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Tag: leadership

  • Book Review: Overcoming the Dark Side of Leadership

    I’m on a leadership book reading kick, so what you’ll see happening in the next posts is a barrage of books that I have read, or am reading that I have yet to review. I’m going to start with a book I pulled off my Pastor’s book shelf called, “Overcoming the Dark Side of Leadership.”

    The book is only 233 pages and it was an easy read. I did find myself feeling like I was in my general psychology class back in college except the class was taught by Obi-Wan Kenobi. From the multiple references to psycho-analysis and Maslow’s Pyramid of Needs to the repetitive reference to the “Dark Side” I had a hard time taking this book in the beginning seriously.

    This book was intended to help encourage those in leadership to avoid the traps that led to the fall of people like Jim Bakker and such. The only problem is that the view from which they have analyzed “what went wrong” was that it was from a psychological stand point. I was amused by the 5 different types of “Dark Sided Leadership”

    1. The Compulsive Leader
    2. The Narcissistic Leader
    3. The Paranoid Leader
    4. The Codependent Leader
    5. The Passive-Aggressive Leader

    While there were probably a lot of “practical” things this book may have for combating the “Dark Side of Leadership”, I would not recommend this book. I may be wrong, but it felt as thought this book did little to name the root cause of what causes leaders to fall. It doesn’t takes professional psycho-analysis to understand what the root cause is. It’s sin. I personally feel there are plenty of other books that deal with effective leadership and tackle the issues of sin that leaders deal with much better than this book.

  • Book Review: Holy Discontent

    A couple of weeks ago, this book was placed in my hand. It’s Holy Discontent by Bill Hybels. Here are a couple of phrases that caught my attention and have sparked an inward paradigm shift in regards to how I view and handle “Personal Vision”

    “The best thing that you can do is to move toward your area of holy discontent until you have clear direction from God as to what action you should take to resolve it.”

    “If you want to be a force for good, then, like David, you’ve got to choose to take action in the area of passion God has placed inside your heart.”

    “Determine now that you will never insulate yourself from what wrecks you.”

    “…anything worth pursuing ins going to require great risk…are you risking enough for your holy discontent?”

    “In the fundamental state…people care so much about getting results that they begin to move and breathe in a totally different realm. They operate with intentionality…They open themselves up to any and all new ideas and forms of input – regardless where those suggestions come from…”

    “The only thing crazier than the destination itself is how much you enjoy it once you’ve arrived.”

    The book is only 149 pages long. I read it in two nights where I decided I’d take a break from watching TV once my son was in bed and devote it to a cultivation of my mind. I totally recommend it to everyone who is in need of a challenge in the area of spiritual apathy that causes lifeless, unpassionate Christ following.