As you may know, I’m a big Star Wars fan (and by Star Wars fan I mean the original Star Wars, not the new stuff).

In honor of the Star Wars 30th Anniversary I thought I would share some leadership advice over the next couple of days from the movies. Today’s leadership principles come from that short little green guy we all know and love – Master Yoda.

• “Do or do not… there is no try. - I mean, really, is there any better leadership advice than this? It applies to everyone in nearly every situation. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve used this in a team meeting. It’s probably one of my favorite leadership principles.
• “Beware of the dark side.” – Good advice. Watch out for the bad guys who are out to get you! Sounds like something I read once in 1 Peter 5:8
• “Early must I rise. Leave now you must.” - Another great principle we can all apply in our daily lives. If we want to get stuff done practice the habit of rising early. If that means you need to use the force to kick your friends out of the house so you can get some rest than so be it!
• “Size matters not. Judge me by my size, do you?” - Whether we are looking at our church, our youth group, our job or our physicalstature, size just doesn’t matter. With God living inside of us there is nothing we can’t accomplish! (Zechariah 4:6)
• “Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering. – This is one of my favorite Yoda quotes. It pretty much describes the importance of love, trust and unity in a leadership team and what happens if you don’t have it.
• “Named your fear must be before banish it you can.” - In other words, before you can conquer the thing that is weighing you down you first have to know what it is that you are fighting. Sometimes we dress our fears up with different names but if we really searched our hearts we would find ugly fears like fear of rejection or fear of failure. Name your fears before you banish them.
• “When 900 years old you reach, look as good you will not” - Umm, this doesn’t really have to do with anything but I love saying it anyway! It’s a great comeback if someone asks how old you are.