Decision and Consent (pt. 5)
Aug 14th, 2009 by Micah Tillman | 2 Comments |
[ Pt. 1 | Pt. 2 | Pt. 3 | Pt. 4 | Pt. 5 | Pt. 6 | Pt. 7 ]
1. There are two types of leader:
a. Those who lead “by rule.”
b. Those who lead “by example.”
2. “Rule,” as I shall use the term here, is the general class that includes “laws,” “commands,” “instructions,” and “orders.”
3. No person can be a leader who has no followers.
4. Therefore, there are two kinds of followers:
a. Some followers follow rules
b. Some followers follow examples
5. We can describe the experience of following a rule or an example, in the following way:
a. To follow a rule involves experiencing a decision as having been made for you (whether by yourself or by someone else).
i. That is, to be told to follow a rule is to be told to consent to a decision someone else has made [or that you made at an earlier time].
ii. With a rule, there is only one decision—that made by the leader. The follower merely consents to the decision.
b. To follow an example is to experience a decision as having been made by someone else, and as a decision you also make in turn.
i. With an example, there is only one decision—that made by both the leader and the follower.
ii. That is, there are two acts of deciding (the leader’s act, and the follower’s act), one of which (the leader’s) precedes the other (the follower’s) in time; but both acts of deciding are acts of making the same decision. (For example, when I say, “The sky is blue,” and you say, “The sky is blue,” there are two acts of claiming, but only one claim.)
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More to come.
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John Maxwell and I would both agree on the types of leaders- and the the example leaders would be the kind that led toward true change. I never thought about the time component…
It seems to me that a good leader, often times, makes rules that assist in premaking decisions or avoiding difficult decisions… In some sense, the rules are just generalized examples.
A leader might value integrity, for example. He might make decisions which embody this decision. If (s)he wishes to institutionalize this integrity, it might then become a rule, both for the leader and for the followers.
For example, my pastor believes that unmarried people ought not to have sex. (Pretty wacky, huh?) He makes decisions which avoid the appearance or the potential of inpropriety. Making the same decision, over and over again effectively makes it a rule, I think. He holds himself to a pretty extensive list of these. Those of us who fufill leadership positions in our church are expected to submit to many of these rules, too.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that the rules are kind-of driven by the examples. This may be where you were going; or perhaps it’s quite irrelevant to your direction, or maybe it flies in the face of what you were thinking about. I just thought I’d throw out my 2 cents on the matter.