Source/Author: Dr Michael Dalseno

Leadership is for all believers in some shape or form, be it in family, at work, overseeing a project, a collision of unexpected circumstances, and the like. Let the Leader arise within you!

THE LEADER WITHIN YOU

By Dr. M.P.Dalseno

There is quite an array of leadership theories proposed in this age of the global village, leadership having surreptitiously evolved as a hot topic in the last decade or two, with some theories confidently attesting to having actually discovered the holy grail of leadership effectiveness. Hence, all kinds of models and mentors are paraded before our eager minds, from Donald Trump to Nelson Mandela, each presenting their own irrefutable laws of leadership success.  

Enter the Joseph narrative, occupying the largest single story section in the Book of Genesis, spanning chapters 37 to 50. It says a lot about developing the leader within you, though not in a way typically propounded in leadership texts. We might praise Joseph’s leadership skills, no doubt hammered on the anvil of Potipher’s house as well as his stint in an Egyptian dungeon. He certainly sounds an able and competent administrator, as well as manager and organizer, judging by his confident and capable rulership of Egypt as a kind of Prime Minister.

But there’s a lot more to Joseph’s story, and a lot more to leadership, than this. Perhaps more than skills, style, personality and punch, leadership has much to do with one’s heart, spirit, life and character. Indeed, quite a number of articles from the predominantly secular Transformational Leadership literature suggest that almost anyone can be a leader – when it comes to the right “collision of circumstances” between gifting, expertise, experience, environment and other intangibles (e.g., the perennially quiet engineer who finds himself leading a construction team after a beached aircraft lands he and a hundred other people on a secluded island).

Joseph might have possessed the “stuff” of dreams. He might have had what we would call natural leadership traits. He might even have had a pervading air of authority, as was obviously given by his father in overseeing his complicated brothers. But what he definitely had to get in those 13 years of life in Egypt, before being elevated to the second highest authority in the land, was a good dose of noble character, a good heart, and a sensitive spirit. Joseph seemed well aware of this. When it came to his natural abilities, as in the interpretation of Pharaoh’s dream, he would say; “It is not in me” (Gn.41.16). And when it came to appointing Joseph to high position, the Pharaoh would say; “Can we find a man like this, in whom is a divine spirit?” (41.38). As Joseph unequivocally realized in Potipher’s house, when pressured by a charming and compelling woman, leadership rises and falls on character. Let the leader arise within you!