Happy New Year. Be blessed and be a blessing!

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Which Type of Leader Are You?

So I went to this church conference/convention/retreat called Winterfest. Winter + Festivel = Winterfest I suppose??

Anyway, I learned a lot and I think that best way for me to remember them is to jot them down before I forget about them. So here it is.

Emerging Leadership.

Which kind of leader are you?

Type 1 : Red Bull leader
This type of leader drinks Red Bull everyday. One Red Bull is enough to keep you going for one day, maybe two for some who are extra-sensitive to glucose and caffeine. Once the high/strength/stamina wears off, he goes and get another drink and move on. This type of leader has finite amount of energy and stamina in him.

For instance, leader A has 1000 calories from one Red Bull and he decides to pour out 300 calories to one brother, another 300 to another sister, and another 300 to another friend of his. Ooops, now he only has 100 calories of energy left in him. That lack of energy is going to drive him crazy and hungry for more. So he goes and take more Red Bull and this vicious cycle never ends. Besides, when he gives to people, he will be like, "Hey, I only have 1000 calories in me and I'm giving you 1/3 of them. Treasure them well." Wait?! He gets the energy from the Red Bull; it is not even his own energy.

To tie it to present day leadership, this is the type of leader that goes to church every week in order to get refreshed. He then uses up all his spiritual energy during the weekdays and go back and be filled again. He is not going to feel full ever because he has to use them all the time. Not only that, a side effect might emerge from this bad habit; that is he might feel that he doesn't even receive enough from God to share anything with anyone.

Not only that, a Red Bull leader will incline to leading his people to himself instead of leading them to Christ. So we have this never-going-to-be-pleased leader who is constantly trying to uphold his own position desperately by trying to point people to him and not God.

This is not a good example of a leader.

Here's another type of leader that we should consider.
Type B: Overflow Leader

This type of leader goes to a fountain and drink as much water as he can. He drinks so much that he cannot contain it anymore. So he uses his water bottle/canteen/tumbler/Tupperware/whatever you call it and fill up all the bottles and distribute them to other people. In return, other people feel refreshed and he feels refreshed too. He can never get enough of his resources because the water is always overflowing in the fountain and his subordinates never feel thirsty too because they in return, benefit from the fountain as well. Eventually, the leader, being a good leader, points the people to the fountain because obviously, that's the source of the energy. The leader will not keep pointing that he is the source of the water because after a while, he will want people to get to the source of the water and drink from the fountain themselves, instead of him having to fill up their water bottles every single time. By leading them to the fountain, he does himself a great deal of help and he does the people a great deal of help too. He releases some of the pressure of his shoulder, he leads people to the original source of water, and he let people enjoy the overflowing water that he has been enjoying all this while.

I'm pretty sure that you have a good idea of what this story means. A good leader should be the one who is constantly renewed in God, constantly having a relationship with God, having revelations from God, that everything overflows. The God in him just shines through and people get drawn to him automatically. Then he will have this abundance of spiritual experiences to share, lessons to teach, and so on. Not only that, he will ultimately lead the people to Christ and lead the followers to be leaders themselves too.

Now that's a good leader.

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