Since I was a young supervisor, I hear about this common misconception that leaders are born or went to the best schools. So goes the theory that you are either born a leader or not. From my experience, I beg to differ.
Yes, there are people who are born leaders. However, that far and few in between. The rest of the great leaders of our time had to learn it. Of course, you have to want to learn and practice the right leadership principles. Allow me share a story that supports why I think that leadership can be learned.
August 15, 2020 7pm started as a normal fellowship for our Victory Group. That Saturday was a little different than our previous Zoom fellowship. That night, our Bible Study group discussed a brief lesson from a very interesting topic – Lead Like Jesus.
The members of our Victory group comes from all walks of life. For everyone in the group, we are all equal. We are all leaders in our own way. Some of us are leaders by designation in our jobs. All of us are leaders by the roles we play in our family structure. Some of us are leader Dads, leader elder brothers, leader uncles, leader cousins and so on. Our role leadership is something we are born into. We cannot easily turn our backs on our role leadership.
In the course of our 90 minute fellowship we touched upon two kinds of leaders that began over 2,000 years ago. On one corner, you have the powerful Roman empire led by Emperor Augustus all the way to Emperor Marcus Aurelius. On the other corner you have a carpenters son leading twelve disciples. If I could time travel back to those days, I would have imagined that the Roman Empire’s leadership would have carried the empires dominion all the way to present day.
Ironically today, the Roman Empire no longer controls the 50 countries it did before.
On the other side; Christianity, under the leadership of Jesus and the twelve disciples has ballooned into 2.3 billion believers or 31.2% of the worlds population. Talk about successful and sustainable leadership.
Let’s see what the disciples were doing before they were called and trained by Jesus. Thomas and Bartholomew were possibly fishermen. Philip, James (the son of Alphaeus), and Judas (Thaddaeus) were tradesmen. Andrew and Peter were fishermen. James and John were possibly businessmen. Matthew was a tax collector. Simon was a zealot or someone that was passionately against the Jews.
These twelve disciples learned important leadership principles from Jesus in the years prior to the great commission. This Great Commission, lead by the Jesus disciples, has transformed the lives of billions of people for over 2,000 year and is still continuous to grow.
If these unlikely twelve was able to lead, so can you. Anyone can lead provided you understand the leadership principles the disciples learned (and practiced) from Jesus.
So here my friend is proof that anyone can lead.
Helping Develop Organizations, one leader at a time! 