Bad Leadership - Part 1

“Watch out now, take care
Beware of greedy leaders
Who take you where you should not go.”

(from George Harrison, Beware of Darkness)

The desire to be a positive and impactful leader has created an entire industry on leadership development. The content of the vast majority of leadership development offerings is based on the skills that we need to develop.

While books and seminars may be helpful, there is nothing like experience for teaching us how to lead. And if we have a learning mindset, we can learn in any situation – including bad ones. In fact, I think I learned more from bad leaders than good ones. I learned what not to do.

In her book, Bad Leadership, Harvard professor Barbara Kellerman develops a framework for understanding several forms of ineffective and/or unethical leadership.

While the book emphasizes leadership, she makes a compelling case concerning the role of followers in creating, allowing, and perpetuating bad leadership.

The seven types of bad leadership are:

1. Incompetent: The leader and some of his/her followers lack the will or skill to sustain effective action.

2. Rigid: The leader and his/her followers are stiff, unyielding, and unwilling to adapt to new ideas, new information or changing times.

3. Intemperate: The leader lacks self-control and is aided and abetted by followers who do not intervene.

4. Callous: The leader is uncaring or unkind; he/she ignores or discounts the needs of the rest of the organization, or of stakeholders.

5. Corrupt: These leaders lie, cheat, or steal their way to the top position putting self interest above all else.

6. Insular: They disregard or minimize the health and welfare of those outside the core group.

7. Evil: Some leaders and their followers commit atrocities and/or tragedies.

Legacy Marriage

One of the big ideas I have learned over the last several years is that God blesses us so that we can be a blessing to others.

Too often we see only the material blessings. But one area where I have experienced tremendous blessing is in my relationships.

And the greatest relationship I have is with my Proverbs 31 woman! For 31+ years now I have been blessed to have a great marriage. And it just keeps getting better all the time.

Because we have been blessed in our marriage, we have a passion to bless others with the principles that have guided us and the lessons we have learned. For over 20 years, we have sought opportunities to invest intentionally in the lives of younger couples. This has been fleshed out in a variety of venues: Sunday school classes, classes taught at our church, small group settings in homes, and retreats we facilitated for couples. But perhaps the greatest venue in which we have done this is simply doing life with our couple friends.

Late last fall, I began to explore a vision of intentionally investing in other couples who would then invest in other couples. Those of you familiar with my Legacy Logic concept will recognize this pattern. But its not original with me. Paul gave similar instructions to Timothy (2 Timothy 2:2):

"The things which you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also."

As this vision developed, I began to think about this in terms of Legacy. I know … that doesn’t surprise anybody. But, Legacy Marriage really seemed to be a good name for this ministry.

So let me give you my definition of Legacy Marriage:

A Legacy Marriage is a marriage that is a blessing to us now, and that will be a blessing to others for generations to come.

I shared my emerging vision with The Sunday Men and they enthusiastically affirmed the idea. So, this spring The Sunday Men became the Sunday Couples for a season and we worked our way through some key scriptures that provide a solid foundation for building the kind of marriage that blesses us as a couple, blesses our children, our grandchildren, blesses those around us, and that will be a blessing for generations to come.

The first eight installments of Legacy Marriage are:

God’s Blueprint for Marriage (Genesis 2:18-25)

Preparing the Soil, Laying the Foundation (Psalm 127:1; Proverbs 24:3-4; Genesis 2:24-25)

Framing the Relationships: Roles and Responses (Ephesians 5:21-33; Mark 10:35-45; Titus 2:1-5)

What Every Marriage Needs to Succeed

The Principle of Reciprocity (Ephesians 5:21-33; Philippians 2:3-4)

Love Languages

How to Have a Good Fight (Ephesians 4:25-32)

Bricks That Build a Marriage (1 Peter 3: 1- 9 )

As we worked our way through these lessons, I prepared two sets of documents. Set one is the discussion guide for the participants. The second set is the teaching notes for the facilitator. Its my prayer than some of these couples will now take this material and teach it to other couples. Over the summer I plan to develop at least four more lessons in this series.

And, I hope to invest in another set of couples soon, who will then apply the Legacy Marriage principles in their home and then pass it on to others.