Servant-leadership-KNOW Yourself: Worldview

This, the third leg of the “Knowing Yourself Stool,” expresses your integration of your belief system (purpose – a vertical relationship, so to speak, with your God) with your ethical system (the horizontal relationships with others) into a systematic process of understanding the past, interpreting the present and thinking about the future – teleology.

The literature on the theory and practice of leadership has been around a long time. From Plutarch’s Lives, to more modern writers, a body of literature has developed about the ways leaders must think and behave to motivate followers - each writer offering valid ideas and processes on leadership. Studies have emerged from many disparate disciplines that have shaped and augmented the literature. Each writer, some intentionally, many without intention, has reflected a particular worldview.

One’s worldview consists of at least three attributes, (with thanks to Nancy Pearcey, writing in Total Truth for this model) it:

• Assumes something about origins (fundamentally either matter or spirit - first cause - is eternal);
• Defines the problems that beset the human being (at the core it’s either sin, or some evolved set of environmental/societal drivers); and finally,
• Ultimately offers a solution to the human condition.

Our view of these three attributes determines our views about intentions of individual behavior, behavior – the acting out of those intentions, and impact humans have on each other and the role that leaders and followers play in that dance of interaction.

Some questions to consider include:

• How do you view the worlds of scared and secular? Are they interrelated or separated by a “divide” that thinking humans do not cross?

• How do you incorporate your belief system into your mental models of how the world operates – the dynamics of human interaction?
• How do you connect your perceptions (assumptions) with reality (what your senses communicate)?
• How do you connect your purpose with your principles in a pattern of thought that will position you in the mind of those with whom you interact?

Are you leading from your core of “getting stuff done” that separates work, from play, from home, from faith, or are you leading from an integrated core that maintains that one is the same in each instance, expressing a different focus, but not a different person?


Copyright ©2009 by P. Griffith Lindell