THE CLASSICAL VIEW OF YOUR PERSONHOOD

A correct understanding of personhood - the classical view - is not merely a cold, obscure, and irrelevant religious dogma. It is a foundational and indispensable part of understanding who you are and your sense of self-worth and dignity. It opens the door to purposeful living, to a proper understanding of self, and ultimately determines your view of leadership.

The classic, Judeo-Christian view of personhood starts with an understanding of God Himself. The biblical record begins with God, In the beginning God… (Genesis 1:1, ESV). God alone is the fountainhead of all that exists. God is completely independent of and sovereign over all things He created. God is not dependent upon any created thing. Throughout eternity it is God alone who creates, upholds, and governs every part of His creation from the largest to the smallest.

All reality is created by, owned by, controlled by, and completely dependent upon God. As the Apostle Paul wrote to the Christians in Rome, For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen. (Romans 11:36, ESV).

This means that God is the author of mankind - of your personhood. Again the biblical record is crystal clear:

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
Genesis 1:26-27 (ESV)

Yes, you are a creature, part of the rest of God’s creation. Yet, at the same time, you are set apart from the rest of creation. You are unique, carefully shaped, male and female, in the very image and likeness of God. Consequently, you are distinct from the rest of creation. This likeness is not incidental. It is intentional. It was God’s conscious and purposeful design to make you in such a way that you reflect His image.

Being made in the image of God is the primary organizing principle of human life. It is the essential element of your existence. It shapes how you are to live. People should be able to look at you and see something of God because you are to represent something of God himself. You reflect Him, like a mirror, to the rest of creation.

Indeed, reflecting God’s image has significant implications for every person in every arena of life, including leadership. As Anthony Hoekema observed,

Any view of the human being that fails to see himself or herself as centrally related to, totally dependent on and primarily responsible to God falls short of this truth.

What is man? Man is the bearer of the very image of God. This is the answer!

This reality is foundational to understanding the truth about leadership!

Hoekema, Anthony A., Created in God’s Image, Grand Rapids, MI, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1986, p.1.

So Tell Me - Are Leaders Born or Made?

According to The Owosso Argus Press, Brad VanPelt was unquestionably the greatest athlete ever to come out of the farm country of mid-Michigan. Brad earned eight varsity letters in football, baseball, basketball, and track and field at Owosso High School. In his senior year he was named all-state quarterback and given honorable mention on the Sunkist All-American High School Basketball Team. Brad had enormous strength. In high school track and field, he threw the shot put 46 feet, 7 inches. Brad’s “Number 10” football jersey, now retired, hangs in the halls of Owosso High School.

All around town people say, “What a natural born athlete!”

Brad attended Michigan State University where he was a three-sport athlete, receiving collegiate letters three times in football and twice in baseball and basketball. He earned numerous honors from The Associated Press, Walter Camp Foundation, United Press, The Sporting News, Time Magazine, American Football Coaches Association, Football Writers Association, Football News, Universal Sports, The Columbus Touchdown Club, and others. Brad became the first defensive back – ever – to receive the Maxwell Award as the nation's top collegiate player. He was a second-team All-Big Ten pick in baseball as a pitcher and still ranks eighth on the Michigan State single-season strikeout list. When Brad played baseball at Owosso High School, one major league baseball team scout said, “No major league pitcher can throw the baseball as hard as Brad!”

“What a natural born athlete!”

Though drafted into professional baseball, Brad decided, instead, to play professional football. He was drafted in the first round by the New York Giants playing fourteen years in the National Football League (New York Giants for ten years, Los Angeles Raiders for three years, and the Cleveland Browns for one year). He played in five straight Pro Bowls and was named player of the decade for the 1970s by the Giants.

“What a natural born athlete!”

Brad continues to be honored for his athleticism. Brad was named to the Lansing State Journal's Michigan State University’s Centennial Super Squad in 1996; inducted into the MSU Athletics Hall of Fame in 2000; inducted into the Michigan Sports Hall of Fame in April, 2002; and inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in December, 2002.

“What a natural born athlete!”

Or was he?

You see, the only thing most people saw were Brad’s amazing athletic accomplishments on game day. Brad grew up in my neighborhood. Few people observed the countless hours he spent practicing and training – shooting thousands of free throws – often after dark – into the old backboard suspended over the garage door; pitching the baseball – again and again and again – into his father’s well-worn catcher’s glove; or, throwing the football, with laser precision, through the old rubber tire dangling from the tall burr oak tree in his backyard.

So, was Brad Van Pelt a natural born athlete – or was he made?

This is the very question that divides us on the topic of leadership, “Are leaders born or are leaders made?”

Or - is there another explanation?

Richard

The Age Old Question

Tell me, Richard. You’re a college professor. Are leaders born or made?

I was startled by this peculiar greeting. Actually, I was flabbergasted. It’s true. I am a college professor. I teach management and leadership courses at Covenant College, high atop Lookout Mountain, near Chattanooga, Tennessee. I was calling on a senior executive of a large foundation to express appreciation for the foundation’s long-standing and generous financial support of the college. As I entered the door into his luxurious, well-appointed, mahogany-paneled office, I was greeted with this bewildering question: Are leaders born or made?

Not one to shy away from a first-rate challenge, I retorted, Made! This is what Covenant College is all about! We’re in the business of making leaders! Frankly, I felt rather smug with my quick-witted comeback.

What followed could be described as gracious, just as easily as spirited. This highly regarded community leader and I took opposing stances on this age-old question.

Leaders are made! I said.

Leaders are born! he exclaimed. Your position is not biblical!

We soon ran out of time, forgetting the original purpose of our scheduled appointment. Though befuddled by this executive’s unanticipated challenge and relentless interrogation (he is an attorney by training), his provocative greeting prompted what has grown into my zealous pursuit for a balanced and reasoned response to this troublesome, age old question.

Let me ask you, Are leaders born or made?

Richard

The Demise of the Person

What is man?

What makes a person a person?

What makes you, you?

Familiar questions?

Led by the naturalistic philosophies and the human sciences, the traditional Judeo-Christian view of the person is under an insidious attack. In fact, your very personhood is under attack. The uniqueness of your personhood is being assaulted, discounted, distorted, and destroyed by technology, bureaucracy, media, the behavioral sciences, the judicial system, and even by recent advances in the field of bio medicine ... such as artificial insemination, cloning, genetic engineering, abortion, and euthanasia.

The machine of modern society is geared to absorb your individuality and rob you of your humanness ... distilling the human mind to nothing more than the boom and buzz of electrical impulses and chemical reactions.

The image of personhood that is emerging, particularly from the behavioral sciences, is radically distorted and far removed from the traditional and classical views of the person. The prevailing view of humanity is devoid of any concept that people are dependent on, or responsible to, a Creator God.

Stephen Evans described this attack this way, It is fair to say that the rise of the human sciences in the twentieth century has been marked by the demise of the person. That is, there is a definite tendency to avoid explanation of human behavior which appeals to the conscious decision in favor of almost any non-personal factors. The idea that God is the Creator of all things is forgotten. (Evans, C. Stephen, Preserving the Person: A Look at the Human Sciences, Grand Rapids, MI, Baker Book House, 1977, p. 14)

You know there's more to you than that!

Richard

Created to Lead

You were created - then commanded - to lead:

• Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
  Genesis 1:26-28 (ESV)

• Each and every person possesses, in equal portion, the created attributes imparted by God in His incomparable act of creation. Leadership ability emerges from these God-given attributes. Consequently, and contrary to popular belief, leaders are not born; leaders are not made. Leadership is not the byproduct of the genetic code, nor is leadership the product of having grown up in the “right” environment or having attended the “right” college. Leadership has nothing to do with being the CEO of a Fortune 500 company. Rather, leaders are created. Leadership arises directly from the attributes of God. Because every person, male and female, is created to be God’s image, every person, male and female, possesses equal capacity and full potential for effective leadership. In short, each and every person possesses, right now, the right stuff for leadership. There's more ...

• Because you are created in God’s image, you have the responsibility to bear God’s image. That is, you are to rediscover and cultivate the long-forgotten created attributes of God. You have been charged with the responsibility to carry each one of these created attributes, your leadership traits, into every arena of your personal and professional life. When you reflect God’s created attributes, you are leading. Leadership, then, is best defined as “claiming and cultivating the created attributes of God.” This is your created capacity for leadership. This is the Genesis Principle of Leadership.

This is the truth about leadership.

Christian Views of Leadership

There is far too much misleading “Christian” advice about leadership out there.

The Christian community is enchanted with the current leadership craze. Have you noticed? There is an eruption of “Christian” publications, associations, seminars, and sermons focusing on leadership.

A great deal of this “Christian” thinking about leadership is woefully unexamined, ignoring the deeply flawed behavioristic notions of personhood driving contemporary notions about leadership. Regrettably, far too many prominent Christian writers, leaders, and pastors recklessly ransack and adopt the latest leadership “flavor of the month,” casually baptize this defective notion about leadership by sprinkling it with a sloppily selected Bible verse, and then piously pronounces this view as “the” Christian view of leadership.

Consequently there is a vacuum of Christian thinking about leadership. The Christian community is notorious for “training the next generation of leaders” but turning out followers by the cage full – “rabbits” – as Solzhenitsyn might have called them.

It is time for a Christian view of leadership!

It's Time to Tell the Truth about Leadership

It's time to tell the truth about leadership!

• Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary defines a leader as “...one who has the ability to lead, show the way to, guide the course or direction of, or to be the first or foremost.”


• This definition is not exactly helpful. It reflects a vacuum of substantive, meaningful thought about leadership. It does not produce solutions to our culture’s leadership problem. Just look at the headlines.


• There is too much rubbish out there – too much ill-informed and misleading advice.
  

I trust you will enter into this discussion.

Three Things and a Photo

Seth Godin said, "Give me three things and I can find a place for them in my brain." (Seth's Blog)

Mike Farrand, my good friend, advised, "Make sure to include a photo with your postings - even if it doesn't relate to your text."

So, here goes: three things and a photo:

Three Things (Can you find a place for this in your brain?):

1. Leaders are not born.
2. Leaders are not made.
3. Leaders are created.

And a Photo (How's this!?):

Yes - I took this picture myself - last week in Alaska. Whales are created too!

Cheers! Dick

Leadership is not an option. Perhaps that’s why leadership has become an industry, not just an intriguing subject.

There are few people who don’t lead someone: a son, a daughter, a neighbor, a co-worker. A few lead many; most lead only a couple. Both by role, expectation, and interpersonal relationships, leadership is everywhere – leaders are everywhere. From many perspectives, those who have led us have formed us.

The subject of leadership has mushroomed into an industry that annually sells millions of books, prints untold numbers of magazine and journal articles, and captures thousands of seminar attendees looking for that extra-special advantage. “Experts” and “would-be-experts” wax eloquent on all the skills and maneuvers a leader can employ to move people into some pre-determined, desired behavior pattern.

Possibly there’s little in this human adventure that’s as important as one’s influence on others. The very character of life is the result of those whose influence has led us in one direction or another. So it’s understandable that the subject of leadership would capture center stage in a world struggling to find significance and meaning.

For many practitioners it’s simply a cause and effect dynamic. If the leader can create an effective causation, the effect on those to whom the causation is applied will be appropriate. The effect on the follower is directly impacted by the skill of the one exercising lead causation. Great skill – great effect; little skill – little effect.

The great gurus of business and politics and religion have been carefully and thoroughly analyzed in an attempt to uncover their leadership secrets. Most have a book they’ve written to share with the world the keys to their success. All have been credited with specific keys to their effectiveness – keys that, if you and I could duplicate, would launch a new measure of our own success.

But a student of leadership soon discovers a discouraging fact. The great bulk of information on the subject is simply another way of saying the same thing others have already said – or a new twist on the same motivational behavior that didn’t work last time. It tickles the imagination, gives short-lived new energy to modified old patterns, but adds little to the understanding of this important phenomenon. Even when graced with a Bible verse, a pithy quote from classic literature, or a clever joke, the foundation of our understanding of leadership somehow isn’t strengthened by what someone else did or said. The age-old questions of “where” and “how” and “when” about leadership simply never found resolution in the plethora of pages.

You are correct. There’s a direct relationship between the remarkable creative act of God and the leadership capabilities within each person. That relationship is intriguingly exposed and expanded in your notions of the source of leadership. No longer do we need to discuss whether leaders are born or made – whether leadership is genetic or environmental. The source is The Source. Leaders simply reflect the characteristics God created within everyone.

H. Charles Roost, Ph.D.
Founder and Director, International Steward, Inc.
Grand Rapids, Michigan

I’m mesmerized by this alluring subject of leadership. I have been a professor of leadership and management since 1974. I’ve conducted hundreds of leadership development seminars and workshops involving thousands of organizational leaders across the country. I’ve conducted leadership courses and seminars in nearly fifty nations. I take every opportunity to visit my favorite bookstore, purchase a large cup of my favorite, albeit expensive, coffee drink (a double latte macchiato with heavy cream, extra cinnamon, and a dash of nutmeg – with whipped cream, when my wife is not looking), then scurry to the business section to scope out the latest releases on this fashionable topic. I am zealous to learn all I can about leadership.

Some book titles are intriguing: The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change; The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness; The 9 Natural Laws of Leadership; Lead to Succeed: Ten Traits of Great Leadership in Business and Life; The 13 Fatal Errors Managers Make and How to Avoid Them; The 17 Indisputable Laws of Teamwork: Embrace Them and Empower Your Team; The 21 Indispensable Qualities of a Leader: Becoming the Person Others Will Want to Follow; and, How to Think Like a CEO: The 22 Vital Traits You Need to Be the Person at the Top.

Other titles are downright disturbing, such as The 48 Laws of Power. The Machiavellian approach to leadership espoused by this book is not about influencing people in a positive, winsome way. This book is what I call the “I’m here to pull you buzzards into the 21st century” approach to leadership. The 48 Laws of Power is a book about cunning manipulation. It teaches people to do anything, anywhere, at anytime to get what they want regardless of how many people get hurt in the process. If there is any redeeming value to this book, it is to make one aware of the cunning, manipulative people out there masquerading as leaders.

Some titles are absolutely amusing: Jackass Management Traits; The 101 Dumbest Moments in Business; The 108 Skills of Natural Born Leaders; Leading Every Day: 124 Actions for Effective Leadership; and, just when you think “124” traits tops them all, John Baldoni released his book, 180 Ways to Walk the Leadership Talk: The How to Handbook for Leaders at All Levels.

It makes me wonder, what number is next? 360? What are your thoughts?

"Where Have All the Leaders Gone?"

When a problem is this pervasive it must be systemic. Who or what is responsible? Is it the federal government? Is it the escalation of tensions in the Middle East? Are terrorists to blame? Or is it good old-fashioned greed that accounts for these large-scale leadership meltdowns?

It is my conviction that organizations don’t collapse because there are not enough managers; organizations collapse because there are not enough leaders. In the 1960s, the folksingers, Peter, Paul, and Mary, made popular a song that asked the question, “Where have all the flowers gone?” Perhaps today’s headlines should cause us to ask, “Where have all the leaders gone?” As Peter, Paul, and Mary pondered, “Long time passing?”

So, just how many leadership traits are there: 7? 8? 9? 10? 13? 17? 21? 22? 124? 180?

And how fast can one become a leader? Some writers make the dubious claim that you can become a leader in as few as 60 seconds. Another author claims it can be done in as little as 10 seconds. And, not to be outdone, yet another author claims that you can become a leader “now.”

In spite of this deluge of confusing advice about leadership, reports of massive corporate collapses continue to dominate the business headlines:

AVS Sputters into Chapter 11
Japan Registers Third-highest Number of Corporate Failures Since WWII
Germany Posts 25% Rise in Corporate Failures
Charges Filed in HP Spying Scandal
Lucent Posts $7.9B Loss
Tyco to Cut 7,100 Jobs, 24 Factories
Delta to Cut 8,000 Jobs
Kodak to cut 15,000

Richard

Important Questions

Important questions about leadership continue to be asked today with a heightened sense of urgency. What is the underlying apparatus that drives leadership? Is it genetics? Is it the environment? Is it attending the right school? Is there some primordial soup that explains leadership? What do first-rate leaders possess that separates them from the rest of the pack? Can leadership be taught? Or is leadership caught? Are leadership skills transferable? What is at the core of effective leadership? Am I a leader? How can I become a more effective leader?

There is an enormous body of conflicting and disparaging views on each of these questions. Unfortunately, most fail to answer these crucial questions about leadership. Thus far, most leadership models have failed to provide an adequate description for effective leadership. One only needs to read today’s headlines. Is there not a view of leadership that can really make a difference in the 21st century?

Are Leaders Born or Made?

It's time to tell the truth about leadership!

Leaders are not made! Leaders are not born! Leaders are created!

This is the truth about leadership.