Excuse your leadership weaknesses

Tom Harper Sept. 13, 2021

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Leadership weaknesses in one situation can be assets in another, like a victorious general who flounders during peacetime.

Where are you weakest in your leadership? Do you lack skill in planning, speaking, writing, socializing, numbers, people issues or task focus?

Well, big deal. So you're not good at something. Neither were countless war heroes (including Winston Churchill) during peacetime. The sense of urgency and impending disaster that drew people to them in wartime dissipated afterward, when new leaders—the rebuilders—took precedence.

"Hero leaders" rise up at specific times for specific purposes. Then there's the rest of us. We lead in good times and bad, peacetime and war, day in and day out.

If I were called to leadership because history required my skills and personality for a specific mission, I'd feel much more useful than I do on any given day of my normal life.

So let's let ourselves have weaknesses.

Our strengths will lead us to success in due time, Lord willing.

If anyone is never at fault in what he says, he is a perfect man....
—James 3:2

Relax—imperfection is OK!

Excerpted from Servant Leader Strong: Uniting Biblical Wisdom and High-Performance Leadership, by Tom Harper (DeepWater Books, 2019).

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Tom Harper is publisher of BiblicalLeadership.com and executive chairman of Networld Media Group, a business-to-business publisher and event producer. He has written five books, including Servant Leader Strong: Uniting Biblical Wisdom and High-Performance Leadership (DeepWater Books, 2019) as well as the Christian business fable Through Colored Glasses and its sequel Inner Threat (DeepWater, 2022). Learn More »

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