The Making of a Leader by Dr. J. Robert Clinton was a book I had recently picked up at the recommendation of a friend of mine in the midst of a conversation regarding leadership.
Stylistically, this book reminded me a lot of how it felt to read through books by the Barna Group (with the exception of The Power of Vision)or from Ed Stetzer – lots of facts and observations. In a conversation with a friend over Facebook, I had mentioned that it didn’t remind me of books on leadership by authors like Maxwell or Lencioni, or Covey.
I was wrong.
This book does remind me a lot of Covey’s style of writing. What I mean by that is that – like Covey – this book is best understood in the context of hindsight and is most difficultly understood if you are early in your leadership journey. I am experiencing this with an intern I am walking 7 Habits through. It isn’t impossible to gain insight, but it seems to me that a lack of “real world” experience (and it doesn’t take much) that it’s difficult to grasp some of the illustrations.
To sum it up, this book was less of a book on HOW to be a good leader, but more of a scholastic observation of WHAT leaders go through to become the leaders they are.
The thing that I appreciate the most about this book is that it is overtly from a Christian worldview and is filled with scriptural examples of principles observed of leaders in real life. While someone who does not find their vocation in ministry may not feel this book speaks to them about how a person becomes a leader in their “ministry in the marketplace” there are plenty of great nuggets of truth that not only makes you a leader – but they are great nuggets of truth that tells you how to be an effective Christ-follower.
Anyways, enough about that…here are some things that I found interesting from The Making of a Leader:
- Integrity and faithfulness are preludes to success and giftedness
- Effective leaders recognize leadership selection and development as a priority function
- Effective leaders increasingly percieve their ministries in terms of a lifetime perspective
- Apart from character, ministry is only religious activity or even worse, religious business
- A leader must learn obedience in order to influence others toward obedience
- The right to influence comes form the ability to clarify God’s truth to others.
- It is self-initiation in the entry patterns that indicates strong potential for upper-level leadership
- Those who self-initiate often disrupt the status quoand threaten those in authority over them…Leaders need to recognize the value of this quality and be on the alert for those emerging leaders who demonstrate it
- A spiritual gift is a unique capacity for channeling the Holy Spirit’s power into a ministry
- Sometimes being right on certain issues is less important that maintaining a positive relationship
- What we truly are is revealed in crisis
- …high-level leaders are known for reading widely and for their capacity to apply lessons to their own lives from what they read. The ability to do this often short-circuits the years it would have taken to learn the same lessons by personal experience
- Spiritual authority comes out of an experience with God. A leader does not seek spiritual authority; a leader seeks to know God.
- People in power usually win whether right on a given issue or not
That last point is the hardest lesson I had to learn on my own. As one mentor of mine puts it, “It’s the Golden Rule of power. He who makes the gold makes the rules!”
If you have just started in vocational ministry, this would be a good book to read every couple of years to assess where you are at in your leadership journey and to keep you from having unrealistic expectations on how you are supposed to be developing as a leader. If you have been in leadership for a while, this is a great book for you to look back at your experiences and evaluate with clarity how well or how poorly you navigated the stages of leadership – and to make adjustments regarding the future of your leadership journey.