Looking for leaders

     

Everyone’s shouting out about it, engrossed in Starbucks debate over it, or writing passionately about it: Leadership. The kind that’s strong and fair. We crave it. Despair over it. Know it’s what the US (and the world) needs. Yet we remain frustrated.

      A leader of surveys, George Barna, wrote about it in Leaders on Leadership: Wisdom, Advice and Encouragement on the Art of Leading God's People (Baker Books, 1998). His book includes guidance on the tasks of a leader, the character of successful leaders, and observations on prayer among leading people.

      Motivational speaker and author Jon Gordon writes column after column on this topic—especially on the role of teamwork—and assembled his thoughts in The Power of Positive Leadership: How and Why Positive Leaders Transform Teams and Organizations and Change the World (John Wiley and Sons, 2017).

      And presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin writes about it in her new book Leadership: In Turbulent Times (Simon and Schuster, 2018).

      I guess Kearns knows as much as anyone around about leadership, which she has been studying and writing about since 1967 when she spent ten months in Washington as a White House Fellow.

      Seven years later I was privileged to be among 150 students for a series of lectures Kearns gave at Harvard on the American Presidency. And in 1975 I returned to Harvard to interview her on various aspects of leadership.

      No doubt about it, Kearns is richly equipped to answer the questions she poses in her new book: Are leaders born or made? Where does ambition come from? How does adversity affect the growth of leadership? Does the leader make the times or do the times make the leader?

      The turbulent times Kearns now writes about are as worrying as the times she discussed with me over 40 years ago, and I still smile at one of her remarks which hasn't lost its mischief or its relevance. All American presidents soon learn that “the pushbutton with which [they can] change canteen demands from pies to cheese, cannot be pushed on the world.”

      Jon Gordon doesn't offer the historical research and scholarly flourish of Doris Kearns, but he is always practical, and speaks from a base of biblical wisdom. In one of his newsletters last year he focused on talent and character in leadership. Gordon wrote: “You can be the greatest leader or coach on the planet, but if your team lacks character you will fail to reach your potential.

      ”Talent without character is like a race car with no steering wheel,” said Gordon. ”It looks great from the outside and drives fast, but without something guiding it, a crash is very likely.”

      Agreed, there are no race-cars in the Bible, but it’s certainly a book about men and women of character, and about avoiding crashes in life.

      Of course, there is no better discerner of character (talent-spotter, if you like) in the Bible than the master Christian himself, Christ Jesus.  He found potential leaders among the humblest of people, charging them with huge responsibilities outside of status and personal accomplishment. He himself modeled humility, kindness, patience, self-sacrifice, and compassion, healing not just sick people but troubled nations, too.

      I was also intrigued that Doris Goodwin should have listed similar qualities (plus empathy and humor) in her assessment of President Abraham Lincoln in the closing paragraph of her book. “He grew, and continued to grow,” she writes, “into a leader who became so powerfully fused with the problems tearing his country apart that his desire to lead and his need to serve coalesced into a single indomitable force.”

      That force, Goodwin continues, has not only enriched subsequent leaders but has provided their people with a moral compass to guide them. “Such leadership offers us humanity, purpose, and wisdom, not in turbulent times alone, but also in our everyday lives.”

     Wouldn’t that be worth a tweet from any president?