How to Lead in a World of Distraction: An Interview with Clay Scroggins

“What are the three villains of leadership?…. To put them simply they’re the appearance of success, the allure of progress, and the attraction of certainty. Everyone experiences these things, whether they’re in a position of leadership or not, and they have the ability to really keep us from moving forward in our lives.” - Bible Gateway

Discussion

Those interested in checking it out…

[amazon 0310598699 thumbnail]

Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.

Clay approaches it from one perspective. But as a leader, I think he misses one big one. While we could argue about all kinds of different vilians, I believe a key one, is failure. As you move up in leadership ranks and as you mature and become more driven, you will surely experience failure. For a lot of leaders it can be their death knell. For a few, they can overcome this, but it is challenging. This makes or breaks leaders all the time. In addition, another reason why I think it is a key miss, is that the Bible is a great instrument in providing the tools for a leader to handle this.

Failure is so demotivating for most of us. In my own case, anticipating failure is more paralyzing than actual failure.

Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.

The other problem that I have with this book is that 1) the author feels more like he is trying to establish himself as an authority on leadership by writing books. Seems a bit like mirroring Andy Stanley. And, 2) I find the lack of Scriptural foundation as a weakness coming from a minister. To me, it starts more with a worldly philosophy (i.e. take time, be silent….something that any secular person could write) and then finds ways to back up with Scripture. Even the interview that is posted, he quickly quotes Plato, but is only willing to mention the Bible or Scripture when the interviewer leads with that question.