The Intangibles of Leadership

Not so. The author, Richard Davis, is a pioneer in corporate psychology, and his company works with the senior-most management of corporations - hundreds of them. Through extensive testing, personal histories, and three-hour interviews with CEOs for the past thirty years, his insights and judgments are often depended upon in acquisitions and mergers of corporations to figure out which executives should leave and who should stay and lead. Davis has distilled the top ten qualities and says in his introduction: ...extraordinary leaders posses certain (subtle) characteristics ... that are fundamental and in many ways "intangible" traits that fall between the lines of existing leadership models." With simplicity and fascinating depth, he then unpacks these traits in such a way that made me think and hopefully give more careful attention to these in my ministry.

Here are a few snippets you might ponder:

• Too many leaders think about what they might do and how they might do it, instead of just doing it.

• Great leaders don't just think about what happened- they think about why it happened.

• Regarding self-discipline: Avoid distractions by devising a process that will keep you focused. Build discipline by forcing yourself to be accountable.

• Learn to manage your emotions according to the demands of situation, not according to your default personality response. Good leaders know there are times to be still and impenetrable, at other times you need to be able to pound your fist on the table.

• Understand but don't play politics.

• The office (or church) can be an emotional hotbed. Being able to recognize issues of emotion and address them can go a long way toward running an efficient, transparent office that doesn't get derailed by anger, resentment, jealously, sabotage, or any other of a number of all-too-human tendencies.

• Leaders understand their big-picture strategy. If I were to ask you right now what that strategy is, could you tell me?

• There are book smarts, thee are street smarts, and then there are people smarts. The most effective senior leaders I've worked with posses all three.

Jim Hamacher