Principles of Effective Leadership - Lesson 11
The Core Values of a Leader (Part 2/2)
In this lesson, you explore the importance of humility in leadership by examining examples from Scripture, such as Moses and John the Baptist. The characteristics of humility, such as submission, indebtedness, learning, acknowledging mistakes, sharing credit, and indifference to role, are discussed. Additionally, the lesson covers other core values for leaders, including compassion, courage, and diligence. Lastly, you discover how to build these core values in your life through learning from experiences, engaging in self-assessment and reflection, and living out these values daily.
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The Core Values of a Leader (Part 2/2)
I. The Importance of Humility for Leaders
A. The Temptation of Pride and Power
B. Examples of Humble Leaders in Scripture
II. Characteristics of Humility
A. Submission
B. Indebtedness
C. Learning
D. Acknowledging Mistakes
E. Sharing Credit
F. Indifference to Role
III. Additional Core Values for Leaders
A. Compassion
B. Courage
C. Diligence
IV. Building Core Values in Life
A. Learning Through Experience
B. Self-Assessment and Reflection
C. Living the Core Values
Dr. John Johnson
Principles of Effective Leadership
PC506-11
The Core Values of a Leader (Part 2/2)
Lesson Transcript
Dr. John Johnson [00:00:00] Now a big core value has to be humility. Humility. Humiliating. Sometimes humiliation is what's required to get to humility. But humility is a tough one for leaders because pride always lurks there. It's probably one of the great temptations of leaders that we have to constantly guard herself from, because a lot of what is about leadership is power, and it's easy to be seduced by power and importance. You know, Ruth Hailey Barden has this wonderful book on leadership in which she says there's a lot of narcissism among leaders. We are driven by our own grandiosity. I think she's right. We can become exaggerated by our own sense of importance. We can be seduced by this power. Jesus is a great model for us because he's constantly showing us the core value of of humility. And we see examples in Scripture. You know, Moses was a great leader because he was the humblest man in the world. And I always find it interesting that number 12 three makes a statement, but it was written by Moses. I'm not sure exactly what that means, but John the Baptist obviously submitted his ego. He must increase and I must decrease. And Proverbs defines hubris as a foundational sin, Meaning, you know, it's sort of the everything spins off of this particular sin. Someone once said, Pride is the mother hen under which all other evils Hatch leaders can be so guilty of this here. So in the corporate world being people notice I've listed Bernice Collins, who warned against this. I like someone who I think was Calvin Coolidge, who said it's a great advantage to a president and a major source of safety to the country. For him to know he's not a great man. And that's a great statement. Yeah, it is a great advantage to a president and a major source of safety to the country. For him to know, he's not a great man. The problem with some of our leaders today is they think they're great men. There are a lot of egos out there. So what does humility look like? It is a posture of submission. Reminds people we are not the mission. Posture of indebtedness that says I'm obligated to you. Posture of learning that says I haven't arrived, a willingness to acknowledge rather than just to find mistakes like, you know, the great illustration there of Exodus 3224. Remember that Moses comes down from the mountain and they've just created this golden calf and Moses confronts Aaron, and Aaron says, I threw the gold in the fire and out came this calf. But that's such a great line in Scripture. Now, it doesn't really quite work that way. A willingness to share the credit Reagan had on his desk. There's no limit to what you can accomplish if you don't care who gets the credit. There's no limit to what you can accomplish. If you don't care who gets the credit and a certain indifference to the role. There's a tension. First, Timothy three. If a man aspires to be an elder, if somebody doesn't want to be a leader, I don't want him to be a leader or called to want to be to a certain aspiration. But again, there's a tension. I guard against people who want to be leaders in the sense of, you know what I'm saying, who want it, and that they want the power or they want the prestige. Don't mistake humility for timidity or weakness. Paul confronts Timothy for being timid, and Jesus was humble, but he was never weak. Six core value is compassion. That is also what people need in us. They need to know that we hurt, that we care, that we don't reduce people to numbers or profits or weigh people down with excessive demands. And then the last one I have listed here is courage or steadiness in the waves. Steadiness through the storms, not afraid of the storms doing the right thing regardless of what it will cost. Taking a stand. Being willing to fall on a sword for a good cause. You know the courage to be a Jeremiah who stands up and reminds the organization of its mission. So Joshua was exhorted to be courageous. Joshua one six. David exhorts Solomon to be a man of courage just before he dies. First Corinthians 2820. Paul exhorts Timothy to be courageous. These are somewhat representative, but I think they're the essential core values nonetheless. How do you build them in your life? You learn them. A lot of it's learned through the desert. I give the example there of the Jesuits who worked really hard through self-awareness. They were some of the great leaders in earlier centuries. Heroic Leadership is a book about the Jesuits and characters, a big, big part of their leadership, and it talks about some of the disciplines they go through, through what he calls self-assessment, ruthless self-assessment, looking at what's inside, taking occasional ice water, baths where they spend a month deconstructing themselves, uses this word, looking at what are the attachments to the soul that you need to detach from. You know, asking yourself, what is the attach? What is clinging on to me? Overturning personal rocks to see what crawls out. Those are good phrases. Every now and then I'll pick up a pot on the deck and suddenly all these potato bugs scatter. The lightest exposes them. It's kind of asking ourselves what? What? When we really turn on the lights are exposed and then, you know, learning them and then keeping them and living them. Okay. Well, so much could be said about core values, but those are some thoughts. Your thoughts? Core value that you immediately think of that's left out here, or she'll look at all of them, the one that stands out the most to you.
Speaker 2 [00:07:33] The leader that I chose. Yeah. In the paper he has a pyramid on the base when they can put. We didn't have it here. And he's dead. Huh? Enjoy what you're doing. Any other leader. That's really important.
Dr. John Johnson [00:07:48] That kind of a decision. Hmm. Build is almost a core value. Of what? This is just something I value as a leader is.
Speaker 2 [00:07:56] At its core.
Dr. John Johnson [00:07:59] Like a positivism. A joy. Mm. Yeah. If people don't tend to follow morose leaders today, that's a good one. Thanks, Sandy. Any other core value that maybe one you even look at in your own life that you say, This is what I build in my life, One that maybe we've not mentioned?
Speaker 3 [00:08:27] I think resourcefulness and ingenuity can be really, really helpful to me. Mm hmm. Creatively? In terms of. Yeah.
Dr. John Johnson [00:08:35] And that might all be under diligence. Yeah. What do you think? Is the core value a real defining core value of David in Scripture? Let's look at David as a leader. What core values stands out with him?
Speaker 4 [00:08:51] You have the heart of the Lord.
Dr. John Johnson [00:08:53] Yeah, but when we look at these core values, we've looked at what would be a central core value for him. Of these seven.
Speaker 3 [00:09:01] On the courage core, the current.
Dr. John Johnson [00:09:05] Yeah. But then on the other side, sometimes there was really a lack of courage, wasn't there? A real failure of courage like confronting a sin or confronting his son Absalom? Or when Amnon and Tamar had their thing and his son raped Tamar. But where was he to stand up to that? He's kind of a mix of a man who had tremendous courage, and yet sometimes he really failed that courage. Moses, who would be a defining core value for him.
Speaker 2 [00:09:41] Humility.
Dr. John Johnson [00:09:42] Humility. He. He said it. Yeah, but where do we see the evidence of that? How did Moses. Evidence. Humility.
Speaker 2 [00:09:53] That approach from 1991. Initially, it was it was almost a fatal flaw. I guess when God called him, he had five objections.
Dr. John Johnson [00:10:05] From the very start, he didn't see himself as well. It wasn't like he said, Hey, you found the right guy. He tried to hide from it.
Speaker 2 [00:10:14] I never questioned the guy, called him as a leader, and he said he was not a good speaker and said, Aaron can speak. Wow. Yeah. These kinds of things call people who aren't competent as leaders, but the use them.
Dr. John Johnson [00:10:32] Probably the first thing that comes to my mind in the broad sense. God seems to always call those who are not full of themselves or the youngest or the least or the given. He often calls the people that we would not think he would, but he sees something in them. He's made them for something He actually delights, I think, in calling those who just don't see who they are yet, as opposed to people full on themselves. I mean, Moses does emerge as really quite a capable leader. Now Moses has his meltdown moment, in fact, where he he lost his leadership when he struck the rock. What core value was missing there?
Speaker 2 [00:11:17] Compassion.
Dr. John Johnson [00:11:19] It's always a mystery story, isn't it?
Speaker 3 [00:11:22] Many more follow through.
Speaker 2 [00:11:24] No credit? No.
Dr. John Johnson [00:11:27] What was striking the rock incident about.
Speaker 5 [00:11:29] You supposed to speak to it for the amount that he struck it?
Dr. John Johnson [00:11:33] Yeah. So what was wrong with that?
Speaker 5 [00:11:37] He wasn't loyal to what I asked him to do. I think it ties into. A diligence aspect because.
Dr. John Johnson [00:11:46] Yeah, it actually might tie in really to the humility aspect. Striking the rock would have given Moore the impression this was about his power. Speaking to the Rock would have given Moore the impression this was about Gods power. One is this needs me to do something. It's interesting when you study leadership like David. We just talked about courage. Courage really stands out. But what really stands out is his downfall was a failure of courage. Could be with most the same thing. What stands out is his humility. His downfall was his pride. It would be interesting to look at that and trace that through scripture. There's a certain truth is in there. Sometimes what is our greatest strength is our greatest weakness. Can you think of another illustration? What can sometimes be our greatest strength can be our greatest weakness.
Speaker 5 [00:12:42] Irene Loyalty led him to reveal.
Dr. John Johnson [00:12:45] Yeah, exactly. Peter's a classic illustration. Probably you'd say one of his core values is loyalty. I mean, he was there in one sense when others weren't. But then, on the other hand, he wasn't there when others were. It must be kind of a bum rap. Peter must feel for all of eternity. The guy who left caved in, and yet he was really the guy that stood in there when others you know, then. Yeah. Peter. Okay, let's look just for a little bit at some scales. Well, you want to talk about core skills? We got 15 minutes where we can talk about Fabulous. We'd like to talk about Roy PAGELS. Remember us seems point in this book. He is looking at what he calls the leadership moment. And we all have these moments that will come in our life when we will either step up to the plate or will cave in. We don't get many of them served up, but they will come. He starts with Roy PAGELS and he tells the story of his life. So here's a question. What was his leadership moment? Did you underline it? What does he say? Point me to it in this chapter.
Speaker 4 [00:14:11] The vision and the cause to carry out.
Dr. John Johnson [00:14:17] Point is to a paragraph, a sentence.
Speaker 3 [00:14:20] Page 23.
Dr. John Johnson [00:14:21] Okay.
Speaker 3 [00:14:23] The next president. I finally decided to go and write to all of needed forever. And then the next line down. He said, Sometimes in your life, you've got to take the leadership position and make a decision. Yeah. I mean, there was great resistance he faced. You can imagine.
Dr. John Johnson [00:14:39] Yeah.
Speaker 3 [00:14:40] Nothing pollster's stubborn, Just like money.
Dr. John Johnson [00:14:43] Yeah.
Speaker 3 [00:14:44] Gosh, they even call it Who's the Economist? They call it. Remember Milton Friedman for Economics One call in 1979, having read Milton Friedman and Milton Friedman blasts the guy for making this decision. But he did what he thought was right. Yeah.
Dr. John Johnson [00:15:05] Yeah. I mean, you've captured certainly one of the clear statements here that this became his leadership moment. What did he have to overcome? What was the what did he have to face as a leader? What was the challenge in front of him?
Speaker 4 [00:15:22] He faced the combination of those two one, the loss of the financial.
Dr. John Johnson [00:15:32] Right.
Speaker 4 [00:15:33] That.
Dr. John Johnson [00:15:34] He had to say to himself, Let's see, I am leaving this corporation. And if I'm successful at this one day when I leave it, it will be financially because that's what we're in the business to do, is to make money. So he was going against a lot of what the corporation's about, except for what the mission the mission is to, except that he knew the mission and he knew the mission wasn't ultimately about making money. What was the mission? Yeah. So he went back to the fundamental mission. Now, don't miss that, because what in a sense he did is he put on what set of glasses.
Speaker 4 [00:16:15] Read the story.
Dr. John Johnson [00:16:16] He saw the symbolic DNA in the social frame. He saw the symbolic frame, and he knew that would save him. It would silence the arguments because if people said, What are you doing? What would you say.
Speaker 2 [00:16:30] Being.
Dr. John Johnson [00:16:31] A following what this was about from the beginning, nothing ever happened, right? Yeah. So, I mean, what's my responsibility as a leader is to sustain the mission, fulfill the mission. And as we'll see later, you know, a leader has to fundamentally understand and own the mission. That's your task as a leader. Everything else really is secondary. What else did you like about this story? What impressed you? What did you underline? I always like to ask the question, What did you star in the margin? What was sort of sort of an aha moment that you went, Oh, yeah.
Speaker 4 [00:17:14] He put the value of the human life, you know.
Dr. John Johnson [00:17:21] Above. Look at the bottom. A 26 one strand of American business culture would certainly question how fabulous could possibly take it upon himself to make such a decision. Milton Friedman, a Nobel Prize winning economist, articulated the critique as cogently as any for him any diversion of company resources from profitable investment, especially in the name of social responsibility, amounts to executive irresponsibility. To spend stockholders money on anything but profitable returns is the same as imposing a tax and then deciding unilaterally how the proceeds will be spent. Talks about people who lead like that, like down to bottom. Albert Dunlap, the chief executive officer who radically downsized Scott Paper Company in 94 to 96 before it sell to Kimberly-Clark and then restructured Sunbeam Corporation in 96 to 98. Much the same way exemplifies Friedman's principles for Dunlop. There's only a single constituency worthy of management attention the owners, the special interests of employees, communities, the public often lumped together as corporate stakeholders, should influence no company decisions. I don't believe in the stakeholder concept, one minute, Dunlap asserts. I believe in the fact that shareholders take all the risk. The shareholders own the company. Remember who's boss? You work for the shareholders. They're the constituency to whom you have to be responsive. Had he thought like a milton Friedman or an Albert Dunlap, there's little doubt where PAGELS reasoning would have taken him. You know, let somebody else do it. But this was his leadership moment. He took it unequivocally, as it says here, in the opposite direction. What would be one of his fundamental core values? Well, we can list several, but what stand out of the seven we just talked is courage. Courage was huge. What would be another fundamental compassion? Yeah, Yeah. Integrity to the mission. Compassion for the fact he's leading a pharmaceutical company. What is this about? And then the courage to stand in the face of those who had to say, You're crazy. Okay, what else?
Speaker 2 [00:19:53] On that same page. On page 28. Yeah.
Dr. John Johnson [00:19:58] Yeah.
Speaker 2 [00:19:59] Right. Our social context. Yeah, but those who placed you there expecting you.
Dr. John Johnson [00:20:07] Yeah. Why have I been called to this? Now, if they said to him right from the start, we're hiring you to make money, of course, then you have to ask himself, Is that what I want to be about? Or what he'd say is, if that's not your mission statement, then you need to readjust your mission statement.
Speaker 2 [00:20:32] By May 29. The last paragraph, the first sentence A skeptical voice may still question whether such formulas are more better than reality, but it works at 5.5. Some translating, actually. Mm hmm. And for me, I thought of Scripture, and then I'd say, I think it's 28.32. And it says, A noble man makes noble plans, but by noble deeds, he stands by a noble plan that whole take a vision turn into reality. But is he going to follow through with. That really goes back to character Noble Man or Plan B?
Dr. John Johnson [00:21:17] A noble man makes noble plans, but how does that go?
Speaker 5 [00:21:20] By no good deeds, he stands. It's easier. 32.
Dr. John Johnson [00:21:26] That's really good. That's a book back to Belsky vision to reality that ideas in and of themselves doesn't mean a whole lot if you just have rhetoric. So what?
Speaker 4 [00:21:41] But then your work is son on the company of American founders that we tried that with the medicine you give for the people and not for the profit.
Dr. John Johnson [00:21:52] Yeah.
Speaker 2 [00:21:54] I swear thy will be done on American citizens. And I just thought you have to start with whatever God's will, that vision to reality. Me that just like I don't know what I was reading through, I knew was when we talk about vision reality with just that one line from the prayer, Christ, I will be gone and I can't live in heaven.
Dr. John Johnson [00:22:18] In other words, that the reality that they match up, you mean, is that where you're going? Yeah.
Speaker 2 [00:22:25] Yeah. Vision. Godspeed. And it feels like as a Christian, as a people. Do not you?
Dr. John Johnson [00:22:31] Yeah.
Speaker 3 [00:22:33] His connection to the mission statement of Mary probably a million times in my ministry of other missions. The first time I read Stephen Covey's book, Seven Habits, I have to point out no vision statement. But for years and years, they were just little pieces of stuff I read on paper. Now I'm in July. I can put on the wall. There is real strength in my heart. But I think the difference with this guy was that those principles were actually things I believe inside of them. And regardless of whether that mission statement, whether in America he would have done something to try to help, you know, because it was part of him, it was really.
Dr. John Johnson [00:23:08] But it was necessary if it's part of him, it was necessary that he aligned himself with the corporation that would flesh this.
Speaker 3 [00:23:15] Out. So.
Dr. John Johnson [00:23:16] Yeah, So it's a great story. It's I mean, it's a great start in this book because it shows a great leadership moment and a great leader who took his core values and stepped out and did them. It's a great encouragement to us. Hopefully we'll be leaders like that, which means we align with the right organization that will let us something of who we are be released to always think nationally and patiently.
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