If it wasn’t for . . . there would be no humility. . . or real leadership.
Two weeks ago, we introduced two major elements of a leader’s character, leading as a servant and leading from a position of humility. We briefly discussed leading as a servant and setting an example. You know there is much more to discuss about leading as one who serves, but today let’s touch on leading from a position of humility.
First, leading from a position of humility is not leading with timidity. If anything, leading from a position of humility requires risk taking, boldness, and faith. But the one who leads from a position of humility understands where he or she really stands in the organization and who is really important. As Jesus said, the things not to do are, “lord it over them,” and “exercise authority over them.” Anyone can intimidate, but that will not produce organizational results that last. It will not produce new ideas. It will not produce courage to go forward when no one is watching. It will not produce extraordinary results. There is much to say about leading from a position of humility, but let’s begin with where the leader views his or her position in the organization.
Haven’t you found that the typical organization looks like a pyramid with the leader at the apex of the structure? But one leading from a position of humility, at least internally, views the pyramid as inverted with the apex at the bottom where the leader bears all the hopes, dreams, cares, fears, and concerns of all those in the organization above. Among other things it means that exercising leadership involves taking the difficult problems of people, the things that greatly concern them, the failure of dreams they may have experienced, and turning them back to those people with clear vision, hope, encouragement, training, and the tools to do the job so they, the people of the organization, can take responsibility for accomplishing the work at hand.
This sounds like a simple concept, but for one exercising leadership, it means flying lead when the going gets tough, it means exercising influence outside of the organization to obtain the resources and authorizations to accomplish the assigned mission, it means picking people up following a failure, making corrections, and getting them back into the fight, it means exercising timely and fair discipline. It means coaching people to accomplish the tasks at hand and it means sharing the credits of success with those who accomplish the work. And that is the fun part.
There is much more to say about leading from a position of humility, but let’s end with a very simple definition of leadership.
LEADERSHIP IS MAKING OTHERS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE WORK AT HAND.
Wasn’t that what Jesus did with His disciples toward the end of His time on earth; making them responsible for building His church. More to come on the definition of leadership.
