Perhaps the most powerful motivation leaders can offer is to show that they care about those whom they lead. It is a simple but powerful idea: If leaders care about their followers, followers will care about their leaders and respond accordingly.
The Gospel accounts in which Jesus demonstrates his love for his disciples are too numerous to name. He spends time with them, teaches them, feeds them, heals them, consoles them, and even weeps with them. In so doing, Jesus is the paradigmatic leader. He declares, “I am the good shepherd, and I know mine and mine know me. … and I will lay down my life for the sheep” (Jn 10:14-15). And he later gives his disciples a new commandment: “Love one another as I love you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (Jn 15:12-13).
In his passion and death, Christ laid down his very life for his followers’ salvation, and they in turn laid down their lives for him and for the people that he loved. This simple formula is still at work today: It is the loving self-sacrifice of leaders that attracts loyalty and the motivation to follow in kind.
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JOSEPH MCINERNEY is vice president of leadership and ethics education for the Knights of Columbus.








