Leadership - (July's parish newsletter article)

The contest to see who will be our next prime minister is well underway, and we are now down to the last two candidates; Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt.  Over the next few weeks the Conservative party’s 160,000 members will make the final decision by postal ballot and the result is expected to be announced on 22nd July.Reaction in the press and social media has been varied; there are some people who enthusiastically support one candidate or the other, others who say they would vote based on who they least want to win and still others who cannot believe that out of 66 million people in the UK, the choice that we have for our next leader must be one of these two.This all got me thinking about what sorts of qualities we look for in a leader? A google search on “the qualities of a good leader” produces many ‘top 10’ lists which are a mixture of skills (communication skills, strategic planning, managerial competence, etc) and character qualities (honesty, integrity, respect, loyalty, humility, etc). In my former career in engineering and consultancy, and since I came to work for the church, I’ve worked with many different leaders.  I’ve had the privilege of working with some great leaders and with some awful ones who should never have been in a leadership position.  Working in consultancy provided some interesting perspectives; I got to see companies from top to bottom and witness the styles and abilities of leaders throughout an organisation.  I met some leaders who were totally focussed on the bottom line for the company, others that put the success of their department ahead of the company, others who’s only real interest was their own career and, occasionally, leaders who had a more holistic approach and were focussed primarily on the needs and development of their staff.  This last kind of leader believed that the best way to ensure success was for their staff to be happy, motivated, growing and performing well.  Their skills as a leader were important, but it was their character qualities that I believe motivated their staff to follow them. Robert Greenleaf is credited with coming up with the term ‘Servant Leadership’ to describe this last style of leadership, “A servant-leader focuses primarily on the growth and well-being of people and the communities to which they belong... The servant-leader shares power, puts the needs of others first and helps people develop and perform as highly as possible.”  However, Greenleaf did not invent servant leadership, history shows that servant leaders have been around for 1000’s of years.The scriptures of many of the world’s great religions contain the ethos of servant leadership.  From a Christian perspective, I see it embodied in the way in which Jesus led, served and taught those that followed him.  On one of the occasions when his followers were arguing about which of them was the ‘greatest’, he said, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” Whoever wins the leadership contest, my prayer is that they would genuinely serve the interests of the nation and not their own agenda, that they would foster the growth of the values like respect, tolerance, honesty, integrity and humility* that will help to heal the divisions in our society.Rev B Jackson* Humility is often misunderstood.  I like CS Lewis’ definition, “Humility is not thinking less of ourselves, it is thinking of ourselves less.” As such it’s an essential characteristic of servant leaders