The Leadership Cartesian

As leaders, every day looks like a fight and our leadership post appears to be a battlefield. Every circumstance we face and every decision we make is either emotionally overwhelming or exhausting. In either state, both result to physical drain. Should we lose in the first fight, the worst thing we could do is to mourn for our defeat. Every leader knew that the fight is not ended by the first defeat. There is a subsequent game of restitution. However, when we are always on the losing side, our leadership post is at stake. Thus, no leader would voluntarily occupy that seat. I personally believe that when God anoints a leader the smell of his victory is upon his reach. However, this very victory could also make or break our leadership, so we need to watch out for our attitude. The panorama could be taken from the glimpse of Saul’s leadership as the first king of Israel. His preliminary successful attacks on enemies had driven him to become impulsive (1 Sam. 13:13) which resulted to rebellion against God. His arrogance (1 Sam. 15:23) has led him to a life of bitterness (1 Sam. 14:52) taking the battle as his own (1 Sam. 14:24). He is now focused on “annihilation of enemies” instead on “submission to God”, putting his troops into a possible defeat and jeopardizing his son Jonathan.

Just like Saul, our leadership is affected in four directions. It can be illustrated on a Cartesian plane. Our position at the center indicates (origin) that our leadership is affected by God, our family, other people and our enemies. God (+y) has sovereign power over us. A good leader always seeks for divine wisdom before making a decision. Our family (+x) serves as our support system as we lead others (-y) under our authority in their walk with Christ. However, no matter what we do to avoid them, we will always have enemies (-x) left. They also affect our leadership, one way or another. Our greatest enemy could be ourselves.

Indeed, we must always obey God’s direction, carefully examine our decision, and bring our success below our head because the consequences could be greater than the result we expected.