{"id":34356,"date":"2023-11-29T18:20:03","date_gmt":"2023-11-30T02:20:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=34356"},"modified":"2023-11-29T18:20:03","modified_gmt":"2023-11-30T02:20:03","slug":"leaders-and-followers-chicken-and-egg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/leaders-and-followers-chicken-and-egg\/","title":{"rendered":"Leaders-and-Followers (Chicken-and-Egg)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cBoth leaders and followers are involved together in the leadership process. . . . Leaders have an ethical responsibility to attend to the needs and concerns of followers.\u201d [1]<\/span><\/p>\n

In Peter G. Northouse\u2019s leadership textbook, “Leadership: Theory and Practice”, the author explains various leadership theories incorporated into practical applications for aspiring leaders.\u00a0 Each chapter includes theory and practice, including an application section that discusses aspects of the leadership approach and case studies to illustrate issues and dilemmas.\u00a0 The questionnaires provide readers with a chance to contemplate their individual leadership styles and viewpoints, offering a beneficial exercise in developing self-awareness as a leader. I gravitated towards leadership approaches and styles intricately linked with the paradigm of the transformational servant leader.<\/span><\/p>\n

Transformational leaders inspire and motivate others to achieve exceptional outcomes, while transactional leaders focus on exchanges, rewards, and punishments to influence. As I serve others in my role as a coach and pastor, I find that much of my work emphasizes a follower\u2019s needs, values, and morals, utilizing skills such as listening, empathy, healing, awareness, conceptualization, community, stewardship, and commitment to growth.\u00a0 With a commitment to inspire and motivate others, it is crucial that I listen to the Voice of One so that my leadership is kingdom-seeking, God-honoring, and biblically rooted. As Jules Glanzer stated, \u201cLeaders must lead from a divine center with a heart in tune with the heart of God, forming a holy partnership that results in fulfilling the purposes of God on earth.\u201d [2]\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Northouse highlights the importance of emotional intelligence in servant leadership and its impact on interpersonal relationships.\u00a0 He quotes research from the <\/span>Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies<\/span><\/i>, \u201cEmotional intelligence, or the leader\u2019s ability to monitor the feelings, beliefs, and internal states of the self and followers, has been identified as an important attribute for a leaders implementing a servant leader ideology.\u201d [3]\u00a0 The book also explores leadership ethics, emphasizing the ethical responsibilities of leaders and the importance of making principled decisions.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I conclude with a couple of personal reflections on leadership.<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m grateful for the cultivation of leadership that begins in the womb.<\/b>\u00a0 I am God\u2019s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for me to do. (Ephesians 2:10).\u00a0 From the moment I was being formed in my mother\u2019s womb, God knew me and had kingdom purposes for my life.\u00a0 The experiences, pains and triumphs, bruises and scars, abilities and gifts, all are being recycled for God\u2019s glory.\u00a0 My mind and heart experience deep gratitude as I think of the people that have influenced me over the years and have had a leadership role in some capacity in my life.\u00a0 The earliest leaders being my parents, who loved God, loved me and introduced me to Jesus, my Lord and Leader.\u00a0 I think about the teachers, pastors, coaches, Sunday School teachers, professors, authors, spiritual directors, life coaches and more.\u00a0 Each one uniquely crafted to lead and I am so grateful to be the beneficiary of their leadership, whatever the style.\u00a0 Leaders make imprints, lasting impressions on the lives of followers.\u00a0 As Peter Northouse pens, \u201cleadership involves influence. . . without influence, leadership does not exist.\u201d [4]\u00a0 As names and faces of leaders who have made an imprint on me come to mind, I immediately remember Mr. Wachveitl, who quietly served as an usher every Sunday at my church as a kid, handing out pieces of gum to me and my friends when we came to church.\u00a0 \u00a0 Others have led boldly from a distance without even knowing who I am or their influence on me like Andy Stanley during a Catalyst Conference in 2016, John Maxwell during a Leadership Summit in 1998, Rick Warren during two Purpose Driven Life Conferences, Christine Caine, Priscila Shirer, and most recently J.D. Walt, Sower-in-Chief at Seedbed, during a one-to-one interview last week.\u00a0 As a follower, I needed leaders to help in the pruning process of my own leadership identity.<\/span><\/p>\n

Leading out of who I am is to be natural.<\/b>\u00a0 In the book <\/span>The Sound of Leadership<\/span><\/i>, Glanzer states that \u201cleading out of who you are is natural and does not require a set of goals or a personal plan.\u00a0 It just happens\u201d. [5]\u00a0 I am a goals oriented person who likes making lists, timelines, calendaring and goal setting.\u00a0 When I was a Kindergarten teacher, each day I met with one student, during our quiet time after lunch recess, to check-in with them to see how much they had grown and work together on setting new goals.\u00a0 Many progressing from recognizing zero letters and sounds to reading CVC books.\u00a0 They loved coloring in simple bar graphs charting their growth as we celebrated together for a few brief moments in their time with Mrs. Glei.\u00a0 It is good to be reminded that while goal setting is a valuable practice, there exists skills, traits and abilities that are activated as we lead.<\/span><\/p>\n

While leading out of who I am is to be natural, my mind quickly shifts to taking an inventory of the numerous flaws, shortcomings and obstacles, that the Lord is pruning.\u00a0 As Simon Walker states in his book, <\/span>Leading Out of Who You Are<\/span><\/i>, \u201cHe had used weakness. . .There can be no shadow of doubt whatsoever that at the heart of God\u2019s purposes to transform the world is the way of vulnerable self-offering.\u201d [6]<\/span><\/p>\n

Leaders and followers seem to represent a chicken-and-egg relationship where it’s unclear which event causes the other.\u00a0 Each dependent on the other while having profound influence and impact in the development of one\u2019s leadership style.\u00a0 Leaders need followers, and followers need leaders. [7]<\/span><\/p>\n

[1]\u00a0 <\/span>Peter G. Northouse,<\/span> Leadership: Theory and Practice,<\/span><\/i> (Thousand Oaks, California: SAGE Publications, Inc., 2019), 7.<\/span><\/p>\n

[2] Jules Glanzer, <\/span>The Sound of Leadership: Kingdom Notes to Fine Tune Your Life and Influence<\/span><\/i> (Jules Glanzer: 2023), 33.<\/span><\/p>\n

[3] Ibid, 260.<\/span><\/p>\n

[4] Ibid, 7.<\/span><\/p>\n

[5] Jules Glanzer, <\/span>The Sound of Leadership: Kingdom Notes to Fine Tune Your Life and Influence<\/span><\/i> (Jules Glanzer: 2023), 49.<\/span><\/p>\n

[6] Simon Walker, Leading Out of Who You Are (Carlisle, UK:\u00a0 Piquant Editions, 2007), 2.<\/span><\/p>\n

[7] Peter G. Northouse,<\/span> Leadership: Theory and Practice,<\/span><\/i> (Thousand Oaks, California: SAGE Publications, Inc., 2019), 7.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cBoth leaders and followers are involved together in the leadership process. . . . Leaders have an ethical responsibility to attend to the needs and concerns of followers.\u201d [1] In Peter G. Northouse\u2019s leadership textbook, “Leadership: Theory and Practice”, the author explains various leadership theories incorporated into practical applications for aspiring leaders.\u00a0 Each chapter includes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":168,"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":[2310],"tags":[2489,2258],"class_list":["post-34356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-doctor-of-leadership-3","tag-dlgp02","tag-northouse","cohort-dlgp02"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34356","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\/168"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34356"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34356\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34357,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34356\/revisions\/34357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}