Behaviour in Leadership

Far too many people, sadly many of these are believers with an aspiration for leadership, seem to think that behaviour has no part to play in their leadership 'calling.' They seem to refer primarily to the role of motives (now in one sense this is true, but in another it is so far from the truth - as I said recently to our men, "DON'T BE GODLY DO GODLY!") in Christian leadership. Today I found these excellent, convicting, inspiring words from Andy Stanley in his brilliant book Visioneering.

"Every great leader, every successful father and mother, anybody who has ever received and followed through successfully with a God-given vision has possessed a form of authority that rests not on position or accomplishment, but on an inner conviction and the willingness to bring his or her life into alignment with that conviction. It is the alignment between a person's convictions and his behaviour that makes his life persuasive. Herein is the key to sustained influence.

The phrase that best captures this dynamic is moral authority... Moral authority is the critical, nonnegotiable, can't-be-without ingredient of sustained influence...
Moral authority is the credibility you earn by walking your talk. It is the relationship other people see between what you say and what you do, between what you claim to be and that you are. A person with moral authority is beyond reproach. That is when you look for a discrepancy between what he says he believes and what he does, you come up empty. There is alignment between conviction and action, belief and behaviour.

Nothing compensates for a lack of moral authority."

What does your life say about what you believe. How do your actions, your behaviour, portray your leadership 'calling.'

Simon