Ladder-leaning for Leaders

A Proverb

You may think you are on the right road and still end up dead.

A Thought

What if you get to the top of the ladder of your life and find out you had it leaning against the wrong building.

Have you ever had a conversation with someone about life’s purpose? Asked them “Why are you here? For what were you born? Just what is your purpose in life? Have you asked yourself?

Uncomfortable questions, it turns out.

Perhaps Socrates realized that the pressures of peers, of culture and learning provide false-fronts upon which you lean your ladder of life. He noted that “an unexamined life is a life not worth living.” Questions like that above help bring some clarity to thinking. Especially if one is challenged by the answers.

The toxic culture of the 21st century is numbing minds to ultimate truths that guide life. Life, for many just happens. For others, life finds meaning in self – pulling yourself up, reframing thinking, finding some sort of god in you. To some contestants on American Idol life is about singing and entertaining. Their purpose is wrapped up in their voice. Good to have focus. But is that purpose?

One contestant has a purpose greater than his voice and it even drives his choice of songs – he wants his ladder leaning up the “right wall.”

Earthquakes and tsunamis have a way of changing focus. If your world is about you and you only – what you do (how well you sing or entertain, engineer, build, project manage, whatever) - what happens if you “lose your voice – your world is washed away?” Have you lost your purpose? Is living over?

My purpose is to glorify God by expressing His love as a communicator, adviser and mentor, especially to those in the business community.

A Proverb

What’s your purpose?

©Copyright 2011 P. Grifffith Lindell

Leadership Wholehearted in Purpose

Plato made an interesting observation in The Republic:

“When we say that a man desires something, do we say he desires all that pertains to it or only one part and not another?...Then any student who is half-hearted in his studies-especially when he is you and lacks the understanding to judge between what is useful and what is not-cannot be called…a lover of wisdom. He is like one who picks at his food. We say that he is not really hungry and has no appetite. We say that he is a poor eater and no lover of the table….”

Leaders must have a purpose to which they are committed. Completely. Wholeheartedness powerfully moves people. Followers love leaders who are committed. Passion coupled with knowledge mixed in the cauldron of experience provides confidence to those being led.

As I was writing today on one of my future books - The Jericho Principle – Overcoming Impediments to Success - I was struck again with the story’s hero, Joshua who inherited the leadership reigns from Moses. What caught by attention was his side-kick Caleb of whom it is said by God, “…because my servant Caleb has a different spirit and follows me wholeheartedly, I will bring him into the land he went to, and his descendants will inherit it.” In fact, that is said of him at least three times. What a tribute!

That's exactly what we – leaders and followers – are called to do in the workplace: “Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not people…”

Christian leader: are you wholehearted in your studies of God’s way? Or do you pick and choose what works for you when you need or want it. If you are picking and choosing, Plato and I would agree – “you are no lover of wisdom.”

 A Challenge

Do you have the appetite for leadership based on Eternal Principles?

©Copyright 2011 by P. Griffith Lindell