I recently came across a thought that has really stuck with me. A poor leader will tell you how many people work for them. A good leader will tell you how many people they work for. I love that.

When my wife and I started our company more than 10 years ago, we really had no idea what we were building. We knew what we hoped it would become. We knew what we wanted it to represent. But we couldn’t have imagined the difficult decisions that would come with it, the people who would eventually depend on it, or how much owning a business would reveal things in me that still needed to grow.

What we did know was that we wanted to create something different from the workplaces we had experienced. We wanted people to feel safe. We wanted them to know they mattered. We wanted them to be seen, challenged, recognized and given opportunities to become more than they were when they arrived.

I hoped our company might help someone become a better leader, a stronger spouse, a more present parent, or simply a more confident human being.

There have been seasons when I believe we came pretty close to that. There have also been plenty of moments when I wondered if we had created any of it. Owning a business has a way of humbling you like that.

You can write a mission statement. You can choose the core values. You can hold meetings, give speeches, and put meaningful words on the wall. But you can’t declare a culture into existence.

Culture isn’t defined by what we say matters. It’s revealed by what we repeatedly allow, what we reward, what we protect, and most importantly, what we practice.

The longer I’ve led people, the more I’ve realized this has very little to do with business alone.

Every relationship develops a culture.

You can feel it inside a marriage. You can feel it around a dinner table. You can feel it in a church, a friendship, a company, or a community. Eventually, our everyday, ordinary choices tell the truth about what we really value.

But creating the right environment doesn’t mean we can control what another person does within it.

That has taken me such a long time to understand, and maybe working with trees all these years has finally helped me understand it a little better.

You can’t stand underneath a struggling tree and tell it to grow.

You can improve the soil. You can protect the roots. You can give it water. You can remove what is damaged and create better conditions around it. You can do everything within your responsibility, but at some point, the tree still has to respond.

People aren’t all that different.

For years, I believed caring for people meant carrying more responsibility for them than I probably should have. If someone struggled, I wondered what I should have done differently. If someone made a poor decision, I questioned what I had failed to provide. If something went wrong, my instinct was usually to pick it up and carry it.

Some of that came from caring, but honestly, some of it came from my ego and believing that I had more control than I actually did.

That’s been difficult for me to admit.

I can’t make another person care. I can’t place integrity inside someone else. I can’t force another person to take responsibility for choices they refuse to own. But recognizing that doesn’t let me off the hook either.

I still have to look at myself.

Did I communicate clearly? Did I listen? Did I address the problem when I first saw it, or did I avoid the conversation because I knew it would be uncomfortable? Did my actions reinforce the values I kept saying mattered?

Those questions belong to me. Their choices belong to them.

Learning the difference between those two has taken me a long time to figure out.

One of the hardest lessons for me to learn has been realizing that compassion without accountability can eventually be interpreted as permission.

Supporting someone through a difficult season doesn’t mean pretending their choices are harmless. Forgiveness doesn’t mean acting as though nothing happened. Patience doesn’t require us to avoid every uncomfortable boundary.

Sometimes love looks like nourishment. Sometimes it looks more like pruning.

Knowing which one is needed is where it gets difficult.

Some people need encouragement because they are truly trying, but they’re beginning to lose confidence. Others need direction because no one has clearly told them what is expected. Some simply need time.

And occasionally, someone needs to feel the weight of their own choices.

That can be hard when you genuinely care about people. I know that’s been hard for me.

But caring about someone isn’t the same as giving them everything they want. Sometimes love means telling someone something they’d rather not hear.

I’ve also had to learn the lesson from the other direction.

Just as I shouldn’t accept all the blame when another person fails, I should be careful about accepting too much credit when things go well. Anything worthwhile my wife and I have built has the fingerprints of countless other people all over it.

People showed up. They sacrificed. They accepted responsibility. They believed in what we were trying to build. They carried things when I couldn’t.

I don’t ever want to forget that.

When other people help create something good in our lives, I think we should ask what that good should create for them too. Sometimes that means opportunity. Sometimes it means greater trust or responsibility. Sometimes it simply means making sure someone knows that what they contributed mattered.

But generosity requires wisdom too.

Giving greater trust to someone who has repeatedly shown they can’t carry it isn’t always kindness. Protecting someone from every consequence doesn’t necessarily help them grow.

Those are the parts of caring for people I find the hardest.

When do I encourage? When do I challenge? When do I forgive? When do I trust again? And when does protecting what is healthy require making a decision I wish I didn’t have to make?

That’s why Solomon’s prayer in 1 Kings 3:9 has meant so much to me over the years.

“Give me, your servant, a discerning heart to lead your people and to distinguish between right and wrong.”

The older I get, the more I understand that prayer.

I don’t need the ability to control every outcome. I need the wisdom to know what is mine to carry and what isn’t. I need enough compassion to care deeply about people and enough discernment to know what the moment requires of me.

I still don’t always know. I’ve made decisions too early before, and I’ve probably waited too long on others. But I’ve learned that discernment comes much easier when I stop trying to make every answer my own and allow God to lead.

We’re responsible for taking care of what has been entrusted to us.

We help create the environment around people through the way we speak, the things we tolerate, the truth we’re willing to tell, and the way we treat people who have nothing to offer us in return.

We can’t control everything that grows there. We can only decide what kind of soil we’re helping create.

Maybe that’s a better way to measure our influence.

Not by how many people know our name. Not by how much authority we have. Not even by how much we accomplish.

Maybe the better question is what became stronger because we were there.

Did our spouse feel more valued? Did our children become better prepared to carry responsibility? Did someone begin believing in an ability they couldn’t yet see in themselves? Did someone become better prepared to encourage, lead, serve, and someday do the same for somebody else?

I think about that far more today than I used to.

A poor leader counts how many people work for them. A good leader understands that every person they’re trusted to influence is also someone they’ve been given an opportunity to serve.

We can’t command another person to grow.

We can only tend the ground around them with truth, compassion, wisdom, accountability, and love.

Then we have to trust that, over time, the measure of our lives will be revealed by what took root.

‘Well Rooted’ is written by Jeremy Elliott. Elliott owns a lawn care business and lives in the Great Bend area.