"The greatness of an organization will be directly proportional to the greatness of its leader."
Blackaby then moves to a typical leadership question - Are leaders born or made?
Even without reading the remainder of the chapter we can predict the answer. If leadership is essential to a organization's success, and they are merely born, than this book is pointless. It would need to become a book on how to recognize leadership rather than develop it. Perhaps the point of that question is whether or not you can train someone with no leadership ability.
I think you can. Primarily because I've never met anyone with 0 leadership ability. Everyone has at least a little.
The disturbing part of the chapter is the description of the preparation of leaders, which is through adversity. Perhaps you could summarize it, "whatever does not kill you has the potential to make you a better leader." At the very least it makes your bio a little more interesting.
However, since we are not going to advocate killing a parent of kids we think might be good leaders, the tragedy strategy for developing leaders is off the table.
Instead we look to Abraham for some guidance.
- Abraham was an ordinary person.
- Abraham built on his heritage.
- Abraham grew through failure.
- Abraham built spiritual landmarks
- Abraham experienced God's redemption.
- Abraham learned by experience.
- Abraham was not allowed to take shortcuts
- Abraham demonstrated his faith
- Abraham obeyed God
- Abraham became a friend of God.
As leaders we should not become embittered about trajedy, rather understand that it builds character. Admittedly this is a cliche, and not terribly comforting, but it does seem to be how life works.
Questions for discussion
1. What have you learned from adversity?
2. If you had it to do over again, would you prefer a life free from tragedy?
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