There is an existing leadership problem no one is talking about and should be. Because it has been around for several years.
Recently I had a conversation with a friend who is one of the most astute leadership thinkers I know. I asked the following question:
“What new leadership thought has come out in the last 10 to 15 years? I think there has been a land rush on new language to reframe old thoughts. But what new thoughts have come out since John Maxwell’s 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership and the Jim Collins books?”
He thought for a moment and said, “I’d have to give it more thought because I can’t really think of anything right now. Everything really does go back to Maxwell and Posner and Kouzes. I guess there really is nothing new under the sun.”
The reference to (Barry) Posner and (James) Kouzes is the classic book they co-wrote entitled The Leadership Challenge: How to Make Extraordinary Things Happen in Organizations.
Here is my theory.
It is if God from 1990 to 2010 gave us one incredible leadership lesson after another. Information flowed like water from a faucet from individuals like Maxwell, Warren, Hybels, Stanley, Jobs, Gates, Buffet, Lencioni, Sinek, Saban, Summit, Wooden, Collins, Godin, Ramsey, Gladwell, and many more.
But I feel like God has put a lid on new thoughts until we have become faithful to implement what He has already given us. Once we do, I feel new ideas will flow once again.
We are moving from a period of leadership information to leadership application.
How do you know we haven’t been applying what we have learned? Because the more leadership information has increased, so has the level of dysfunction and instability in our churches, nation, and world at a commiserate rate. So much so, we now have a leadership famine in our country and world. I wrote about this recently in the post Why We Don’t Need Anymore Smart Leaders. We Have A Wisdom Famine In Our World Today.
For this crisis to change, I think the new leadership thinking should be focused on the following areas:
- Wisdom over intelligence
- Character over competence
- Personal holiness over personal freedom
- Personal growth over personal gain
- Culture to overcome crisis
- Execution over explanation
- Divergent thinking. In other words, seeing new ways to solve age old problems. This requires diversity and new minds in the room. Did you notice how many of people listed above were middle-aged white men at the time? The future will be much more diverse with men and women of all nationalities, races, and ages.
- Creation over creativity
- Results over rhetoric
- and finally, the Bible (the greatest leadership book ever written) over banter.
While leadership books are still selling (I mean who I am kidding, I have written two of them), it does feel like there is nothing new under the sun. Once we focus on the topics above, I feel new leadership ideas will flow once again.
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