A Better Leadership Definition

Those of you that have followed The Christian Leader or have received any emails from me know that I believed that “Leadership is the art and science of inspiring others to reach their full potential in the pursuit of a common vision”. I aspired to that definition of Dr. James Bultman for over 10 years.

A little more than a month ago I was on a golf trip. During that trip some of us began to describe what we believed leadership really was. During the discussion, one of my business friends said “A good leader gets people to do what they want to do, a great leader gets people to do what they need to do.”

Ever since that conversation I have considered that statement to test it against what I believed.  Since I believe that the core of leadership in church is the same as business, I wanted to see if this past the test of the life of Jesus Christ, and also if it fit into my business and leadership experiences. Within my review, I do feel Jesus did inspire people to do what they “need to do”. I also acknowledge that many times in my leadership experience I focused more on helping inspire people to embrace a “common vision” than I did inspiring people to do what “needed to be done”. That got me thinking. While I would attribute to the Lord for what I would believe are my leadership successes, there are those times where I have not been able to do that to everyone that I have led. Thinking about it more, it might also have led to allowing some mediocrity when it should not have been allowed. I now acknowledge that there will always be some that never agree strongly enough in the vision to work as hard as they should or do the things they should do.

While thinking about the above for weeks, I then found myself in a church service at a small church I love. The leadership of this church had just spent months pouring over where they were going for the future and had just completed the design of a new mission and vision statement. I wanted to hear the pastor preach on this so I attended one of the services to hear for myself.  The mission statement was nicely written and the pastor gave a good message about it. However, near the end of the message it was clear that the mission statement did not say it all. I remember him pausing and saying something to the effect of  "I believe in our mission but really do know one more thing, .... that at the end of the day ... we need to do what we must". It was a call to do what God says must be done, no matter what the vision said. When he said that, I believed it to be theologically true, true in my own spiritual experiences with God, consistent with my review of my friend's statement, and true as to what I need to do as a business leader. I now believe that it is even more true for a leader at some point be able to say "I gotta do, what I gotta do". I also beleive we need to be able to inspire others to do "what gotta be done".

In light of all of the above, and with two months of study, I now move forward with a newer revised definition of leadership. It now reads, "Leadership is the art and science of inspiring other to reach their full potential in the pursuit of doing what must be done".

I will have more to say about the application of this new definition. So today I must ask you three things.

1. What has God called and/or gifted you to do?
2. Who has He given you to help you do it?
3. What must you do next to get it done?

If you know the answers to these questions ... then go do it .. because you must.