Self Leadership

How can one really claim to grasp the concept of leading people before they have understood who they are, what they are about, how they function and how to manage that effectively?

There are countless journal articles, books and excursus’ on leadership styles, methods and structures, and no doubt with the announcement of the President of America looming over us in the hours to come there will be more and more splashed across the international media, with what will surely seem like an endless array of new material assessing the strengths and weaknesses of his character.  So once again the question is posed, can one successfully and effectively lead an organisation, a church, a company, a country, whatever, without first mastering themselves.  I would suggest not.

I believe in some cases leadership is a natural gifting.  I am however not so naive as to think that everyone who is naturally gifted in that area is a great leader, and I suspect in some cases it is because they do not approach honing their gifting in an advantageous way.  Whilst being naturally gifted I think it is still peoples responsibility to test themselves, challenge themselves and push themselves further in order that they may grow in knowledge and understanding of how to out-work their gift to the best of their ability.  I would suggest things like personality tests, finding our who you are, and how you relate to the world around you.  I would suggest things like SWOT analysis, so that people can work out their strengths, weaknesses and highlight and be aware of areas of opportunity and threat.  It seems to me that the better people can manage themselves the better the can manage other people.  While I have talked quite a bit about natural leadership ability I feel compelled to say that I do believe leadership is something that can be learned as well.  It may however take a lot of working, but people are and have been willing to doit, to be the best that they can be.

When we look at the ministry and leadership ability of Jesus there are just a couple of things that I want to mention, before closing.  He didn’t start until he 30 (ish).  That is 30 years of getting to know himself, working out who he was, what he was about, and what exactly he was to do.  He had a group of people around him.  Very rarely during Jesus’ ministry years do we find him without his disciples, this group is the one to whom he was passing on his knowledge (leaving a legacy) and they supported him.  They didn’t always understand him, in fact I highly doubt they understood him even after he had gone, but they were devoted to him.  Jesus was a man whom a lot of people wanted to follow.  He was sure about his mission, and didn’t deviate from that.  When John the baptist was in prison, and remember he was the one who prepared the way for Christ, he questioned Christ’s authority and deity because Jesus had not released him from prison, but that was not Jesus’ mandate to release one person, he had a bigger earthly calling than simply freeing John the Baptist from jail, and in many ways I think John knew this to be true.

I guess the main point I want to get across today is lead yourself before you try and lead others, and you will find that the latter will come more naturally, and continually assess yourself.

Filed under: Uncategorized , Culture, Jesus, Leadership