LEADERS OF CONVICTION

Proverbs chapter 19






Today we are walking in: Leaders of Conviction








Today we look to the word-LEADER- H5057 nagiyd-- leader, ruler, captain, prince; excellent thing, (chief) governor, leader, noble, prince, (chief) ruler.







The Torah Testifies.............................

*****












The prophets proclaim...............







Isaiah 55:4 - Behold, I have given him for a witness to the people, a leader H5057 and commander to the people.


















The writings bear witness.............







2Chronicles 32:21 - And the LORD sent an angel, which cut off all the mighty men of valour, and the leaders H5057 and captains in the camp of the king of Assyria. So he returned with shame of face to his own land. And when he was come into the house of his god, they that came forth of his own bowels slew him there with the sword








Chapter 2
Leaders of Conviction


“Leadership development is self-development.” —John G. Agno, corporate executive and author


Several years ago, I was sitting at the airport, looking out the window as I watched the arrival of an aircraft that was taxiing down the runway toward my gate. This was the plane that would take me to Nigeria, where I was scheduled to speak at a conference. Suddenly, a seagull flew in front of the window and landed on the ground near where the aircraft would come to a stop.


So, there I was, looking at two “birds.” The first one did not have an innate ability to fly—it had been constructed with the mechanical ability to become airborne. But the second one had an inherent physical capacity to fly.
As the plane approached, a number of airline employees started quickly moving around on the nearby tarmac. Two of the workers guided the plane to the jet bridge using green and red lights as signals. Others then positioned the wheel chocks, worked the ramp, plugged in the external power and air, refueled the plane, checked for mechanical issues, and unloaded and loaded the conveyer belts with luggage.


Within the aircraft and behind the scenes, there were a number of others who were involved in flying and maintaining the plane and seeing to the needs of the passengers: air traffic controllers, pilots, flight dispatchers, load planners, flight attendants, and maintenance coordinators, as well as employees who restocked the water and food, serviced the bathrooms, and cleaned out the cabin. I have learned that for a domestic flight, it takes about fifty minutes to “turn” an airplane, preparing it for the next departure. International flights can require an hour and a half. The well-choreographed efforts of many individuals are required to handle the needs of just one jet.


Yet, as I observed the action on the tarmac, I noted that no one ran to help the seagull! The bird didn’t need any outside support to keep it running smoothly and safely, and to prepare it to fly again. Flying came naturally to it. Soon, I saw the bird take off from the spot where it had been standing— without jet fuel to propel it, a pilot to guide it, or a long runway to help it get up to speed. It just flew up into the air...and soared.


Leadership Is Inherent


Leadership is designed to function like the flight of a natural bird rather than that of a mechanical plane. That doesn’t mean that leaders act independently from others. Quite the opposite. But, as I wrote in chapter 1, leadership is not a role one plays; it is a life one leads. Genuine leadership can never be separated from the essence of the leader as a person. In this way, an individual’s exercise of leadership is, in effect, “self-manifestation.”


True leaders begin to “fly” when they start living in line with their intrinsic purpose. They don’t need artificial props. A leader may have a title, status, and so forth, but he doesn’t require those external supports—and they are not what define him as a leader.


Genuine leadership cannot be separated from the essence of the leader as a person.


If you have not yet discovered your inherent leadership purpose, you may have an important position in your company and an impressive job description, but you are functioning only “mechanically” instead of naturally. You are going through the motions, but you are not leading according to the capacity that you were meant to, and you are not experiencing the level of fulfillment that comes with it.


The Vital Connection Between Purpose and Character


Only when a leader discovers who he was born to be, and how his intrinsic gifts determine his personal leadership, can he effectively develop the values, principles, and ethics that lead to strong character. Character is much more than mere rules and regulations for behavior. If we don’t understand the relationship between leadership and purpose, the development of our character can be interrupted or blocked. We may always struggle with certain ethical flaws, because we will be functioning according to an “unnatural” basis.


In the next few teachings, we will discover the extent to which the power of character in leadership is tied to personal purpose. Let’s begin by investigating how leaders develop.


How Leaders Are Formed


I have trained thousands of leaders in seminars, conferences, and training institutes across the globe. During more than three decades of research, experience, and teaching on leadership, I have read scores of leadership books. From them I’ve collected hundreds of definitions of leadership. Yet I have never been able to find one definition that incorporates all of the essential ingredients of character-based leadership.


Some years ago, while I was searching for a comprehensive description of leadership, I developed the following working definition. I still find it to be the most useful for helping people grasp the nature of true leaders and for training them in leadership so that they, in turn, can train others.


Leadership is the capacity to influence others through inspiration motivated by a passion, generated by a vision, produced by a conviction, ignited by a purpose.
To understand the process by which an individual becomes a true leader— enabling him to lay a strong foundation for his character—let’s reverse the order of the concepts from the above definition in the following sequence:


Purpose
—
Conviction
—
Vision
—
Passion
—
Inspiration
—
Influence
—
Leadership


The process occurs in this way:
An individual discovers his purpose.


As a result of this discovery, he develops a conviction about what he should be doing with his life, as well as convictions, or foundational beliefs, about how he should live it.


His convictions prompt him to conceptualize a clear vision of a preferred future that will enable him to pursue his purpose in a practical way.


This vision gives him the passion to carry out his purpose.


His passion inspires others to embrace his vision.


As others are inspired, they are influenced to take action to help him fulfill his vision.


The evidence of a leader’s positive influence on others is the manifestation of his leadership.


Let’s look at each of these stages more closely. As we do, I encourage you to evaluate the basis on which you have built your leadership and how you exercise it. What is its foundation? What is its meaning? What energizes it?


1. Purpose


Leadership is not exercised simply by implementing techniques or methods, by using one’s skills, or by exhibiting a particular management style. It is the expression of a mind-set resulting from the knowledge of who you were born to be.


We live our lives based on who we think we are and why we think we exist. Therefore, our leadership development to this point has been influenced by our sense of the significance of life and our relationship to it.


Discovering Your Inherent Purpose


A true leader recognizes that he has a special purpose for being in the world. That purpose determines the area of leadership in which he is to serve. His recognition of his particular purpose is not an indication of undue pride. Rather, it is a realistic assessment of his gifts and strengths.


Every person on earth is meant to exercise leadership in a particular area of gifting. One of the ways we discover our purpose is by recognizing the gift we can contribute to the world and/or the problem we were born to solve. This process involves asking ourselves questions such as these:


What are my talents?


What would I like to do with my life?


What do I most enjoy doing?


What has been my lifelong dream?


What idea do I have that refuses to go away or keeps recurring in my mind?


What have I always wanted to do but never thought I would be able to?


What injustices make me so angry that I must do something to alleviate them?


King Solomon, the wisest and richest man of his day, said, “A man’s gift makes room for him.”1 Your unique gift will make room for you in the world, opening doors of opportunity, while drawing the help and resources you need to fulfill your purpose.


Every person on earth is meant to exercise leadership in a particular area of gifting.


Internally Motivated


Perhaps you have been using your gift to some extent but haven’t really applied it with a sense of personal purpose. Or, maybe you have you have been burying your dream, settling for a lesser existence. You may already be very accomplished in a certain field but secretly wish you were doing something different with your life.


If you pursue your true purpose, you will be internally motivated to exercise your inherent gift. In contrast, if you do something you were not born to do, you will have to make an effort to perform it. Maintaining your leadership position or your job will become a burden and a drain on you.


When someone is in the wrong place, he sometimes has to prop himself up with a surplus of support people and resources. But when he finds the place for which he was born, his life begins to flow naturally. He no longer needs to manufacture motivation, because he can’t wait to start each day and initiate the next step that will bring him closer to seeing his purpose fulfilled. He’s found what he has been looking for in life. He’s not even motivated by a paycheck, because a true leader has a need to fulfill his purpose, whether or not he receives compensation. Even so, he discovers that provision comes when he focuses on serving his gift to the world.


If you hate Monday mornings, if you can’t wait for the weekend to come, then you are a “jet.” But if, after a weekend, you are eager to get back to your work (your corporation, artistic endeavors, volunteer activities, and so forth), you are a “bird”—and not just any bird but an eagle.


Avoiding Ethical Pitfalls


It can be much more difficult to exercise character in leadership if you are in the wrong field, place, or position in life. This is because if you have become frustrated and uncertain in your leadership, you may say and do things that are not honest or forthright, for the purpose of protecting your position or keeping your insecurities from being exposed. If you are motivated not by your inherent purpose but by other impulses—a desire for fame, money, and the like—you will want to do whatever it takes to achieve those ends, and character will take a backseat.


In an address to aspiring lawyers, Abraham Lincoln wrote some wise advice, which we can apply to any field of endeavor:


There is a vague popular belief that lawyers are necessarily dishonest....Let no young man, choosing the law for a calling, for a moment yield to this popular belief. Resolve to be honest at all events; and if, in your own judgment, you cannot be an honest lawyer, resolve to be honest without being a lawyer. Choose some other occupation, rather than one in the choosing of which you do, in advance, consent to be a knave.2


The same principle applies to any arena of endeavor. If you know you cannot have good character while pursuing a certain goal or working in a certain field, then you should cease pursuing that goal or vocation and find your true purpose. You should pursue something that you can do with honesty and integrity. Even when we are functioning according to our purpose, we still have to build and maintain our character, but we can avoid some of the ethical pitfalls that spring from wrong motivations, boredom or apathy, and the fear that others will learn our weaknesses.


When we are functioning according to our purpose, we can avoid ethical pitfalls. When you are settled into your purpose, insecurities will begin to melt away. You won’t wear yourself out trying to please other people; you won’t need others constantly telling you that they approve of you and what you are doing. You will like yourself because you will experience your own inner approval as you fulfill what you were born to do. You will also be freer in opening up to other people as you work together to fulfill mutual purposes.


The primary focus of your leadership, therefore, should not be to lead people —that result will develop naturally. Rather, it should be to discern your true self and to pursue your purpose. By exercising your unique gift, you will discover your personal leadership and find meaning, fulfillment, and contentment in your work. And the character it takes to sustain your gift and your leadership is what this book is all about.


You were meant to accomplish something that no one else can accomplish. You were born to do something that the world will not be able to ignore. So, diligently seek your gifts, purpose, identity, potential, and destiny.3


2. Conviction


Once a leader discovers his personal gifting and leadership, it ignites conviction in his heart. In the process of leadership development, conviction has a twofold connotation. The first sense of the word is a belief in one’s significance. This is not just head knowledge. It is the certainty that you have something essential to contribute to humanity. It is a 100-percent dedication to your purpose, which is stronger than any opposition you might encounter. As a leader, you must be convinced that you exist for a worthy reason and that you are able to accomplish what you were born to do.


The second sense of the word refers to convictions (plural), or deep-held beliefs based on a commitment to one’s purpose. Convictions give you a sense of direction in life. They guide your activities and give them meaning. Your convictions are instrumental to your character development. They lead you to become dedicated to specific principles, or a code of ethics, by which you pledge to live as you carry out your purpose.


An individual can have the other qualities listed in the above definition of leadership, such as influence or passion, without having conviction. But true leaders manifest each of the qualities—and the ingredient we are sorely missing among leaders today is personal convictions. Having convictions is what enables a person to remain stable and trustworthy, even in the midst of difficulties or temptations.


Frankly, if you don’t have solid convictions, you don’t deserve to have followers. If you keep vacillating in order to please people, if you keep sacrificing your belief system in order to be accepted, you are not a leader— you are a compromiser. We need leaders who are willing to stand up to the disapproval of their own friends and the public at large for the sake of something that is noble and true. Today, it is hard to find leaders who have such commitment to their convictions.


If you sacrifice your belief system in order to please others, you are not a leader—you are a compromiser.


3. Vision


A leader’s conviction about his significance propels him to develop a personal vision, as he begins to formulate the specific way in which he will carry out his contribution to his generation. I define vision as “purpose in pictures” or “the future in pictures.” It is seeing your purpose so clearly in your mind’s eye that it is already a reality to you. All true leaders have a clear vision. They can “see” the objective they hope to accomplish or the product they want to produce.


When Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech, he declared, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”4 From the clear way he articulated his vision, many of the 250,000 people who heard him speak from the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., that day—as well as the multitudes who have since heard or read his words—must have virtually seen the future he envisioned.


Vision influences your entire life, including your priorities—how you use your time, what you spend your money on, what opportunities you act upon, and so forth.
What is your personal vision? When you start “seeing” your dream and realizing how your gift can be served to the world, you begin to formulate a vision for your life. And it is through your vision that you will be able to begin the practical process of fulfilling your life’s purpose.


4. Passion


Most people have an interest in their future, but they lack the drive to fulfill what they truly desire to accomplish in life. Yet, those who have discovered their purpose, formulated deep convictions, and captured their vision in their mind’s eye will have natural enthusiasm and energy. Hard work and diligence are always involved in carrying out one’s purpose, but they can be difficult to maintain without internal motivation. Passion provides that motivation.


It is his sense of significance that a helps a true leader to protect his passion from degenerating into mere hunger for power. Tragically, there are leaders in our world who seem to have no trouble killing or otherwise eliminating their opponents and others who are “in their way”—including many innocent people—in order to achieve their ends. But they are not willing to die for something noble. In contrast, the passion associated with true leadership comes from a personal commitment to sacrifice oneself to fulfill one’s purpose—even to the point that one would be willing to die for it.


Leadership passion is therefore a desire that is stronger than death. We see evidence of this quality in the lives of great leaders. Abraham Lincoln spoke about his unequivocal commitment to the principle of freedom for all men that is embodied in the Declaration of Independence, asserting, “I have said nothing but what I am willing to live by and, if it be the pleasure of the Almighty Yah, die by.”5 Nelson Mandela said, “I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”6


Mahatma Gandhi was only five foot four inches and had a slight build, but he won a remarkable political victory over the British Empire, freeing India from colonial rule. He had a vision of equality and justice in India and a conviction about nonviolent protest. He went to jail and was willing to die for this vision. His passion stirred up hundreds of millions of people and brought about sweeping change. That’s the power of passion in leadership.


5. Inspiration


In the process of leadership development, inspiration is the point where the leader connects with other individuals; it is where his purpose intersects with their purposes. A leader’s passion for his purpose is like a flame, igniting new possibilities in the minds and hearts ovf other people, causing them to think in new ways and stirring up and revealing the convictions and visions within them. In this way, a leader’s vision gives meaning to others’ lives as it invites corporate commitment to a noble cause. People’s personal vision will always be found within a larger corporate vision.


A leader’s passion for his purpose ignites new possibilities in the minds and hearts of other people.


Awakening Others’ Sense of Purpose


When you inspire people by your passion for your purpose, you won’t need to recruit them to help you, obtain their “vote of confidence,” or wait for them to approve you. As you awaken their sense of purpose, they will voluntarily join you in order to fulfill their own contribution to the world through participating in your vision. They will offer their time, energy, resources, and creative power to be part of a larger purpose to which their vision is connected. Likewise, other leaders will inspire different people who will join them, based on their innate purposes and gifting. There is a place for everyone to manifest his personal leadership abilities.


Keep in mind that although true leaders draw other people to their vision, they do not “clone” them to be just like themselves; they do not seek to recreate themselves in others. Rather, they enable others to use their unique gifts and abilities to fulfill their own inherent purposes. It should be clear that people don’t receive their personal visions from the leader to whom they are connected—they are enabled to fulfill their own vision as they help the leader enact his.


For example, suppose a leader’s vision is to manufacture a safety feature that would help prevent plane crashes under severe weather conditions. He has the idea and enough knowledge of engineering that he believes the device can be developed. However, he can’t design and produce it by himself. As he begins to share his vision and passion for this safety feature, he will draw others to him whose personal vision is to participate in airline design and who have the innate gifts to develop and produce such a device.


Free of Manipulation Is Creating


Just as true leaders don’t seek to clone themselves in their followers, they don’t try to “collect” followers and supporters in order to make themselves feel good. They may identify particular people they would like to mentor, and invite them to help carry on the overall vision after they are gone, but they never actively try to recruit admirers.


Likewise, a leader who is motivated by his purpose, convictions, vision, and passion never uses or abuses The other people. Genuine leaders seek to facilitate the Process by personal visions of their colleagues, executive team members, managers, employees, and family members. At the same time, the manner in which they live out their vision and code of ethics is a positive example to those around them.


Inspiration is the opposite of intimidation and is absent of manipulation. When leaders fail to inspire others, they often resort to manipulation to force people to participate in their plans and do what they want them to do. I’ve studied many individuals who have portrayed themselves to the public as leaders but who are really professional manipulators. They play on people’s fears, use a carrot-and-stick approach, and threaten and coerce them. That is not leadership—that is sophisticated dictatorship.


Every leader must recognize the danger of falling into manipulation. Every day, all over the world, people manipulate their spouses, their children, their friends, their colleagues, their coworkers, their employees, their clients, or their constituents because they do not understand—or respect—the leadership quality of inspiration. The moment you stop inspiring people and start manipulating them, you cease to be a true leader.
Inspiration is the opposite of intimidation and is absent of manipulation.


6. Influence


To a large extent, leadership is influence, and all of us already exercise some influence—whether positive or negative. If somebody else is watching you, you are a leader. The moment you have a child of your own to raise, you are a leader. When you know more about a particular subject than others and can teach it to them, you are a leader. When you are placed in a position of responsibility over your peers, you are a leader.


Leaders who exercise positive influence don’t try to prove themselves to others. They are more concerned with “manifesting” themselves, or revealing the purpose they were born to fulfill. When you inspire other people through your passion, you never have to announce that you are a “leader.” People will think of you as a leader, and will call you one themselves, because you will have motivated them to do something—change the status quo, create something new, find a solution to a problem, and so forth.


The essence of influence is the ability to motivate other people to take action and effect change. You can’t lead if you don’t influence. You can’t influence if you don’t inspire. You can’t inspire if you don’t have passion. And you won’t have passion unless you are convinced about your purpose, convictions, and vision.


As I wrote in the introduction to this series, nothing is altered or transformed without leadership. As leaders go, so goes the world. Therefore, if we don’t do something about the global crisis in leadership we are experiencing today, the state of our societies is going to grow worse and worse. Moral leadership is urgent in human affairs because the character of leaders—for good or for ill—affects the lives of their followers. Let us look at some specific ways in which this influence occurs.


1. Leaders Influence the Mind-set of the Followers


Leaders can transform people’s outlook to the point where their perspective becomes completely different from the way they formerly thought. Such influence is a tremendous power that all leaders need to acknowledge and discipline in their own lives, ensuring that they do not abuse it—especially since a change in mind-set almost always leads to a change in behavior.


A leader can use rhetorical skills to convince people that what they believed was good is evil, and vice versa—altering their values and conduct. In Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar, after Brutus and his fellow conspirators kill Caesar, believing him to be a tyrant, the character of Mark Antony uses his communication skills to turn the crowd from an admiration for Brutus to a seething desire to kill him and his accomplices. Followers must always weigh the consequences of what they hear and receive from their leaders.


In contrast, an enlightened perspective is a gift that true leaders can give their followers. For example, when Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote the novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, she changed the mind-set of tens of thousands of people who had been either neutral toward the institution of slavery or accepting of it. By putting a personal face on the issue, she showed that slaves were people rather than “property,” so that many citizens began to support efforts to abolish slavery.


An enlightened perspective is a gift that true leaders can give their followers.


2. Leaders Influence the Characteristics and Attitudes of the Followers


A leader who holds deep convictions can transfer those convictions to others. For instance, he can rouse the fearful so that they will take bold and necessary action in the midst of a crisis. Winston Churchill, through his powerful speeches, stirred the English people to continue standing against Nazi Germany after the fall of France. In one of these speeches, he famously declared, “...the Battle of France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin....Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour.’”7


In contrast, a leader who lacks conviction can transfer his complacency or timidity to his followers. There is an account in one of the books of Moses in which Moses sent twelve leaders to scope out the Promised Land before the nation of Israel entered it. When the leaders returned, ten of them expressed their fear of the inhabitants, declaring that they were too strong to defeat: “We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them.”8 Two of the leaders insisted they would still be victorious, but the people grumbled and took on the perspective of the ten who were afraid and felt like “grasshoppers” in their own eyes. As a result, the victory was delayed for forty years—almost two generations. The people lost out, largely because they allowed the fearful mind-set of their leaders to infect them.


3. Leaders Influence the Morality of the Followers


The ethics of a leader can sway those who follow him—either directly, through the corporate values that are encouraged through his leadership, or through his policies. If the leader is a high-ranking official over a nation, his morals can permeate an entire culture. You may come from a country in which the leaders have tremendous gifts, communicate well, and are competent in various leadership techniques—but are lacking in ethical convictions. Many leaders do not take responsibility for their actions. They feel they should experience no consequences when they betray the trust of their constituents, whether their employees, their families, or the public.


Such attitudes and behaviors do not go unnoticed by followers, so that many people begin to think, He’s a leader, and he did such and such and got away with it, so I can do it, too. This is why it is vital for leaders to recognize and assess the values they currently hold and to establish or reestablish ethical principles that they will commit to stand upon. We will explore this process in the next few chapters.


4. Leaders Influence the Commitment of the Followers
If a leader has strong convictions, his passion will become contagious among his followers, leading them to commit to his vision. Earlier, we talked about Martin Luther King Jr. in relation to how leaders develop vision. King’s vision gave him a passion that inspired and influenced “average” people—such as housewives, carpenters, masons, teachers, and religious leaders—to march in nonviolent protest against the refusal of certain states in the nation to acknowledge and permit voting rights for blacks. A number of them personally faced the resistance of policemen armed with clubs, dogs, water hoses, and tear gas. Why would anyone willingly risk being beaten with a billy club or choked by tear gas? What kind of man would influence people to actually do that? Someone with genuine conviction.


A leader’s commitment can be transferred to enough people that his personal conviction eventually becomes a national movement. His principles can initiate an irresistible process of reform. If, as a leader, you try to avoid an issue or a consequence, people won’t follow you. But if you meet it squarely and remain constant in your convictions, others will join you.
A leader’s principles can initiate an irresistible process of reform.


5. Leaders Influence the Destiny of the Followers


The influence of someone who has conviction can lead people to a destiny they might not otherwise have reached. Czech playwright and dissident Václav Havel, who had long decried the dehumanizing elements of communism, helped precipitate the nonviolent Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia in 1989 that effectively led to the end of communist rule there. Havel and other dissidents formed the Civic Forum to plan the dismantlement of communism in their country. Timothy Garton Ash, a historian who witnessed the forum, said, “It was extraordinary the degree to which everything ultimately revolved around this one man....In almost all the forum’s major decisions and statements, he was the final arbiter, the one person who could somehow balance the very different tendencies and interests in the movement.”9 Havel became the last president of Czechoslovakia and the first president of a new Czech Republic.


Conversely, the influence of a leader who lacks character can condemn his followers to an appalling fate. In the 1970s, cult leader Jim Jones convinced people to leave loved ones and live with him in the jungles of Guyana. Several years later, he led 909 of his followers to their deaths by inducing them to drink cyanide—then he shot himself to death.


Adolf Hitler was a gifted politician and communicator, wielding tremendous influence over the German people. He held thousands of citizens spellbound as they listened to his speeches in person or on the radio. His oration was so powerful that some people thought he was a god. Hitler had many characteristics of an effective leader. But his philosophy, his personal code of ethics, was immoral. It turned his leadership assets into frightening tools of abuse.


Hitler didn’t value all of human life—just a small segment of it. His warped value system created disaster for his nation and many other nations of the world. Millions of people died as a direct or indirect result of his reign. They were starved, died of disease, or were exterminated in concentration camps, prison camps, and quarantined ghettos. While fighting World War II—a war Hitler instigated—many people were killed in battle or died when they succumbed to disease or accident; others were wounded, maimed, or emotionally scarred for life. Multitudes lost loved ones and possessions, seeing their entire way of life vanish. Today, the German people are still trying to come to grips with the question, “How could our people have let that happen and even have participated in it?”


The lesson for us is that whatever we accommodate, we will either ultimately embrace or be destroyed by. We are not safe on any level—social, economic, emotional, physical, or spiritual—if we don’t know the person we are following. We can’t afford to be complacent or gullible.


Study and Evaluate Your Leaders


Our culture teaches us to be impressed by a leader’s power, oratorical skills, academic degrees, and/or wealth, thinking that those characteristics add up to great leadership. Yet you must not imagine that your country will remain strong and established if you vote for someone just because you like the way he speaks or looks, or even if you approve of some of his accomplishments. Before you follow anyone, you must know what that person truly believes and on what path he is taking you. You might find out too late that you don’t want to go where he is going. I encourage you not to place undue confidence on how powerful a leader is or how much knowledge he has or who his mentor was. Continually evaluate what your leaders stand for, as well as the policies they promote. Study their lives and convictions. Discover what they really think and value, and how their beliefs affect their policies. Ask yourself questions such as these about individual leaders:


Does he still have the same convictions that inspired me to follow him in the beginning?


Does he share my beliefs and values?


Does he demonstrate that he has ethical standards?


What is his vision of life?


What is his attitude toward other human beings?


What does he see as the future of this company/organization/community/nation?


What direction does he think the world should be taking?


Even if a leader’s beliefs seem good, you must still observe his life to see if his words and actions are consistent—if he lives according to his stated convictions.


“If the Blind Lead the Blind...”


I consider Yahusha of Nazareth to be the greatest leader in history, and He warned, “If a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a pit.”10 Note that the blind leader doesn’t fall into the pit by himself. Both he and the blind man whom he is leading fall into it together. We have to make sure our eyes are fully open, so that we will know where our leaders are taking us, and can avert potential disaster. We must not allow ourselves to fall into a pit with them.


Moreover, since we are all leaders or aspiring leaders in our unique areas of gifting, we have a responsibility to those whose lives we influence. That is why it is essential for us to understand the priority of character before we move on to the other aspects of leadership. We might understand many of the keys and principles necessary for being a leader but, at the same time, embrace a negative or destructive philosophy that will undermine our leadership and hurt our followers.


Leadership influence is a powerful instrument, and we must always be aware of its potential to bring either good or harm to others. Leaders without character demonstrate power devoid of principles; they often manipulate people to achieve their own ends. But true leaders have a commitment to ethics and principles; they build up others and offer them a better life.


The Distinguishing Marks of a True Leader


People are looking for leaders who have the qualities on the list we have been discussing. In the progression of leadership development, the stage in which one develops conviction is key for leaders if they are to move from the recognition of their purpose to establishing a solid foundation for becoming a genuine leader. It is not enough to know that you have a special gift that will give you a unique place in the world. You must be able to serve that gift in accordance with ethical principles that you are committed to follow as you pursue your vision.


Conviction and character are therefore the distinguishing marks of a true leader. They are what separate those who merely have titles, positions, and talents from those who make a positive difference in their families, communities, and nations—from those who make history, changing the course of human events for the better.


Consequently, the twenty-first-century leader must not seek only to find his purpose or to develop his vision. He must also desire to be introduced—or reintroduced—to ethical principles, and he must commit to developing character throughout his lifetime, demonstrating his trustworthiness to those who follow him.


Our attitudes and motivations always correspond to our character. In part III of this book, we will look at how to develop specific character qualities of true leaders. For now, let us keep in mind the following points:


Leadership, and the gifts that enable it, are inherent endowments.


Leadership is not about gaining followers—it is about pursuing purpose.


Leadership is not about manipulating people—it is about inspiring people.


Leadership is not about having power over people —it is about empowering people.


Leadership is not about controlling others—it is about serving them.


Leadership is not about doing—it is about becoming a person of noble aspirations.


Will you be a leader of conviction? Will you lead the way for others to become leaders of conviction by following your example?