5 Ways the Best Leaders Warm Hearts

Abraham Lincoln demonstrated his profound understanding of how to exercise influence when he said, “in order to ‘win a man to your cause’…you must first reach his heart, ‘the great high road to his reason.’” I submit the most effective moral leaders have mastered the soft leadership skill of reaching people’s hearts, or as I like to say it, warming hearts.

In The Hospitable Leader: Create Environments Where People and Dreams Flourish, I write that the first welcome of hospitable leadership is “Home” and that home is where the heart is warm. If moral leadership is about influencing people in moral ways to achieve moral ends, which I believe it is, then it is important to note it is simply easier to influence people who feel at home with the leader, whose hearts have been warmed by the leader.

…the most effective moral leaders have mastered the soft leadership skill of reaching people’s hearts…

Our statement of values at The Life Christian Church, where I serve as Lead Pastor, is called The TLCC Way. One of our Ways is “we are always hospitable.” I know there is nothing particularly unique about an organizational value of hospitality, but one of the sub points to this value is, “we massage people’s hearts.” My understanding is that it is common for the surgeon at the end of an open heart surgery to reach into the patient’s chest cavity and massage their heart to help it start beating again. I like that image a lot. There are so many people in our world who need their heart massaged.

So, we teach our staff and volunteers to never just do a thing, but to do it focused on what is happening in people’s hearts. We are not just casting vision, or communicating truth, or teaching a child, or singing from the stage, or serving a cappuccino in the coffee bar; we are always warming people’s hearts and knowing that when we do, we greatly enhance the probability of leading those people we are serving to good and beautiful things.

Jesus was an expert heart warmer.

Jesus had an amazing capacity to make people feel at home. I believe in Jesus as my Lord and Savior, however, if we just look at Jesus from a pure leadership perspective it would be hard to deny that He was one of the most effective—if not the most effective—leader who ever lived. One of the secrets to His leadership success is how often Jesus used or created environments of hospitality in order to exercise leadership. He used the wedding at Cana, for instance, to reveal His glory through turning water into wine. He fed the 5,000 to teach that He was the bread of life, and cooked a seaside breakfast for Peter where He reconnected him to his destiny. I could go on.

Only warm hearts can warm hearts.

A very telling interaction occurred in the famous story of the two guys on the road to Emmaus who acknowledged they should have immediately recognized Jesus when they saw Him after His resurrection because, as they said, “were not our hearts burning within us while He talked with us?” I believe great leaders learn how to create environments so welcoming that their follower’s hearts are always burning and where their followers passionately follow them from the depths of their hearts.

Allow me to suggest an interesting model that demonstrates how Jesus paid attention to the whole human experience and created the conditions—physically, spiritually, emotionally, attitudinally, and communicatively—that warmed people’s hearts and led them to do great things. I see this in the story of the Last Supper. Regardless of whether we are leading in the for-profit, nonprofit sector, or in a secular or religious context, this is a paradigm of superior leadership all of us can learn much from.

Here are five ways Jesus created an environment that warmed His followers’ hearts and led them to do great things.

1. Jesus paid great attention to the physical preparation for this most consequential of leadership meetings.

Luke’s Gospel tells us in some detail that Jesus sent two of His top leaders—Peter and John—to prepare the physical space for the Last Supper. They secured a “large room, all furnished” and made preparations for the Passover there, no doubt a meticulous and time-consuming task: a lamb secured and slain, wine purchased, a meal prepared, a table set for twelve plus one. A hospitable physical environment mattered to Jesus and should matter to us.

2. Jesus ensured that the spiritual climate was hospitable.

John’s Gospel tells us “Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under His power and that He had come from God and was returning to God.” Jesus knew who He was in relationship to the Father, He was at home with God. In order to create home, we must be at home. Which is to say we need to have a settled peace and deep sense of security in our own relationship with God. Only warm hearts can warm hearts.

3. Jesus set a warm emotional environment.

John said in this moment, Jesus showed His followers “the full extent of His love.” A leader who wants to reach people’s hearts must figure out how to convey the depth of his or her love to the people they serve.

4. Jesus established the attitudinal atmosphere.

Then, in the greatest act of servant leadership ever recorded, Jesus established the attitudinal atmosphere when He wrapped Himself in a towel and washed the dirty feet of His followers. He let it be known in no uncertain terms that He had come to serve. Hospitable leaders always posture themselves to serve the needs and dreams of their followers.

Hospitable leaders always posture themselves to serve the needs and dreams of their followers.

5. Jesus was then able to advance a communicatively hospitable environment.

If you look at the many things He said at that meal—covering five chapters in the Gospel of John—from a pure leadership communication perspective, it’s hard to not be awestruck. He cast vision for their future together, called them to sacrifice for His cause, assured them He would provide the resources necessary for their success, and so much more. He gave a leadership talk for the ages that helped propel the team of twelve people to change the world forever.

I encourage you, like Jesus, to be a leader who thinks about how to create an environment that feels like home—where people’s hearts are warm—by paying attention to the physical, spiritual, emotional, attitudinal, and communicative climate in whatever you are leading. Then watch how much easier it becomes to lead people to achieve the good, the beautiful, and the great.

_Footnotes:

_{“In order to win a man to your cause… you must reach his heart, the great high road to his reason”: Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005), 168.}

_{“Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us?”: Luke 24:32 NIV.}

_{“Large room, all furnished”: Luke 22:8-13 NIV.}

_{“Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under His power and that He had come from God and was returning to God”: John 13:3 NIV.}