Power Strip Leadership

I was talking to my wife this morning about leadership from thoughts she was having in Mark 4:21-25. About how “Giving, not getting, is the way”, and how that relates to “getting ahead in the world” in terms of leadership. We were talking about how many people feel like giving parts of their job away hurts their leadership and threatens the loss of their job, where this scripture and many people in leadership say differently.

To help her with the thinking of giving away as a value of leadership, I came up with this illustration on the fly. I told her that when you start you are just a single outlet on the wall, and that as you step into leadership you are there to get results, and the best leaders are able to get lots of results, or increase their capacity as a leader. They have only so much energy, but they give it away by plugging in a power strip, then more can be accomplished because they are giving their resources away to more “outlets” that can yield results. The more you open yourself up that the larger your capacity grows, and so does your ability to lead and to get more/better results. It doesn’t mean you stop being the outlet that everything plugs into, and that you forgo responsibilities or qualitative and evaluative control. But as a good leader, you want as many outlets as possible creating as many positive results with as high of an effectiveness as you can reach.

I don’t know if that is helpful or not, but it felt like a “light bulb” illustration that helped us both key in on this principle of leadership, especially as this scripture was teaching. Either that or it reminds you of your college dorm room built in the 50’s that tried to support your computer, TV, video game console, cell phone charger, electric shaver, curling iron, hair dryer, refrigerator, and hot pad - haha!

July 6, 2007 | Filed Under Leadership 

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