Living with Heart: From Birth to Death 59 - The Twelve Movements of a Man's Life #9: A Man Seeks Out Appropriate Authority
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For a man to lead any organization, family, mission, or task, he needs to trust what he knows. In addition, he needs to be aware of what he doesn’t know so that he can grow into becoming all he is created to be.
This man seeks out the abilities of others so that he can accomplish his responsibilities.
No one knows everything, and therefore, we all need others’ abilities.
Four Categories of Practicing Appropriate Authority:
- Every man is a leader if he loves someone, and/or has a goal or mission in life. Therefore, he has authority, which is more about a responsibility than a form of power.
- A leader definitely needs certain skills to accomplish his responsibilities; just as important, a leader needs to be a competent human being.
- A leader truly needs to know what he doesn’t do well and know his limitations, so that he can reach out to others who have the abilities he needs in order to fulfill his responsibilities.
- A leader needs to be responsible with the power that is inherent in leadership.
- The power of delegation.
- The power of truth-telling.
- The power of delivering consequences.
Authority comes from the word author, which means that you have been given the ability and responsibility to communicate your assigned “mission.”
There are two kinds of authority
- Healthy authority is invitational. It grows trust and confidence in the “followers” because they know two things about their leader. They believe he desires their good or benefit, and they know that he is as much a servant of the “mission” as they themselves are. For example, the president of the United States’ mission is to serve the Constitution. The truest leader knows that he is serving God as the top authority. Healthy authority invites the full participation of heart, mind, and abilities of a person.
- Unhealthy authority is subordinating. It is about exercising power over someone. It is inherently threatening because it focuses on “lock-step” obedience even more than the development of a team that can accomplish a mission. Unhealthy authority focuses on “obedient” performance over the full of investment of a person’s presence of heart, mind, and abilities. Heart doesn’t matter too much in an unhealthy authority system, only abilities.