subject: Leadership's Firm Foundation [print this page] Leadership's Firm Foundation Leadership's Firm Foundation
What is critical to the leadership process and its success, is where those values come from that determine those boundaries. They can't come from a single individual. Nor can they come from the collective whole. Where do we get the ideals, the beliefs and the permanent hopes that Mr. Lippmann wrote of, that define the boundariesthose guides that mold and shape us? George Washington believed that those values and boundaries came from God. In hisfirst Inaugural Address he asserted that "we ought to be no less persuaded that the propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation thatdisregards the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained." Again, our boundaries must come from something outside of ourselves. That something is God. An effective leader has an agenda designed to produce results, but is guided by a core of values that come from outside and not from within. This process is maintained by means of the leader's integrity or custodianship of those values.
Stressing the need for integrity to an outside core of values in the performance of proper leadership, John Adair, Visiting Professor of Leadership Studies at the University of Surrey and Exeter in England, states, "Although it is impossible to prove it, I believe that holding firmly to sovereign valuesoutside yourself grows a wholeness of personality and moral strength of character. The person of integrity will always be tested. The first real test comes when the demands of the truth or good appears to conflict with your self-interest or prospects. Which do you choose?" Perhaps it is time to apply those "eternal rules of order and right", those values, to the leadership roles we must perform and lives we do lead. Everyday activities are opportunities to demonstrate and illustrate the values and beliefs for which we must be custodians. Thus, the element ofempowerment is introduced into our lives.Every person becomes in some sense a leader.The Being that created us and knows what is best for us, is the source of the values we must demonstrate. In His Word he teaches us how to serve, how to look after each other, how to esteem others higher than ourselves, how to teachin other words, how to lead. It is where we will find the guidelines we seek to steer a course through this complex age.
