. Not when it's demanded. It's a beautiful thing when it's earned. When that integrity, when that reputation, that character is earned. Third principle to lead with purpose vulnerability. I I've seen it myself, whether it's dealing with a coach and client or just talking to somebody casually. When you're vulnerable, it really just invites people to trust you. And as a leader, it's not what you want. If you want to be closed off and be kind of a wall, you're just doing leadership wrong. Nobody's gonna follow you except that it's done with compulsion. And I believe I forgot who shared the quote uh who it's attributed to, but if you're leading and somebody's following you out of compulsion, it's not a true buy-in, it's not a true commitment to follow. They're kind of being dragged into doing it, it's not really obedience at all. But when you're vulnerable and you're not a walled-off personality, you disarm the fear and the distrust, and we invite trust to come in. And as a leader, especially one that leads with purpose, you definitely want that. And the last principle today to lead with purpose is service. I know people who do a lot of things in a lot of areas within organizations, in the community, in ministry, etc., in business and in the business circles and commerce. But if there's no community mindset towards it, if there's no humility, if there's no sacrifice in it, and all it is is just you strategizing on how you can get the most out of this situation, it's empty. So a service and a level of commitment means so much. It is critical. One of the most critical principles out of this four. So clarity of vision, consistency of character, a courageous vulnerability, and committed service. I want to close with Proverbs, the 11th chapter, verse 14. And it reads, where there is no guidance, a people fall. But in an abundance of counselors, there is safety. Just a quick reminder that I think is going to help you out. Part of our leadership is to create space for wise counsel. Make room for people who know more than you. If you're the smartest person in the room, my God, you're in the wrong room. Get out of there as fast as you can. Create space for wise counsel. Lead with humility. Don't make all these big, boy, boisterous, and boastful decrees. Because even when you're leading, you're not doing that by yourself. Many a person helped lift you to get to where you are. And many have helped you to sustain where you are. We don't talk about politics much on any of our shows, but just think about it. People who have been elected into office, you can't get too bigheaded about that. Somebody brought you in. So four years from now, they can take you out. Even when you leave, you don't leave alone. And you don't stay there alone. So I want to just say this to you before we close the episode out today. First off, thanks for watching and listening. I definitely appreciate that. Probably listening now because Inspiration Station is all audio now. We're not doing much video anymore. So thank you for listening to us and sharing us on listening platforms. Thank you for sharing our link and for dropping us with a five-star review on Apple Podcasts. Three stars ain't gonna do it, baby. Four five-star review. Let's hook us up. So don't sit back and hope leadership won't find you. Step into it, lean into it, lead well, walk with your head up and walk with some intentionality. Know why you're here. And honestly, I know that this is easier said than done for some people. Leading together with courage and humility and with purpose, it's not easy. I understand that. So I got some help in the show notes for you. Uh links that you can find my information. Uh my link tree. If you know how link tree works, do you understand? After the forward slash, they call me Mr. Use My Link Tree, easy to find me. And I got a landing page you can find on most of our show notes there. So you can find me two ways. If you want to dive deep into this journey with me, if you'd like to be coached by somebody like myself who's had years of experience doing this, decades of doing this, especially on this level. If you just want to have conversations in the community with me, you can find me at those places. I'd be happy and honored to have that conversation with you guys for sure. Let's lead together. Let's lead with courage. Let's lead with humility. And most of all, lead with purpose. Thanks for listening to the Inspiration Station. I'm your host, Mr. You, and I'm so proud to be your host and maybe even your new coach. God bless you. Lead with purpose. God bless you.