Leadership is for Sissies

Okay; I just grabbed a second to catch up on my blog reading - it's been a wild whirlwind of a month, trying to juggle the church and my day-job-to-support-my-habit so that I can keep diapers on my boy, so I haven't had much time to do much of anything else.

Oh, except for reading a lot; you get to do that on planes & in hotel rooms & stuff.  While I don't mind TV (after all; hockey season's coming up), I vastly prefer to read. So my "extra-cirricular" entertainment reading has been stuff by Jack McDevitt (sci-fi writer; I just finished Eternity Road and Infinity Beach, both of which were just flat-out awesome), Robert Charles Wilson (his book Spin - oh...my...goodness was it good... Probably the best speculative sci-fi I've read in a very, very long time; I can't wait until the sequel is released in e-book format), Peter Hamiltion (The Dreaming Void - sequel series to the Commonwealth Saga and set 1500 years after the events in Judas Unchained - Pete's perhaps my favorite modern author, with McDevitt a very close second), Stephen Baxter (light on character development, but loooooooooooong on plausibility and taking our current cosmological and physics understanding to the limit - great speculative fic, Vacuum Diagrams was a great summary of the truly epic sweep of his Xeelee Sequence) and others.

But other than that, I haven't had time for much of anything else.

So after a discipleship meeting this morning with a great brother, I fired up my blog reader, and found this absolutely awesome pearl over on The Blog Of Which We Do Not Speak which I think succinctly describes the critical key differences between "leadership" (which so very many in the Growthinista camp are all a-goo-goo over) and servant leadership - which is a very exceedingly different sort of thing altogether.

LeaderMan: Wants a platform on which to say something

Servant Leader: Has something to say

———–

LeaderMan: You almost feel you know his family, because he’s your Leader

Servant Leader: You allow him to influence you, because you know his family

———–

LeaderMan: Wants you to know he’s a Leader

Servant Leader: You’re not sure he knows he’s a leader

———–

LeaderMan: Loves the idea of the Gospel, and the idea of The Church

Servant Leader: Loves God and the actual individual people God brings across his path

———–

LeaderMan: A great speaker, but self-described as, “Not really a people person.”

Servant Leader: Makes himself a people person

———–

LeaderMan: Helps you find where God is leading you in his organization

Servant Leader: Helps you find where God is leading you

———–

LeaderMan: Gets together with you to talk about his vision

Servant Leader: Just gets together with you

———–

LeaderMan: Resents “sheep stealing”

Servant Leader: Doesn’t get the “stealing” part, since he doesn’t own anyone to begin with

———–

LeaderMan: Wants the right people on the bus

Servant Leader: Wants to find the right bus for you, and sit next to you on it

———–

LeaderMan: Shows you a flow chart

Servant Leader: Shows you his whole heart

———–

LeaderMan: A visionary who knows what the future looks like

Servant Leader: Knows what your kitchen looks like

———–

LeaderMan: If it’s worth doing, it worth doing with excellence

Servant Leader: Not exactly sure how to even calculate “worth doing”

———–

LeaderMan: Talks about confronting one another in love

Servant Leader: Actually confronts you in love

———–

LeaderMan: Impressed by success and successful people

Servant Leader: Impressed by faithfulness

———–

LeaderMan: Invests time in you, if you are “key people”

Servant Leader: Wastes time with you

———–

LeaderMan: Reveals sins of his past

Servant Leader: Reveals sins of his present

———-

LeaderMan: Gives you things to do

Servant Leader: Gives you freedom

———–

LeaderMan: Leads because of official position

Servant Leader: Leads in spite of position

———–

LeaderMan: Deep down, threatened by other Leaders

Servant Leader: Has nothing to lose

I absolutely love this list, and I'm printing it out and framing it in what passes as my office to be a continual reminder.

I have no time - or patience - for "leadership."

So go to all the seminars and coaching networks and hoedowns and interpretive finger painting classes as you'd like.

But in my opinion: "Leadership" (as it is currently defined and as is currently all the rage) is for sissies.