Lessons in Leadership

“Leadership is about love.” I made this statement in an interview I once gave and was immediately asked, “What does love have to do with it?” (Sounds like a song, doesn’t it!) My response was simple: “Everything.”

The story of Job is the story of loss and suffering such as you never want to endure. But it is also a story of a successful business leader unlike any other in the Bible, encountering total loss before being restored to double success.  

It is not hard to find examples in business today where honesty is not regarded as the best policy. There is great peer pressure to go along with the corporate line, a line that may not be based on truth.

The challenge for a leader is to have a strong level of certainty about these three things, that the leader can overcome any personal doubts, insecurities, or distractions of the world and obey the calling and embrace the vision.

The biblical principle of integrity is foundational in leadership.  In Luke 16:10, God provides a measuring stick for us to use in gauging integrity.  This standard can be used to check our own integrity, but it can also provide discernment in understanding the health of integrity in others.  

Jesus contrasts the way the world works with how it should be in his kingdom. In the world, rulers lord it over their subjects, literally “lord down.” He notes their leaders use authority. Most definitions of leadership involve “using authority,” which brings up a word commonly unpopular today: submission. Generally, we like to avoid the word, but that doesn’t change anything. Submission is part and parcel with using authority. On good days, the world likes to find ways to use authority “down” in kinder and gentler ways, but it is still top down.