Simon Walker’s Undefended Leader is a great book that I enjoyed reading. It has great insights for self-leadership and leading others. Like other clergymen reaching beyond the four corners of the church, his leadership insights can impact even those that have not found the church welcoming. As I read this book, it becomes clearer how challenging leadership can be. Walker sheds light on the truths of today\u2019s leadership failures where most leaders will want to show forth strengths choosing to hide the other side of leadership for fear of scrutiny and rejection.<\/p>\n
Below are a few insights I choose to highlight that are shared by other leadership authors I admire. Leaders act as a guide between the known and the unknown. “Leadership is about who you are, not what you know or what skills you have. Why is this? These two reasons: leadership is about trust, and it is about power”[1]<\/a>. Even though leadership might not require a considerable crowd following, leaders will always have people who look to them for inspiration. John adds, “A leader knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.”[2]<\/a> The above statements agree with Walker\u2019 Leading from Front Stage insights. Undefended leadership must come from a place of authenticity (who the leader truly is). Whether leading a family, a church, a community, or a county level, a leader must earn the trust of others who will take his guidance to a particular destination.<\/p>\n Walker shares Erving Goffman\u2019s theory comparing human behavior to theatre performance. He believed our personal behavior is our performance, where we attempt to attract attention to affirm our self-identity. Our front stage is where we perform for our audience; this represents everything that can be seen by our team. Backstage is where we house all things we feel we cannot show our audience. This is where we hide our hopes, thoughts, plans, feelings, and more negative thoughts like doubt, failure, frustration, and fears.<\/p>\n This reminds a few other quotes from John C. Maxwell in his Becoming a Person of Influence teaching on leadership where he emphasizes, \u201cLeadership is influence nothing more nothing less\u201d[3]<\/a><\/p>\n It is challenging to lead unless people trust you as a leader; they will not follow you into the unknown. In Proverbs 27, we read, “For as he thinks in his heart, so is he.” Putting forward a different face might work for a short time but won\u2019t last for an extended period which will require authenticity, and it builds trust. Walker explains that there is the kind of leadership we put out for others to see (Front stage), whereas backstage leadership is the part we want hidden. He adds there is a need to balance backstage and frontstage; saying otherwise, the backstage will start leaking out to frontstage if a leader fails to balance. Since the backstage is usually messy with possible unresolved challenges, one wonders who will qualify to lead undefended.<\/p>\n Vulnerability, as shared by Bren\u00e9 Brown\u2019s quotation of Theodore Roosevelt in his speech commonly known as the Man in the Arena, says it best:<\/p>\n \u201cIt is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at best knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.\u201d<\/p>\n Every one of us has had our best and worst moments in life. Our backstage might look different, but we all share humanity and the flows that come with it. Learning to accept it and balance it with the front stage is the best way to lead. Miller’s words sum it up best. “There have been meetings of only a moment, which have left impressions for life, for eternity. No one can understand that mysterious thing we call influence\u2026yet. every one of us continually exerts influence, either to heal, bless, leave marks of beauty; or to wound, hurt, poison, and stain other lives.\u201d[4]<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n [1]<\/a> Simon Walker P., Out of Who You Are: Discovering the Secret of Undefended Leadership<\/em> (United Kingdom: Piquant, 2007).<\/p>\n [2]<\/a> John C. Maxwell, 150 Essential Insights on Leadership<\/em> (Harvest House Publishers, 2021).<\/p>\n\n