Category: Book Summaries

Do you want to be a leader for life?

Great Leaders Grow

In their book Great Leaders Grow: Becoming a Leader for Life (2012), Ken Blanchard and Mark Miller ask, “Are you a serving leader, or a self-serving leader?”  They quote C.S. Lewis, who said, “Great leaders don’t think less of themselves; they just think of themselves less.”

Blanchard and Miller assert that a leader’s capacity to learn determines his or her capacity to lead.  If a leader stops learning, he or she stops leading.

Both authors strongly believe that each of us has a stewardship opportunity to maximize the talents and gifts that have been entrusted to us.

If a leader is not growing, he or she can’t expect others to grow.  So, how do you grow?

Click here for a summary of Great Leaders Grow

What can we learn from “Shepherd Leaders”?

Shepherd Leadership

In October 2003, my first professor in Human Resources Management at Texas A&M, Blaine McCormick, sent me a copy of a book he co-authored with David Davenport entitled, Shepherd Leadership.  In the book, McCormick and Davenport point out that good leaders aren’t just born…it is possible to learn how to be a better leader.

They took Psalm 23 and crafted a picture of leadership.  Now, when you or I think about a shepherd, we may be thinking about a calm, peaceful activity.  However, Biblical shepherds like David (author of the 23rd Psalm) held a dangerous, demanding, around-the-clock job.

McCormick and Davenport note that whereas servant leadership downplays hierarchy and status differences, shepherd leadership places the leader squarely at the front of the followers to serve as role model.

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