Stuff That Matters In Life

I’m reading/listening to this. Here are some ideas that stood out to me:

“What is leadership itself? What does it mean to lead people?” Here is a simple definition, that leadership at its heart involves change. It involves movement. Leadership is movement. The leaders help people to move from where they are to a better place in the purposes of God.

Leadership is not caretaking. There is nothing wrong with caretaking. The people need to be taken care of, but that’s not the specific task of leadership. People need a leader to help them to move or else they typically won’t move. They’ll typically stay where they are, afraid to move – that’s the way we are. The sheep need a shepherd. 

To build on this, we can see that fundamentally there are two things that leaders do. I know that this is an oversimplification but it’s also a very useful one, to clearly articulate the nature of what it is that leaders do. Leaders think and leaders act. First, the leaders think, because leadership involves movement. Where are we going? Leadership involves definition of direction. Where are we going? Leadership involves definition of direction. Articulation of direction, articulation of means by which we will go there. Leaders think. Leaders are thinking outside of the current situation. They’re looking into the future. They’re looking into the possibilities. Hopefully they’re looking at the face of God and they’re being challenged by Him. They themselves are being challenged personally. And then out of that life comes the direction, the vision, the purpose of God in order to help the people to move there. So, first leaders think – they explore, they think outside of the normal patterns of action, the normal ruts that we find ourselves in for so much of our lives. We need leaders to help us get outside of that. This is the essence of what leaders do.

This is good stuff. I encourage you to read/listen to Healthy Leaders.