the Goal of Leadership
In my experience with leadership, I have created and now follow what I call the “Inspirational Leadership” model. I call it that because it operates from a simple goal – to inspire the people I lead to aspire to greatness. Probably the greatest compliment I ever received from someone was that my presence made him want to be better, that I inspired him to strive for something more. That is the kind of leadership that I want to model. And that is the goal that I work from. In order to make that work, we have to model it. We have to aspire to greatness ourselves, and model it for all to see and follow. There are a lot of different models out there, and many of them are great, in fact, we share a lot of the points of practice. I like this one because it will work in any setting, be it business, military, church, or whatever. It works from the basic premise that everyone wants to be a part of something bigger and grander than themselves. Everyone wants to be great at something. A leader’s job is to inspire those people to want to be a part of his/her team, to take ownership of his/her vision and direction. When that happens, and we inspire them to aspire to be great at it, then hold on, because we will be hard pressed to keep up or stop them. Just look at Wal-Mart! That is how it became the business giant that it is today. Sam Walton was able to inspire his people to take ownership of his vision and then inspire then to aspire to greatness and then he just held on for dear life while his people took him all the way to glory, but it comes with a warning too. Woe betides the people who start off on that road only to lose their first love; for they will fall, and fall hard. (Rev. 2)