Saturday, June 23, 2012

Thoughts on Leadership

A few days ago I posted asking for feedback on the role of a leader.  I didn't get much feedback, so let me give you my opinion and see if that gets the ball rolling. This is the short version of my opinion, and is intended to jump start the conversation I'd like to be having with you, dear reader.

Let's start with the first of the three questions I posed in the earlier post:

Q: What is the ultimate goal of a leader?

A: In my opinion, the ultimate goal of the leader is to move people somewhere that they wouldn't go without the leader's influence.  This is not a unique idea, it is a summation of much reading on the subject. 

Biblical Example: Moses: Without his influence, the Hebrews would have remained slaves in Egypt until the genocide that had begun under Pharaoh ran its course and they ceased to exist or had been assimilated into the Egyptian population.  His goal was to move them toward the land that God had promised.  After his first conversation with Pharaoh, the Egyptians made the Hebrew's lives more difficult, and as a result the people begged Moses to stop leading them.  After they left Egypt, and saw God do amazing things, they complained countless times that they would have been better off in Egypt as slaves than following Moses around the desert.  On multiple occasions Moses was accused of plotting genocide against his own people by his own people ("you brought us out into the desert to die").  Had he been leading by committee, popular opinion or what made people feel loved and appreciated, he'd have left them alone in Egypt before the first plague, and our Bible would look extremely different.

Tune in tomorrow and I'll give my opinion on the difference between a leader and an administrator.

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