Your Behaviour as a Boss ...

Wednesday, January 9, 2013. How should you behave when you are responsible for some group of people or for some tasks? It is an interesting question! What should be the character features and talents of someone who leads a group?

Features of a Leader …

How should a leader be like? Of course, leaders should be able to lead. If you do not have some talent to bring a group together and move them into some direction, you should not become a leader. Often, groups have natural leaders, and just by being there, they help everyone and lead the group. But in business you also need official leadership positions, where the owner of the company gives responsibility to someone to lead. There will be different levels of responsibility, and a hierarchy is being setup.

There are different styles and different ways of leaderships. Some exercise a directional leadership, others more a team leadership and others again a laissez-faire type of leadership. When different leaders need to work together, that can cause quite some trouble - you need to have at least a similar style to lead jointly. Or you need time to talk and bring things together. I have seen the split between leaders many times, when they could not agree on the style of leadership.

But there are other criteria and capabilities which leaders should have. For example, you need to trust a leader. He or she needs to be reliable and you need to know what he or she is up to. When a leader is unpredictable in either plans or reactions, that will be extremely difficult for those who need to work with him. An important feature of a leader is that he supports those he is responsible for. When you know, that you will be supported, you can focus on doing good work and not waste your time with protection against possible attacs of your superior!

Important Criteria …

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The bible talks about leadership in the pastoral letters of Paul and the other apostles. In 1 Timothy, we read for example:

1 Here is a trustworthy saying: If anyone sets his heart on being an overseer, a he desires a noble task. 2 Now the overseer must be above reproach, the husband of but one wife, temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, 3 not given to drunkenness, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money.

4 He must manage his own family well and see that his children obey him with proper respect. 5 If anyone does not know how to manage his own family, how can he take care of God’s church? 6 He must not be a recent convert, or he may become conceited and fall under the same judgment as the devil. 7 He must also have a good reputation with outsiders, so that he will not fall into disgrace and into the devil’s trap. (1 Timothy 3: 1-7)

The above passages talk about those who are in responsibility in a church. It talks about the elders and leaders, with spiritual responsibility. But similar criteria are applied to those who are in administration in the church. It is good to know and think about these criteria, since they are important goals for us anyway. They are tasks for every Christian, but here it is demanded that those who lead should have made some progress on these tasks!

Are the tasks and character features for church leaders only? I think that being temperate, self-controlled, respectable and able to teach or communicate are important features for every leader. It would be a nice homework to try to transfer these criteria into our immediate business environment and ask ourselves: how should we carry out leadership in our institute, our company or our school? What needs to be changed and further developed? And we will discover many possibilities which help us to improve our structures and habits in our daily routine …! (Roland Potthast) ... more texts