What is leadership?
What is leadership?
You could ask 10 people to define leadership and end up with 13 distinct definitions. However, the best definition I’ve heard is that “Leadership is influence”. After all, how can you be a leader without having followers? I am beginning to learn a lot about influencing others in my new job as a Childrens Ministry Director. Today was a day when I was challenged to return to the basics of influencing others. Most of my thoughts can be summarized by Socrates’ three components of public speaking: Logos (the logic of the words), Pathos (emotional energy), and Ethos (the basis for the audience trusting the speaker).
I need to have all three of these components to be a good leader. I have to think things through well and recruit others to help me see aspects that I could not see on my own. When we finally come up with a plan, I need to show others that I’m excited about it so they will want to get on board with it. However, along the way, I need to be strengthening my relationship with all these people so that when the time comes for them to listen to an idea or take a step toward implementing it, they will want to do so.
Another thing I was reminded of is the two basic elements of persuasion: Raise a need and offer a solution to that need. People don’t care about your solution until they first understand the need. They also don’t want to listen to you if you only complain about problems without ever offering a solution. I personally tend to skip over the first part and get to my solution, assuming that everyone else sees the same need that I do, but I can’t assume that they do.
I’d like to leave you with a quote that I heard on the radio a couple days ago: “You don’t need a classroom full of kids looking up at you in order to be a teacher; you only need one.” Everyone is a teacher to somebody else in some ways at some times. That includes you. I want to encourage you to consider the quality of teaching (or leading) that you are living out and take a moment to go “back to the basics” to see how you can be a little more efficient.
You could ask 10 people to define leadership and end up with 13 distinct definitions. However, the best definition I’ve heard is that “Leadership is influence”. After all, how can you be a leader without having followers? I am beginning to learn a lot about influencing others in my new job as a Childrens Ministry Director. Today was a day when I was challenged to return to the basics of influencing others. Most of my thoughts can be summarized by Socrates’ three components of public speaking: Logos (the logic of the words), Pathos (emotional energy), and Ethos (the basis for the audience trusting the speaker).
I need to have all three of these components to be a good leader. I have to think things through well and recruit others to help me see aspects that I could not see on my own. When we finally come up with a plan, I need to show others that I’m excited about it so they will want to get on board with it. However, along the way, I need to be strengthening my relationship with all these people so that when the time comes for them to listen to an idea or take a step toward implementing it, they will want to do so.
Another thing I was reminded of is the two basic elements of persuasion: Raise a need and offer a solution to that need. People don’t care about your solution until they first understand the need. They also don’t want to listen to you if you only complain about problems without ever offering a solution. I personally tend to skip over the first part and get to my solution, assuming that everyone else sees the same need that I do, but I can’t assume that they do.
I’d like to leave you with a quote that I heard on the radio a couple days ago: “You don’t need a classroom full of kids looking up at you in order to be a teacher; you only need one.” Everyone is a teacher to somebody else in some ways at some times. That includes you. I want to encourage you to consider the quality of teaching (or leading) that you are living out and take a moment to go “back to the basics” to see how you can be a little more efficient.
posted by Ben and Christina at
10:46 PM
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