I remember the time when I was a young man in my mid-twenties, and I experienced an epiphany. This was a significant moment for me because it was when I came to the conclusion that not all failure was bad. I discovered that the worst leaders I knew, in Walker’s words, had substantial frontstage presence but terrible backstage content. I decided then that I would not be that kind of leader. It drove me to be a different kind of leader. Scott Walker’s book is a breath of fresh air as it gives me a language to think more clearly about how I grew as a leader, even though I didn’t even know I was growing. It never even dawned on me that growth was happening.<\/p>\n
My epiphany came at about the same time as I came to place my faith in Christ. The weight of so many past failures was pulling me down. God revealed to me through His Word that this was not how he intended for life to be. Shortly after, I was commissioned into the United States Cavalry. The weight of leadership took on a life of its own, but now it flowed from a very young 21-year-old with a college degree, a young wife, and a colossal naivet\u00e9 about what was ahead.<\/p>\n
As I read Scott Walker’s book, I felt as if I was a poster child for the Undefended Leader. I think I would be most remiss if I did not lay much of the credit for my leadership journey at the feet of my wife and life partner of 45 years. Quoting Walker, “Freedom to lead an undefended life comes from finding a relationship in which we are safe and secured by unconditional attachment.”[] She has always made me know that my leadership was not secured by my skills and resources but by our attachment to one another and that God was big enough not to be overwhelmed by my failures and weaknesses.[] I absolutely love his notion that our freedom to fail flows from the source of our approval, namely God Himself and the host of people he has put around me who love and approve of me because of who they are and who I am.<\/p>\n
I was struck by his discussion on Strategies of Defense and our experience of trust as it develops through each of our lives. I had a humorous time trying to nail down my Ego shapes and how they shaped my personal leadership ego. In many ways, it felt like a futile exercise as none of us have as accurate a view of ourselves as perhaps we ought to have. I suppose I have always felt stronger than I really was, taller than I really was, more brilliant than I really am. If it wasn’t for the pervasive presence of a mirror, I could imagine myself thinking I was actually better looking than I am. The mirror has dispelled all delusions for me, even though my wife for these almost five decades together assures me I am as handsome as I ever was.<\/p>\n
His analysis of the development of leadership styles and our response to trust through childhood and young adulthood is fascinating. His expansion on his four significant categories was quite exhilarating and exhausting at the same time. The Shaping Leadership Ego as a trust response intrigued me as an outflow of a high level of trust in themselves and others. The words he uses to describe the Shaper leader are a bit ambiguous to me. He uses words like optimism, paternalism, and self-defined reality to describe the Shaper’s leadership propensities, but when you look harder at his lists, you realize that he sometimes uses words in the broadest sense possible. I will just list the several other leadership egos that Walker posits, such as The Defining Leadership Ego. Next, he describes the Adapting Leadership Ego. From personal experience, I found this leadership ego most difficult to work with. Last, and the Leadership ego I most identified with is the Defending Leadership Ego. I am not sure why this seems to resonate with me, perhaps because my childhood days were very uncertain, and I sometimes feel that I almost raised myself. I have always been drawn to unsafe places and was quite determined to see the people there feel safe.<\/p>\n
My takeaway from Walker’s significant Leadership Egos is that all of them can be redeemed. \u00a0As I pondered each of these character qualities of leaders by Walker, I was reminded of 2 Thessalonians 1:11b \u00a0May he give you the power to accomplish all the good things your faith prompts you to do. Simon Walker begins his book by stating that “Leadership is about trust and power.” Paul writes the church at Thessonliki and prays for them that God would give them the power to accomplish all the good things your faith prompts you to do. As we look around us and see specifically Christian leaders grow, we must do so with the understanding that God is above all. God rises way above all the bad things that happened to me as a boy. He rises above all the mental and emotional limitations that I think I may have if I will seek him first. God will envision who he wishes, create movements through the most unlikely, and he will unite our hearts together with His through the glue of trust.<\/p>\n
[1] Walker, Simon P. Leading out of Who You Are: Discovering the Secret of Undefended Leadership (The Undefeated Leader Trilogy, bk 1)<\/em>. Carlisle: Piquant Editions Limited, 2007.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I remember the time when I was a young man in my mid-twenties, and I experienced an epiphany. This was a significant moment for me because it was when I came to the conclusion that not all failure was bad. I discovered that the worst leaders I knew, in Walker’s words, had substantial frontstage presence […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":215,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","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":[],"class_list":["post-41159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","cohort-dlgp04"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41159","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\/215"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41159"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41159\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41173,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41159\/revisions\/41173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}