3. Leadership is Not Directions-Specific Pt. 3
Remember, leadership is the process of influencing the movement of a group toward a particular outcome. In my pickup basketball example, it doesn’t matter whether Mr. Hot-Hand was a good leader or a bad one, he was still the leader. Because leadership is not direction-specific.
A leader can lead an organization in a positive direction or a negative direction.
Take the executive leaders at Enron for example. They led that company right into bankruptcy and ultimately out of business. Or look at ponzi scheme architect Bernie Madoff. Through lies and deceit, he led hundreds of investors in a financial house of cards that came toppling down at the end. Ultimately, most of the investors lost all their money. Some even lost their entire retirement savings. And for the coup-de-grâce, the Wall Street and California banks led the collapse of the entire world economy between 2006-2009.
But those examples are all corporate organizations. What about relational-organization? How about the marital-organization led by Arnold Schwarzenegger and Tiger Woods? Too obvious? What about Brad and Angelina. I don’t know whose providing leadership, but someone has taken the lead on adopting those six children.
I can even go biblical on you!
I’ll spare you all the details, but check out these famous/infamous biblical relational-organizations: Abraham and Sahara (it started bad…then turned out good), Ananias and Sapphira (it turned out bad), Boaz and Ruth (it turned out good), Ahab and Jezebel (it turned out bad), and Priscilla and Aquila (it turned out good).
This just goes to show you that the direction your relationship is going doesn’t determine who’s leading it. Whoever is influencing the movement of a group towards a particular direction…that person is the leader.
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