Why I Write About Leadership

On one level, I write about leadership to help other leaders and aspiring leaders excel, delight in leading, and avoid the mistakes I made.

But there’s a bigger, more impassioned drive at work:

I write about leadership because I’ve received it, helpful and harmful, and attempted it, helpful and harmful, from the moment I was born and even before.

A vast array of leaders has influenced, pushed, blocked, lifted, and rescued me; many had too much influence, some should have had more.

My experience with leaders and leading, however, has not been all struggle and difficulty. Every season of healing and renewal in my life has involved wise, kind, yet flawed leaders helping me make progress I could not have made on my own. I am deeply grateful for them.

Further, healing and renewal involved taking initiative as a leader in some sense, trying to serve others in sometimes uncomfortable and vulnerable ways, risking failure and letdown so I could grow and learn deeper lessons of love. Leading others has been deeply meaningful, even exhilarating, yet full of costly mistakes.

Here is what I will dwell on in my coming essay:

Because I’ve been influenced by so many leaders in so many ways, I’ve realized I’ve drawn inaccurate conclusions about leadership that have led me to overreact and underreact to my experiences with leaders.

Because I’ve tried to lead in so many ways and experienced both failure and success, I’ve drawn inaccurate conclusions about my leadership experiences that have led me to both avoid and crave leadership roles.

Chances are that you, like me, have a distorted leadership story.

I write about leadership because I know that leadership has profoundly shaped you, hurting and healing you in so many ways.

Think of all the leaders you’ve been exposed to: parents, siblings, aunts and uncles, cousins, grandparents, schoolteachers, employers and supervisors, coaches, bullies, peers, pastors, counselors, doctors, actors, musicians, authors, athletes, and politicians.

I write about leadership because it affects everything I think and do. And if I don’t write about leadership and evaluate it carefully, I won’t learn or think carefully about who I follow and how I influence others.

For Christians, Jesus Christ is our professed leader, the Good Shepherd, who laid down his life for you. But Jesus has many rivals for our heart’s affection. I’ve craved the approval of humans over God more times than I to admit.

Dallas Willard asks a very challenging question:

Who teaches you? Whose disciple are you? Honestly.

One thing is sure: You are somebody’s disciple. You learned how to live from somebody else. Human beings are just the kind of creatures that have to learn and keep learning from others how to live.

Probably you are the disciple of several “somebodies,” and it is very likely that they shaped you in ways that are far from what is best for you, or even coherent.

Originally, we are the disciples of our parents or other family members most intimately related to us. Usually this is very good… But not always. Our original family connections may be anything from mildly debilitating to disastrous.

Then we are the disciples of our teachers, then of our playmates and peers—one of the most potent of “discipling” relationships—then perhaps again of our teachers.

Some of our teachers often include some very glamorous and powerful people. They may indeed be teachers—instructors of some type, as in the armed services, or even academic professors. But they may also include public figures of various kinds: artists, musicians, writers, professionals.

It is one of the major transitions of life to recognize who has taught us, mastered us, and then to evaluate the results in us of their teaching. This is a harrowing task, and sometimes we just can’t face it. But it can also open the door to choose other masters, possibly better masters, and one Master above all.

Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy, 271, 272

I initially found this evaluating of my teachers and leaders very difficult. We are all grappling with whether some of our leaders led us astray. Sometimes it seems too painful to acknowledge they failed us, and yet we are still “following” them even though we no longer talk to them.

In my post next week, I’ll share some ideas on evaluating your leaders, how to get closer to your “leadership story,” how you were led and how you learned to lead, or perhaps how you became averse to leaders and leadership.