Give Me Passion!

Building transformative organizations has more to do with who than what. In his book The Human Equation, Jeffrey Pfiffer used Wal-Mart and Southwest Airlines as examples that there is no connection between organizational success and industry characteristics such as conventional strategies. He goes on to note seven practices for successful organizations. (pg. 64-65) When I read these, it occurred to me that these are only effective if you have the right personnel in place. It’s all about the people. It is incumbent upon the leader to ensure that the organization is staffed with the right kind of employee. Proper training can improve capacity only if the “raw material” is willing to expand. When looking for the right “who” there are many components to consider. In my opinion, passion would be among the most important. Proper mentoring can improve skills, but passion comes from the inside. In his book Managers as Mentors, Chip Bell credits passion for giving followers and leaders a feeling of being inspired, incensed, and ennobled which ultimately leads to a sense of being renewed and revitalized. Passion unbridled can certainly be counterproductive but all rudder and no oar can cause an organization to grow stagnate. Passionate leadership keeps the fires of passion burning in the organization. As Bell puts it: “Passionate connections invite passionate responses.”

Leadership as a Process

In Matthew 9:14-22 Jesus shows leadership as a process in His continuing efforts to develop His followers. This episode in the life of our Lord has great insight especially in the arena of leadership. The passage is presented in the form of a narration with threads of healing, teaching, and transformation. Here, actions and faith are interwoven to demonstrate deity and a clear command to follow Christ at all cost. This sounds like a great illustration of leadership for all to see. When I look further into this passage I see several key components of leadership. John Maxwell, in his book, (Becoming a Person of Influence), points out that leadership is a process which grows by stages. He says it looks like this: Modeling, Mentoring, and Motivating. Notice in the text:

1) Modeling: He heals Peters Mother-in-law. (vs. 14)
2) Mentoring: He speaks of sacrifice. (vs. 20)
3) Motivating: He challenges them to action. (vs. 22)

Jesus mentioned sacrifice in leadership in verse 20. Briscoe, Larson, and Osborne spoke of this in terms of risk taking in their book (Measuring up: The need to succeed and the fear of failure) as they assert: “Highly successful leaders ignore conventional wisdom and take chances. Their stories inevitably include a defining moment or key decision when they took a significant risk and thereby experienced a breakthrough.” Jesus certainly was not afraid to take a risk. Our challenge is to be the leader that Christ demonstrates in this wonderful passage.

A Collaborative Approach to Leadership

It takes more than one person to transform an organization. Kouzes and Possner in their book (The Leadership Challenge) assert that leadership is the key to building transformative organizations through the development of a shared vision. The leader must work together with followers within the organization to execute the vision. This mandates a collaborative effort. A leader would be foolish to think he could transform an organization alone. All the vision in the world is useless unless there is someone to buy into it and build on it. Timothy Stagich in his book (Collaborative Leadership and Global Transformation) supports this idea by stating: “Leaders who understand how to facilitate collaboration are better able to improve performance and motivate people to learn, develop, share and adapt to changes at home, at work, and throughout the global community. The transformations which occur through this process help each individual and group to reach their highest potential and in the process generate benefits…” He goes on to emphasis the importance of a collaborative approach by defining successful leadership as: “The ability to influence people to a course of action though a collaborative or facilitative approach to organization or motivation often enabling them to achieve their highest potential and maximum performance.” If we are to be transformational leaders, we must adopt a collaborative approach to fulfilling the vision of the organization.

Jesus, The Transformational Leader

Jesus shows His transformational style of leadership as He gathers His disciples together in an intimate setting. In response to their question, concerning the future Jesus prepares them for what they would face as followers. He attempts to equip them by showing a path to overcoming. This path points out the problems to be solved and encourages endurance, which leads to triumph. Terry Anderson in his book Transforming Leadership states: “Each leader needs to develop the skills to encourage others…personal applications include self examination and problem solving and assists family members to gain self understanding to solve problems they encounter.” Jesus does this as he helps His disciples prepare to deal with the problems they are to encounter in the days to come. An inner textual analysis of Matthew 24:3-13 shows this clearly:

A) Together on the Mountain “What Shall These Things Be?” (vs. 3)
B) Beware Deception “Led Astray” (vs. 4)
C) False Christ’s (vs. 5)
D) Tumultuous Times “Nation against Nation” (vs. 7)
E) Persecution (vs. 9)
D) Tumultuous Times “Brother against Brother” (vs. 10)
C) False Prophets (vs. 11)
B) Beware deception “Falling Away” (vs. 12)
A) Together in Heaven “Shall Be Saved” (vs. 13)

Jesus shows transformational leadership as He becomes the equipper and shows His followers what they are to face. Our Lord then gives them the tool to navigate the future. The tool in this case is the challenge to never give up. “He that endures to the end shall be saved.”