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