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If you’ve ever taken a personality test, you’ve confirmed you have certain skills, traits, tendencies, ways of working, and eccentricities that make you you.
Those tests, however, only go so deep into who you really are. They can’t determine your hurts, fears, desires or goals; they don’t know what your night was like last night, or the family issue you may be dealing with.
We’re complex. In addition to our inner selves, we’re careful to craft outer selves designed to receive approval from the world, while at the same time hiding our failings. This “second person” is the public persona we project. It’s who we think we are to everyone.
There’s also a third-person version of ourselves. We don’t know them very well. In fact, others know this person better than we do.
People see each other through colored glasses. We filter, judge and label each other. The you I perceive – who I think you really are – is your third self.
The problem is my perception isn’t always reality. Nor is it usually the person you meant for me to see.
People’s mistaken perceptions of each other can be devastating. You know what I mean if you’ve ever been misunderstood. I was taken down a notch one time when I heard through the grapevine what people really thought about me.
The following strategies will help you refine your third-person leader and help prevent your own grapevine experience.
Though seeing ourselves through other people’s eyes is not easy, seasoned leaders shift and change into various versions of themselves, depending on what followers need or expect. Paul said, “To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some” (1 Cor. 9:22).
This requires us to get in other people’s shoes. We must see through their colored glasses and set aside our self-focus.
When we gain this empathetic perspective, we can better understand people’s expectations of us. The third person they need us to be becomes apparent.
Do we change who we are? Not at the core. We simply “become all things to all people,” for their benefit.
Identifying with the pains and joys of others is a learned skill for me. But it is a discipline that has inched up my compassion. Over time this has helped me discern people’s needs, opening me up to be a better servant leader.
This is how Jesus saw the world around him. He saw into the heart of the demoniac, who just wanted to be free. He saw through the eyes of a promiscuous woman searching for spiritual truth. He saw with the eyes of the sick, the poor, and even the blind.
When we see from other people’s points of view, we find it easier to allow for their occasional bad moods. We’re able to overlook an offense from time to time. We find it easier to love them.
As we become more compassionate leaders, our third person starts melding with its first and second versions.
Who is your ideal third person, the one you want people to see?
As believers, we’re compelled to model this person after Jesus. He was a compassionate truth-teller unafraid to suffer for the benefit of others. (And of course he was much more!)
In your leadership role, who do people need you to be right now? How do you think they want you to change? At times do you wish you were more relational, quieter, more passionate, or more self-controlled?
With God’s help, why can’t you become that person?
If you’re a Christ-follower, the divine third Person – the Holy Spirit – is already in you, ready and waiting to start the process.
To review:
1. First person – Who you really are on the inside
2. Second person – The public persona you try to project to the world
3. Third person – Who other people perceive you to be
This post is based on Through Colored Glasses: How Great Leaders Reveal Reality – A Leadership Fable, by Tom Harper (DeepWater Books, 2018). Available on Amazon.
Photo source: istock
 | Tom Harper is publisher of BiblicalLeadership.com and executive chairman of Networld Media Group, a business-to-business publisher and event producer. He has written five books, including Servant Leader Strong: Uniting Biblical Wisdom and High-Performance Leadership (DeepWater Books, 2019) as well as the Christian business fable Through Colored Glasses and its sequel Inner Threat (DeepWater, 2022). Learn More » |
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