For many years, I have kept two things posted prominently in my office.
One is a list of John Maxwell’s “Five Levels of Leadership”. The other is Dale Dauten’s “Code of the Laughing Warrior”.
“Accept that organizations call forth the worst in human nature and be liberated by that knowledge” is the fourth entry on Dauten’s list.
Those organizations can be your church, your work, or the clubs and teams with which you participate. It can also be your government.
Since I’m cherry-picking things from their work, the least of Maxwell’s Five levels is “position”. The very last level of leadership. Just because someone is “President” does not mean that they are a leader. They are occupying a position. From that position, they can do great harm, or they can accomplish amazing things.
Let’s consider the effect of a poor leader. One that is a bumbling, indecisive, and possibly feeble president is not an inspired leader, and it’s not someone you want to follow. People follow a leader because they “have to” based on position, but only promote their organization enthusiastically based on a connection, communication and trust with their President. Their leader.
Once that trust is broken, it’s tough for a person in a leadership position, for example a President, to regain that trust.
Without trust, a President can’t lead. It creates a vacuum of leadership, and nature abhors a vacuum, and the rest of the organization will fill that vacancy, usually with poor results. Often, the replacement will be of dubious quality, since “organizations call forth the worst in human nature”.
If you’re putting someone in a position of power because “it’s their turn,” or because “he/she/it is not the other guy,” you’re asking for trouble. We saw this at a national level with Biden. Not only did he break trust with the public, he it broke it with his own party, and they chose to replace him with someone who never won a primary or election to national office.
She proceeded to immolate $1,500,000,000 (yes, that’s $1.5 BILLON dollars) and still could not win. Such is the power of the trust issue.
I recently saw this happen with one of the other organizations I’m involved with, and results are proving to be equally disastrous. An older gentlemen was put at the helm, not because he demonstrated inspired leadership, but because it “was his turn.”
When presented with a tough problem, his response was tepid, and it violated the trust of everyone in the organization. Weakness is painfully obvious with people in a position of power.
That organization may never recover from one poor leader. We must always select inspired leaders. “Always” is not a word I use lightly.
The results from one poor leader will hurt many, and leave a permanent black mark on an organization, a country or the world. An inspired leader, however, will move his followers and those around him to a better place, and will create a positive legacy for your organization or country.
Ultimately, the members or citizens know when this is happening and will make comments like “well, we lived through your guy, and now you get to live through ours”.
Let’s constrain excellence with mediocrity, shall we? If that’s how you want to be known, I want no part of it.
I will enthusiastically follow an inspired leader. You will too.
