Leadership begins with knowing who you are and what you believe. Authenticity is the need for leaders to be themselves regardless of the situation. For this reason, it is more than self-awareness. It is the ability to share the deepest and truest part of ourselves with others.

My undergraduate degree was in Business Management. The first thing we did was to identify successful leaders and write papers on how to mimic their behaviors. Textbooks were full of tips on how to do this and tests made certain we ingested the critical points that led to their success.

Recently, I met with a leader who was in the process of losing heart. I have seen the look in his eyes a hundred times before. (I had seen it in my own mirror on more than one occasion.)

My friend was under attack. He had just discovered that one of his board members was campaigning to unseat him. Worse, one of his children had just been diagnosed with a chronic disease. As a result of these issues, he was struggling with the typical symptoms of stress—insomnia, indigestion, and back pain.

Gail and I have been married for thirty-three years. She is my lover, my best friend, and my coach. But a few days ago we had a fight. It was a doozy.

It’s not important what it was about. It was one of those issues we have stumbled over previously. But I will admit that it was my fault. I ambushed her and let it escalate beyond what the circumstances warranted.

Recently, I read that 70% of pastors don’t have any close personal friends. I have quoted this figure publicly and several pastors have confided to me that it is true for them. They admitted that they don’t have any close personal friends. This made me very sad. I think it is also true of CEOs and other leaders as well.

Why is this true?

If you are going to be an effective leader, you must be able to enter into your followers’ world. In fact, if you are going to influence anyone for anything—whether it is your boss, your employees, a client, your spouse, or even your kids—you are going to have to get really good at incarnational leadership.

This leadership principle is based on the Christian teaching that “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14a). Imagine that: God entered into our world in order to bring us back to Himself.

I spent most of last week with Don Miller and a few friends at Bob and Maria Goff’s lodge in British Columbia. Don wrote about this magical place in A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. It was stunning. It gave me the opportunity to reboot my spirit.

For two-and-a-half days we ate, played, and shared our stories. We laughed and cried. We hiked up mountains, walked through waterfalls, and sat on the deck, listening to the surf and gazing at the stars.

Several years ago, when I was in business for myself, I had a client who was really “high maintenance.” By that, I mean he was someone who had unreasonable expectations of me and my company. Unfortunately, I didn’t see that on the front end; I was too focused on “the opportunity.”

Indulge me. Today is Valentine’s Day. At the Hyatt household it is the third most important holiday of the year, right after Easter and Christmas.

Trust is to an organization what oil is to a car engine. It keeps the moving parts from seizing up and stopping forward motion.

But trust is not something you can take for granted. It takes months—sometimes years—to build. Unfortunately, you can lose it overnight.

Several years ago, I started thinking about by professional relationships with authors and agents. I noticed that some relationships were highly profitable and enjoyable. Others were highly profitable but a constant drain on our staff and resources. Others were enjoyable, but had not yet reached their full potential. Still others were unprofitable and unenjoyable. This got me to thinking.

I imagined a two-by-two matrix, similar to the Boston Consulting Matrix, with the horizontal axis representing maintenance and the vertical axis representing profitability. (To download a PDF of the full diagram, click here.) I think this matrix describes just about every kind of professional relationship you can have.