The Invisible Side of Leadership
Fred Smith Sr.
The most important thing in life is not to capitalize on our gains. Any fool can do that. The important thing is to profit from our losses.
Congregations sometimes judge leaders by "apparent success"—and we sometimes judge ourselves that way as well. But leadership is more than outward. To lead a congregation, we must recognize some intangible factors, both good and bad.
Let's start by identifying three false indicators of successful leadership.
1. Succeeding at a private agenda. When this happens, the leader progresses but the people don't. A pastor builds a large church, for example, in order to win a denominational post rather than to serve the people.
General Electric once learned that young eager beavers running branch or subsidiary operations would sometimes take short cuts that didn't show up until after they were promoted upward. They would cut maintenance expenditures, for example, and throw the money into the profit column. That made them look extremely good. The next fellow would come along, however, and find a lot of overdue maintenance waiting for him. GE decided to add a section to its evaluation procedure for executives: What effect has this person had on the future of the operation?
In the same way, the pastor who takes too many outside speaking engagements is pursuing a private agenda. The person who wants to pray at every football game or social event, to be continually seen with the right people, looks like a leader—but is he? He may become a prominent person but not be leading the church to help people mature or to reach the lost. It's a private agenda.
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Doing better than other people doesn't mean we're successful. We still might not be doing anything close to what we ought to be doing. The essence of leadership ...
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