If your goal is to get people to serve you (or your ministry, your organization, your vision), then you’ll have to use some form of obligation or reward and punishment. You won’t be able to just just say “follow my lead” because your lead is getting people to serve you. It’s self-serving. And by following your lead, people will learn to be self-serving. They’ll want you and others to serve them and you’ll want them to serve you. Everyone will place expectations on each other, and everyone will end up disappointed and hurt by each other. In order to get people to serve you, you’ll have to obligate them through some form of moralism (you should) or some system of reward/punishment (you’ll get treated if you do, and punished if you don’t). This seems to be the default way the world tends to work.

If, on the other hand, your goal is to serve people (even at your own expense), then others may actually serve you too. By following your example and lead, anyone who follows will serve the people around them. No one can be disappointed if the motive to serve is pure. There will be no need to obligate and manipulate.

“You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and those who are great exercise authority over them. Yet it shall not be so among you; but whoever desires to become great among you, let him be your servant. And whoever desires to be first among you, let him be your slave—just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.” – Matthew 20: 25-28