Thots for Life
November 2002
A service to the business community from Hillendale Baptist Church
Seven Deadly Sins of Leadership
"First pride, then the crash. The bigger the ego the harder the fall." Proverbs 16.18 (The Message) Leadership is not about impressing people, but serving others. Leadership is not about manipulating those around you but motivating them. Leadership is not about controlling those under your supervision but about communicating to them a vision for God-designed excellence. God has entrusted leaders with the privilege of influence and to develop others for eternity's sake. But while we most often focus on the positives, what are those aspects of leadership that can derail your influence and impact? Here are seven deadly leadership sins that can shatter your effectiveness as a leader:
1. Haughtiness. Haughtiness is when you're high on yourself and low on others. It displays an attitude of superiority, which looks with condescension on others and their accomplishments. It is an attitude of insolence that thinks no one else has the ideas or insights that you do.
2. Arrogance. Arrogance is a sense of self-important smugness that claims much for you and gives little to others. It displays an attitude that others are there to serve you. D.L. Moody observed, "God sends no one away empty except those who are full of themselves."
3. Pride. This is not the healthy self-respect for your work or ministry but an unhealthy, egotistical pride. Pride exhibits itself as being absorbed with you while ignoring others and their needs. It has been said that pride is the only disease that makes everyone sick but the one who has it!
4. Disdain. Disdain compares you with others in a derogatory way. It looks down its nose with scorn on those around you and belittles the accomplishments of others.
5. Presumption. Presumption claims privileges above your rights. It's a me-first attitude concerned more with the "perks" and "privileges" of power than the responsibility of true leadership.
6. Assumption. Assumption takes for granted what others say is truth without objectivity or investigating it for yourself. The result is going way out on an all too thin limb.
7. Vanity. Perhaps the most destructive of the seven is vanity. Vanity is an intense craving for admiration and applause. This leads you to misunderstand the situation as you follow a personal agenda rather than a servant's heart. All of these leadership snares center on a self-motivated ego. Conceit and arrogance will kill effective leadership. If we allow it to take hold, we end up focusing on ourselves, not on others. And that's manipulation, not leadership.
Jose Cubero was one of Spain's most brilliant matadors. He enjoyed a spectacular career before he died at the age of 21 after a tragic mistake. Cubero thrust his sword, a final time into a bleeding, delirious bull, which then collapsed. Considering the struggle finished, Jose turned to acknowledge the crowd's applause. The bull, however, was not dead. It rose and lunged at the unsuspecting matador, its horn piercing his back and puncturing his heart.
We should never consider pride or vanity dead before we are. Just when we think we've won the battle, just as we turn to accept the congratulations of the crowd, pride stabs us in the back.