Who is leading you?

This week is session four of eight of the Brotherhood series: guys that are meeting together to discuss what it means to lead our families extraordinarily well.

The first three sessions have been heavy on diagnosis. We defined family leadership. We mapped the two ditches, the pitfalls that each of us are most susceptible to. We spent serious time in the abdication ditch and called out the Nice Guy patterns most of us carry to some degree. And we looked honestly at the domination ditch too: the man who swings the other direction, who leads through control and emotional pressure and calls it strength. Both ditches can be equally destructive. Both more common than we'd like to admit.

This work has been necessary. You can't fix what you can't see.

But there's a version of this that stays interesting and never becomes anything else. We talk about the problem. We understand the problem. We feel convicted about the problem. And then we go home and nothing changes.

I don't want that for this group. So tonight we get even more practical.

As we talk about how you lead your family, I want to ask a more foundational question.

Who is leading you?

My Story

I want to tell you about my first few years of marriage.

Brittany and I got married young, before our senior year of college. Like most guys at that age, I was less mature than her. And I was especially less mature than I needed to be.

I procrastinated. I was extremely overweight. I played video games way too much. I had habits I'm far from proud of. Many Sundays I went to church only because I knew it mattered to her. When we graduated, she got a job right away. I spent months looking. During our first years of marriage, she made more money. She was more spiritually disciplined. She had healthier habits. And because of that, I let her carry weight I should have been carrying.

She didn't have a lot of respect for me. And honestly, I didn't have much for myself.

She now says that she saw potential in me. Which is generous. The reality is she needed me to step up, and I wasn't doing it. And because I wasn't leading myself, I couldn't lead us.

There's a version of this story that doesn't end well. I've worked with enough guys to see a version of hell that some marriages eventually find themselves in.

Mine turned. But not because I white-knuckled my way into becoming a better man. It turned with the grace of God, with the help of mentors who were a few steps ahead of me, and with brothers who knew the real version of what was going on in my life. I waged war against addictions and distractions that had a grip on my twenties. Coping habits were broken. Over time, more than a hundred pounds came off. I stopped inheriting my faith from my parents and performing it for Brittany and actually made it my own. I started feeling real ownership of my responsibility to provide and lead.

None of it happened all at once. It was slow, nonlinear, and included some serious failures along the way. But the direction changed. And when the direction of the man changed, the direction of the marriage and family started changing too.

Here's what I learned. You can't lead your family out of a place you haven't been led yourself.

That's what this week is about.

Who Is Leading You?

Before we go further, let me say something clearly. None of what we're about to talk about is a prerequisite for taking responsibility and leading your family. The men who wait until they have everything figured out before stepping up are still waiting, and their families are drifting in the meantime. You start moving before you feel ready. You lead your way into becoming a better man, not the other way around.

But here's also what's true. The ceiling on your family leadership is set by the man doing the leading. A man who is being genuinely led — who is growing, accountable, grounded, and connected to something bigger than himself — brings something to his family that no framework or strategy can manufacture. His family feels it even when he can't articulate it.

So the question is worth sitting with honestly.

Who or what is actually leading you right now?

Not the ideal answer. The real one.

What's having the most influence over your beliefs and convictions? What do you return to when things get hard? Who knows what's actually going on in your life? Who is a few steps ahead of you and speaking into where you're going?

Leadership flows downstream from somewhere. Now we're going to trace that stream back to the source.

Self-Leadership: The Three Domains

The first answer to "who is leading you" is you. How well are you leading yourself?

I've landed on three domains that together form the foundation a man leads from. Not your role as a husband or father — that comes later in this series. These are about you as a man.

Contribution. This is your work, your sacrifice, your provision. Are you fully owning your lane? Are you showing up with real effort, continuing to grow, managing money with discipline, taking ownership of your financial stability? A man who is drifting or stressed in his work life brings that same energy home. There's something about owning your responsibility in the world that builds a kind of self-respect that shows up everywhere else.

Energy. This is your physical health, your strength, your discipline. This isn't about being an elite athlete. It's about whether you're taking your body seriously as a leadership discipline. A depleted man brings depletion home. Something shifts internally when a man starts taking his physical health seriously. It's the experience of proving to yourself that you can do hard things consistently. It's the example of health and wellness that others physically see when they look at you. And it's about both the physical and mental energy needed to lead well.

Alignment. This is the deepest one. How aligned are your actions with your values? How honest are you with yourself? A man who is hiding from his own inner world — running from discomfort, numbing out with coping habits, pretending things are fine when they're not — cannot lead others with clarity. Getting honest about your own inner world is not weakness. It's the foundation for leading anyone else.

These three domains are simple to understand and hard to actually live. Most men have one that's clearly the weakest. That's where the work starts.

Discussion: Which of these three domains is your current biggest gap? What's the core issue within that domain? Be specific.

Brotherhood and Mentors

The second answer to "who is leading you" is the men around you.

You were not designed to lead in isolation. I know that sounds like something you hear at a men's conference and then forget by the drive home. But I mean it practically.

Men who have no one they can be honest with accumulate pressure they have nowhere to take. They make worse decisions. They carry weight that no man was built to carry alone. And eventually, the isolation shows up in their leadership.

But there's another piece that brotherhood alone can't provide, and that's the man who is a few steps ahead of you. A mentor. A father figure. Someone who has already navigated what you're navigating and can tell you what he actually learned, not just what sounds good.

I've had a few men like that in my life at different points. Their influence shaped me in ways that are hard to fully trace. Not because they had all the answers, but because they were further down the road and were willing to be honest with me about what they saw.

Both matter. The brother who is in the trenches with you. And the man who has been through the trenches and can tell you what's on the other side.

Discussion: Who knows what's actually going on in your life right now? And is there a man a few steps ahead of you who is speaking into where you're going? If neither answer is yes, what would it take to change that?

The Ultimate Source

Here's where I want to be direct with you, and I want to say it as personally as I know how.

I cannot lead my family well without being led myself. And for me, the deepest answer to "who is leading you" is God, my Father.

I say this because I've tried the other version. I've tried leading on my own reserves, running on willpower and good intentions, and it runs out, every time.

The humility this work requires, the courage to initiate hard conversations, the ability to humble myself after failure, the capacity to love my wife and kids without needing to control how they respond — I don't have that on my own. What I bring to others is only as good as what I'm drawing from.

Who is influencing you most? What is your source of truth and wisdom?

For me, that upstream source is time in prayer, in scripture, in honest conversation with God before I engage with anyone else. Not as a religious obligation, but as the most practical discipline I have. A man who is being genuinely led by God is a man who has somewhere to take his fears and failures and need for wisdom before they become his family's problem. He brings something different through the door than a man who relies on his own strength and trusts his own instincts.

There's also something deeper here that I keep coming back to.

Part of what makes it possible to lead from love rather than fear of failure is knowing who actually owns the outcomes. I can pour everything I have into leading my family with intention and still not control who my kids become or what choices my wife makes. If the outcome is entirely on me, that weight can become crushing and it eventually turns into control. But if I'm genuinely submitted to a God who loves my family even more than I do and who holds the final outcomes, I can lead with everything I've got and still hold the results with an open hand.

That's not passivity. That's the most freeing thing I've found in this whole journey.

I know some of you are in different places with faith. I'm not here to tell you what to believe. But I urge you to answer honestly: who or what is actually setting the standard you're leading by? What is the ultimate authority you're submitted to? What are you drawing from when your own reserves run out?

Discussion: Who or what is the primary source you're leading from? What would it look like to be more intentional about that?

Key Ideas

• The quality of your family leadership runs downstream from the quality of how you are being led.
• This inner work is not a prerequisite. It's the ongoing work underneath everything else. You lead your way into becoming a better man, not the other way around.
• The three domains of self-leadership are Contribution, Energy, and Alignment. Most men have one that's clearly the weakest.
• Brotherhood and mentors are not optional. A man leading in isolation has no one to tell him what he can't see about himself.
• The deepest answer to "who is leading you" is the one that determines everything else. Know your source.

Reflection and Application

• Which of the three self-leadership domains is your clearest gap right now? Choose one small, practical first step that will change your trajectory.
• Who knows what's really going on with you? Is there a man a few steps ahead of you speaking into where you're going? Make a short list. Pick up the phone and initiate a connection.
• Who or what is the primary source you're leading from?