Successful Leaders?

What makes a successful leader? The simplest definition is "leader: a person who has followers."

1. One that leads or guides.
2. One who is in charge or in command of others.
3. One who has influence or power, especially of a political nature.
4. The foremost animal, such as a horse or dog, in a harnessed team.
5. A loss leader.
6. Chiefly British. The main editorial in a newspaper.
7. leaders Printing. Dots or dashes in a row leading the eye across a page, as in an index entry.
8. A pipe for conducting liquid.
9. A short length of gut, wire, or similar material by which a hook is attached to a fishing line.
10. A blank strip at the end or beginning of a film or tape used in threading or winding.
11. Botany. The growing apex or main shoot of a shrub or tree.
12. An economic indicator.

All of these definitions have a common thread – a leader goes first. Leadership gurus are hired every day to train up organizations and motivate managers to lead. There are a thousand leadership books out there (many of them excellent – most of them repetitive), despite all of that learning and all of those resources – leadership is usually defined using items 1 – 3 above. Most people think of a leader as someone who has power, who is in charge, who leads people. The gurus and the followers have now added the word “successful” to the word “leader” because there are so many terrible leaders,

What is a “successful leader”? If people add “successful” to mean “a great leader or someone who does a really good job a good way that benefits people” they are by definition incorrect. A leader that leads people poorly using manipulative or bad means to get them to bad places or turning out to take more than they give to the people is a successful leader if people followed him, if he got them there and achieved whatever objective he held. In fact, (this will be unpopular) I believe that the “bad leader” is actually a better leader – by definition - than the average leader simply because he got someone to do something they didn’t want to do that really didn’t work out well for them in the end. His “evil” peers and partners will most certainly call him successful.

So the “evil” peers call the leader a success and the “saints” call that leader a “bad leader” based solely on the destination or means of leadership. As you can see, if people add “successful” to “leader” in this way, they have become subjective. Success is this manner is determined by whether the end or methods benefit the objectives of the one defining success. For example, if you believe that all churches should be large then successful leadership for you will result in large churches. Unfortunately, such subjectivity does not work in science, math, gravity and Christianity.

We simply have to have a better definition of successful leader. Determining the success of a leader must be absolute and not relative. Let’s find our definition simply and easily by first dropping the adjective “successful”. It is clear that a leader is either a leader (successful) or not a leader (unsuccessful) by definition – that is, did he get there and did people follow him and thus help him along the way.

All we need now is to know the objective of leadership. This is what I call keeping your eye on the ball. What are you supposed to be doing? What is the predetermined objective? For the Christian Leader, no matter the task at hand, people will always be the focus and connecting them to God will always be the objective. This is Biblically determined. Numerical growth, branches, ministries, administration, theology, Hebrew, presentation, music, drama – none of these is to be either the focus or the objective.

A Christian Leader is doing his or her job only if they are constantly and consistently living a life that is able to support, guide and in the end does direct other people to the end destination of a deep, enriching and self-supporting relationship with God. This is the “ball” of Christian Leadership – who did you lead closer to God. Don’t tell us what you did, what you built or even use the Christianese of “God built” or “God did”. Tell the world only one thing – what are the names of the people that you led closer to God today.