Alice was driven and tough. I would also describe her as “cold”, in that no one really knew much about her because she never shared about herself. It was as if she wore a suit of armor. If you measure success by getting things done and managing costs, she was extremely successful. She was never shy of offering her opinion in meetings with her team and others, and when I reflect on my time working with her as a peer, I believe she was usually right. I considered her a good manager, but not a leader. Great leaders are the ones that people want to work for, they’ll follow that person anywhere. As a peer, a great leader is someone you want to work with because they help make you and your team better. What kept Alice from being a great leader?  I don’t believe she understood the tricky concept of “first” and “last”, which is a challenge for all of us.

What do I mean by that? There are times when a leader needs to go “first”, to be the first person to do something. There are also times when a leader needs to go “last”. Mix them up and you will struggle as a leader.

You might think the challenge of “first” and “last” as one that afflicts new leaders, and it does. New leaders often think they are supposed to always go first because they are the boss, they think it’s what’s they are expected to do. Yet I’ve screwed it up myself at times and found it happens with leaders at all levels and all years of experience.

Here are three critical times when a leader should go first, and when they should go last.

Be First

• Vulnerable – If you want to build trust with your team, it starts with you, and you must go first. You need to show you are human, willing to share you aren’t perfect.
• Take responsibility for a failure – When your team has a failure, you miss a deadline, or something doesn’t go well (trust me it’ll happen), a leader must be the first person to own the failure. You cannot blame the team or another department.
• Support – If you want a new initiative to succeed, you must be its champion. You must go first to express how important it is, your support and your expectations of them.

Be Last

• Opinion – As a leader, your opinion has greater influence than anyone on the team, anywhere from two to ten times more. Once you share yours, it’ll be hard for anyone to offer a contrary opinion. Sharing it first may shut down conversation and keep you from hearing something you need to hear. Wait for everyone else to go first before you share.
• Take credit – Any success you have is because of others and it starts with your team. When there is success, give them credit to your team because they’re the ones who did the work. Yes, it might have been your idea, but it doesn’t matter, publicly credit your team and they will love working for you.
• Be served – If there is an organizational function, make certain everyone else is served their food, before allowing yourself to be served. If your organizational offices are moving, make certain everyone has what they need to get re-established, before you get yours set up.

This isn’t an exhaustive list, there are plenty of situations beyond these where you should be first or you should be last as a leader. Remember that great leaders are servant leaders, they think first about those they are responsible for. If you keep that in mind, you’ll easily be able to see if you should go first or last.

So the last will be first, and the first will be last. Matthew 20:16