day 21: Leading Is Hard Work

Are you a leader at work or wanting to become a leader? In the work world we are in today everyone has a chance to be a leader of something at some point or another. If not a defined leadership role within the company, there are always task forces, improvement projects, group exercises, committees, representation opportunities, etc., to lead. I have been in the middle of the argument about whether leaders or born or made so many times that when it comes up now, I just stand to the side. It’s not an argument worth leading. :)

However, there are some truths about leading that one should know before they decide to take on a leadership mantle and one of them is that leadership is hard work and it takes the willingness to work hard at it if you want to be any good and succeed. Proverbs 12:14 calls it like it is; “Work hard and become a leader; be lazy and become a slave”. Now, I don’t think that we need to take it literally that if we don’t work hard we will be enslaved, but what the verse is saying is that if we work hard we can become a leader and to be a leader we have to work hard. And, we have to work harder to become a leader than how hard we will work when we are not in a leadership position. Why I think this is an important lesson is that there are lots of people who feel like leadership is a right instead of an earned privilege and as such they are not willing to do the work that needs to be done and is expected from those who are being led. Have you ever served on a committee where the leader didn’t work hard enough at it, so much so that is was painfully obvious? What happens? More often than not someone else has to pick up the slack and fill the leadership void. When that happens no one feels good about it and ultimately everyone suffers. Today may be a day that you are offered the opportunity to lead. If you choose to do so, know that you will be asked to work hard at it and give it your all. That is what we are supposed to do. And if we do it, then we again set an example of how it is to go above and beyond for others and to go the “extra mile”. Leadership is a privilege that is so many times worth accepting and stepping up to the challenge. My hope for you today is that if you choose to accept the privilege that you go into it with both eyes and arms open and you give it all that you have! There are others who are counting on you to do so.


Reference: Proverbs 12:24 (New Living Testament)