Lead, Follow or get Out of the Way!<\/p>\n
\u201cIf no one\u2019s following, you\u2019re just out for a stroll.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cEverything rises and falls on leadership.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cLeaders are readers.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cLeaders inspire.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cLead, follow, or get out of the way!\u201d (Seen on a bumper sticker\u2026)<\/p>\n
These are just a few of the dozens of leadership platitudes circulated in recent years.\u00a0 Leadership gets a lot of press nowadays.\u00a0 This hasn\u2019t always been the case.\u00a0 The very idea of \u201cLeadership\u201d as a separate discipline is a recent innovation within the academy.1 \u00a0During the 1990\u2019s, the broad field of \u201cLeadership Studies\u201d began to develop as an academic discipline alongside classical management theory.\u00a0 Little by little, it has supplanted management theory as the idea \u201cdu\u2019 jour.\u201d\u00a0 Highly effective leaders are elevated to iconic status while capable managers\/administrators are oftentimes treated with disdain and contempt.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Probably because to a capable manager\/administrator, it seems that the process is more important than the people.\u00a0 So the people turn their ire toward the manager.\u00a0 Never mind that the manager is simply maintaining the culture that has been created by the leader.\u00a0 The leader generally stays safely out of the line of fire while the manager\/administrator takes the darts.<\/p>\n
Management theory developed in the era of industrialization when the primary emphasis was on the scientific development of better technologies and systems to build products, \u201cin an era defined by machines and inward-focused machinelike business organizations.\u201d2 \u00a0People were largely viewed as commodities, easily replaced.\u00a0 If one should break, another could simply be inserted to take its place in the machine.\u00a0 \u201cThe classical theorist gave little attention to the human aspects of the organization\u2026 The whole thrust of classical management theory and its modern application is to suggest that organizations can or should be rational systems that operate in as efficient manner as possible. This is easier said than done, because we are dealing with people, not inanimate cogs and wheels.\u201d3 \u00a0Human commodities\u2026\u00a0 Hmm\u2026<\/p>\n
So, who is a leader beholden to?\u00a0 To whom is she accountable?\u00a0 Is there any inherent obligation to strive to make the organization she leads a place where humans can flourish?\u00a0 Or do the organization\u2019s goals and purposes carry the day?\u00a0 If the former, then leadership is gift from God, instituted to express divine intent among the pinnacle creation.\u00a0 If the latter, then people really are interchangeable, proverbial cogs in proverbial wheels.\u00a0 It seems to me that God is about the business of easing suffering and elevating the oppressed.\u00a0 If this is the case, then it must follow that the leader\u2019s task is to be out front in this pursuit, to lead <\/i>people and organizations toward this end goal!\u00a0 For Christian leaders in all arenas (business, corporate, church, non-profit, community) the ultimate goal of extending the Kingdom of God here on the Earth must remain the preeminent pursuit, trumping everything else.<\/p>\n
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1. \u00a0Note, the very existence of graduate programs in leadership, such as the DMinLGP, is a relatively recent phenomenon.<\/p>\n
2. Nitin Nohria and Rakesh Khurana, eds., Handbook of Leadership Theory and Practice: an Hbs Centennial Colloquium On Advancing Leadership. <\/i>(Boston, MA: Harvard Business Review Press, 2010), 573.<\/p>\n
3. \u00a0Morgan, G. Images of Organization. <\/i>Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. 1998. 3.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lead, Follow or get Out of the Way! \u201cIf no one\u2019s following, you\u2019re just out for a stroll.\u201d \u201cEverything rises and falls on leadership.\u201d \u201cLeaders are readers.\u201d \u201cLeaders inspire.\u201d \u201cLead, follow, or get out of the way!\u201d (Seen on a bumper sticker\u2026) These are just a few of the dozens of leadership platitudes circulated in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2,475,410],"class_list":["post-3310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dminlgp","tag-lgp5-2","tag-nohria-and-khurana","cohort-lgp5"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3310"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3310\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3311,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3310\/revisions\/3311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}