In my few years on this planet I have seen two types of leaders:
• Narcissistic leaders who are generally insecure and leadership is all about them and their ego and
• Servant leaders who care more about the team winning then them looking good
So why do you lead? Is it all for your glory or is it for the glory of the team/band/group you lead. Or is it for the glory of God?
In Jim Collin’s book Good to Great he describes two different leaders. A level four leader is a leader that: catalyzes commitment to and vigorous pursuit of a clear and compelling vision, stimulating higher performance standards. Whereas a level five leader: Builds enduring greatness through a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will. Collins and his team say the best kind of leader is the level five leader. Because when a level five leader goes the company usually misses its star and suffers. Whereas, the Level five leader builds infrastructure around him so he is expendable.
Also:
The level five leader is not the big personality that by his presence inspires people. Rather, he is humble and is ambitious for the company not himself.
The level five leader is a person who is quick to credit his team when things go right and always apportions blame to himself when things go wrong.
The level five leader, wants the people around him to look better than he does because he knows that if they succeed the company succeeds.
The level five leader is driven by the growth of his company and not the growth of his empire.
Rereading Jim Collins on this has given me pause to think about my own leadership. What kind of leader are you?
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The idea of 'leadership' and that of Christian service are in two different places: the former is in the world, the latter is in the church.
ReplyDeleteThat is to say, the idea of 'leadership' and its fashionable application in the church is not, in my understanding of it, biblical in any way, shape or form.
The scriptures talk of servants, and 'chief servants' (ministers, deacons, elders, etc.) in the collective, not the unitary style of anglicanism, with a parish having a rector (a 'ruler' which is not at all biblical).
Moreover, the Bible talks of a church as a body of believers each serving the others as they are gifted, with different services emerging in response to need.
Leadership on the other hand is tainted with worldly hubris, as though a person (usually a man, in practice) somehow can stand in the place of the Holy Spirit and 'lead' the church.
I can put it no better than Henry Mintzberg did in a recent press article (at: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20081028.wtalkingmanagement1028/BNStory/robAtWork/home):
"In the United States particularly, they just make such a huge fuss over leadership, it has become an absolute obsession. Everything is leadership, leadership, leadership. It is not coincidental that the more fuss that Americans make about leadership, the worse their leadership is whether it is corporate or political or anything else. Their leadership is dreadful in recent years and with all of this fuss on leadership. Leadership is about individuality, leadership is about me. Even if leadership is designed to encourage and to bring along other people and engage other people, it is still the individual driving it.
So, show me a leader and I will show you all kinds of followers and that is not the kind of organizations that we want. That is not the way that we build things up.
I think that we need to put more emphasis on what I prefer to call, there is no word for it but I use the word 'community-ship', which is the idea that corporations and other organizations, when they function well, are communities. People care for each other, they worry about each other, they work for each other and they work for the institution and they feel pride in the institution."
can life really be condensed down so succinctly to only two styles of leadership?
ReplyDeleteis it fair to stereotype and generalise on such a broad subject such as leadership styles when there are endless tasks / projects / situations to manage and lead?
your two definitions of leadership seems a very simplistic viewpoint. life as we all know presents many varied situations that requiring leadership and certainly in my experience there are more than two ways to lead a team, individual or situation.