Men’s Work is Leadership Training
Men’s work is leadership training.
Before a man can lead a team, a relationship, or a family, he has to learn how to lead himself.
He has to learn how to lead himself through his habitual patterns, his childhood wounds, his limiting beliefs about self, others and the world, his pain and programming, his blocks and barricades.
And he has to learn how to lead himself into his body and heart, his dreams and desires, his power and privilege.
That’s what men’s work teaches. And like any real education, it has a structure:
The Lessons
The lessons are integrity, honesty, accountability, reconciliation, ownership, and depth. They’re simple and easy to understand, but most men – if they're truly honest with themselves – struggle to live them. These qualities are in short supply in the world, and the people closest to use are hungry for them.
The Classmates
The classmates are other men. Self-leadership is best built in brotherhood. A man can heal and transform on his own, but it’s slower, lonelier, and easier to bypass and fool himself. Other men can identify your blind spots and shadows. Other men can be a loving witness to your pain and process. Other men can call you on your bullshit and hold you accountable to your past actions and future vision.
The Teachers
The teachers are the facilitators, mentors, and elders. Men who have walked further down the path. Their job isn’t to hand you answers. It’s to ask the questions you’ve been avoiding and to show you what’s possible. Your best teacher is, of course, yourself.
The Quizzes and Tests
The quizzes and tests are your daily practices. Every day, whether you feel like it or not, you set aside time to drop in with yourself. To slow down, ground, regulate, activate, expand, attune, focus, and just be. This is where you cultivate and sharpen the masculine qualities you’ll offer the world, like presence, steadiness, and strength.
The Field Trips
The field trips are the retreats and workshops. You step our of your routine and into an environment build to challenge you and take you deeper than you can take yourself. Years or healing and months of growth can happy in a weekend.
The Homework
The homework is integration. What you do between sessions. It’s the hard, uncomfortable conversation, the apology that way past due, the boundary you finally set and hold. An insight from a field trip means nothing until you apply it at home.
The Final Exam
The final exam is life itself. What’s the pulse of your personal and professional life? Are you providing value to the world? Are you earning an income and providing for and protecting your family? Have you forgiven your parents? Do your children respect you and want to spend time with you? Does your girlfriend or wife desire you? Do you stand for what you believe in? Do you live by your values without compromise? Are you connected to God? Do you nourish yourself in nature? Do you ask for what you want? Do you commit, take risks, fail, and recommit?
Graduation
There’s no graduation day. Life hands out the exam every day. The men who lead best are the ones who keep showing up to class.
Self-leadership comes before leading others. You can’t lead your team, your community, your family, or your woman if you can’t lead yourself. Your team won’t trust your decisions or direction. Your community won’t follow you into battle. Your family won’t feel that you hold their best interests in your heart at all times. And she won’t trust you to take her deeper than she can take herself, which is what her body and heart most desire. No one will follow you somewhere you haven’t been willing to go first.
