H3 Leadership: Be Humble. Stay Hungry. Always Hustle

I love good habits. I hate bad ones. Habits define you. They create who you are and how you live out each day. They shape how you respond in crises. They build or destroy character. As Sean Covey states, “We become what we repeatedly do.”* As a new pastor, I quickly learned that my days fell into typical routine, even though a pastor’s responsibilities vary from day to day. But the habits that naturally fell into place were not the most effective habits.

So it is with leadership habits. Sometimes our leadership styles develop without deliberate action. But Brad Lomenick suggests that by cultivating good leadership habits, we can greatly enhance our effectiveness. His book H3 Leadership is a habit handbook. Lomenick writes in the intro­duction, “Leadership is more than hard work; it is habitual work. It is worked out every day in the tasks we complete, the ways we approach our work, and the rhythms we nurture in our lives. It hangs on the hooks of the patterns we create, not just the success we may stumble upon” (xvi). What follow are 20 habits for effective leadership, divided into three categories: humble, hungry, and hustle. These three categories answer foundational questions: humble—Who am I? hungry—Where do I want to go? and hustle—How will I get there? You will find habits to help you make the answers to these questions a reality in H3 Leadership.

Chapters include both description and practical application. This helped me envision what a habit of innovation looks like, for example. In chapter 10, the habit of innovation is described with eight practical ideas, one of which is simply, “Move—physical motion is a creativity accelerator. Every 60 minutes of meeting time needs at least ten min­utes of motion” (96). Another pointer, “Make Meetings Creative,” includes four rules for crafting creative meetings: (1) include outsiders, (2) exclude (some) insiders, (3) allow for rabbit trails, and (4) take very detailed notes. Every habit, from innovation to meekness to stick-with-it-ness to succession, is propped up by practical advice. Furthermore, Lomenick turns to dozens of proven leaders for their take on the habits of leadership. Each chapter ends with leaders describing their thoughts on the particular habit and how it plays out in their work and life.

I recommend this book to fellow pastors and leaders. But read the book slowly. Read a chapter a week or a chapter a month. Twenty habits cannot be implemented at once. Take the time to analyze your own leadership. What are you doing by default? What habits have you developed already? Where do you need to improve?

At the outset of H3 Leadership, Lomenick describes reaching a place where he was burned out and discour­aged with his work and leadership. Maybe you can relate. A subplot of H3 Leadership is the author’s own journey of revitalization. If you are looking for a guide to revitalizing your leadership, read this book.

—Rob Folkenberg serves as assistant and youth pastor at the Rutland Seventh-day Adventist Church, Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada.