Tour Guides & Travel Agents.   Quick episode today with a leadership principle. Maybe you don’t feel like a leader, or hold a specific position of leadership in any organization, but this applies across the board… For any grown human that has relationship with those around them.   If you ever influence people around you to help them make decisions, or recommend things, or “lead by example” with how you live your life.    Tour Guides & Travel Agents.   Which very simply means you’re either a tour guide, walking with someone through the experience, showing them the way, bringing them somewhere you’ve already been, and helping them get the most out of the experience.    Or, you’re a travel agent: Sending people somewhere you’ve never been yourself, regurgitating what others have said, or whatever Rick Steves says…    Tour Guides & Travel Agents.   Now, of course this isn’t literally about travel. This is about leadership. Bringing people somewhere. Introducing a new idea. Giving advice. Wise counsel.    Maybe around relationships, or career, or spiritual guidance…    People want to know whether the wisdom they’re getting from you is first-hand, or if it’s something you read on the internet, or just something you heard on a podcast or a late-night show.    Trust me, I’m all for sharing things I’ve just heard, from any and all types of media, but there’s a difference when something is really important. When it’s shifting something in someone’s life. When it’s serious. When it really matters.    Will you be a tour-guide type of friend? Or will you be a travel agent, recommending something you’ve never actually experienced?    In spiritual leadership, it’s really easy to get sucked into Travel Agent activity… Recommending books you’ve never read, or spiritual practices you’ve never personally practiced. You’re essentially sending people into uncharted territory… Or at least territory that you yourself haven’t walked.    And people pick up on it. They know—maybe not at first—but certainly once they get into it. They know that you’ve recommended something that you don’t actually know much about.    Now I’m not saying that I never recommend something I haven’t tried or seen first-hand or experienced myself, but I know that I want to be a tour-guide, on the trail with them, experiencing it together along the way…    Not just sending, hands off, transactional type of thing.    When i’m leading worship, I want to be a tour guide, not a travel agent. I want to have ALREADY BEEN where I’m inviting people to go. And of course, it’s different for me every time, but I’m not inviting people into a spiritual landscape that I’ve never experienced.    I know what it’s like to get lost in this song, and I know what to look for over the next ridge. At least enough to lead others through it.    There are countless historical figures that were either tour-guide-type of leaders, that would lead from the FRONT of the army, or travel agents that would send their men out into unknown battles on their own.    It’s a simple encouragement. And simple to recognize.    Keep your eyes open today. Watch the leaders around you. Watch our political leaders. Watch for the opportunities that come your way to either be a tour-guide or a travel agent. And really resist the urge, and the ego-fanning, that you get from pretending to be someone you’re not.    If you want to have authority in your leadership, do some of the legwork of traveling on your own, or sitting under another experienced tour guide, before ever launching out leading an expedition of your own.    And if it’s unavoidable, because maybe it’s truly uncharted waters but you’re leading people through it, tell them that. Tell them where your past experience ends and where your current experience begins. They’ll respect you. They’ll have grace for you. They’ll follow a bit closer to you.   All of this ego stuff that makes us feel good for the 10 seconds we’re saying it, really doesn’t have a good shelf life. Puffing ourselves up and acting bigger or better or smarter or more attractive or more accomplished than we really are feels good for 10 seconds, but then we have to try to navigate that falsehood… Lie our way out of it. Or fake our way through it. And who knows how much collateral damage there could be then.    So that’s it. Tour guides and travel agents.    Be the real thing. Be present with your people. Walk with them, wherever they’re at.    I love you guys, make it a good day.