Spirit of Leadership

THE SPIRIT OF LEADERSHIP get from the ability to buy what we want, live where we wish, eat what we desire, wear what we fancy, and go wherever we decide to. It is the power over circumstances and, in some cases, over people, that we seek. This desire to have control over our lives explains many of the problems in our world. For instance, why does a young teenage boy get a gun, walk in to a store, and say, “Everybody hit the ground!” Imagine that you’re in the middle of such a situation. Suppose that the boy is thirteen years old and you’re thirty-four; he’s 5 feet tall, and you’re 6 feet. You know that you’re physically stronger than he is. But since he has the advantage of a dangerous weapon that threatens your life, you have to cooperate with his commands. For one brief moment, that young man feels what he was born to feel—what is called a “rush.” It is a strange sense of power, control, and invincibility. Our society puts a young man like this in a juvenile detention center, and he does his time and comes back out. But he remembers that feeling and is haunted by the temp tation to repeat the act. I believe that this is more than a psychological issue. It involves that deep spiritual desire in the nature of man to dominate his environment. It’s tied to how he feels about himself. I’m convinced that the desire for power over others is a distortion of something good; it’s a distortion of our inherent human desire to exercise leader ship dominion. LEADERSHIP AND OUR BELIEFS ABOUT ORIGIN Where do most of our attitudes about leadership come from? Whether you think you are a leader or not, your ideas about leadership are probably a conditioned response.

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