Ahead and Behind

For a couple days I am in Presbytery Board meetings in Des Moines. It is a time to hang out with some of my favorite leadership people. I like a quote I read this morning from Isaac Newton:

“If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulder of giants.”

I have been blessed through life to walk in the company of people I would call giants in the faith. Many of them feel that they didn’t intend to take the leadership mantle, but found they had followers. That automatically qualifies them as leaders. John Quincy Adams once said, “If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.” I wonder sometimes if there are more following than I know about or who I am unknowingly following and emulating. I thing there is great value in taking that inventory occasionally because I can learn some things about myself that I may not have been aware of. I certainly need to keep away from the “I “ and move toward the “we”. Peter Drucker once said that the leaders who work most effectively, never say "I." And that's not because they have trained themselves not to say "I." They don't think "I." They think "we"; they think "team." They understand their job to be to make the team function. They accept responsibility and don't sidestep it, but "we" gets the credit. This is what creates trust, what enables you to get the task done. It has often been said that more can be accomplished if we are not so concerned about who gets the credit.
Since I am flooding my blog this morning with thoughts from others about leadership, I might as well close this with a Greek thought here from Plato:

“A tyrant is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.”

Check out who you are following and who is following you today.

Psalms 108:5 "Be exalted Oh God, above the heavens, and let your glory be over all the earth"