Disclaimer: What am about to share with you is an inspiration I got from my Bible study and my short experience as a leader. The following content is not a manual for leaders to base on their conclusions about the people they lead and lead with. This content is developed and fortified to serve entirely a different purpose.
Leaders must always understand that it is easier to lead 10,000 animals than to lead 10 people. Human beings are sophisticated animals. While other animals (domestic) are passive followers, human beings are participatory followers in the leadership they are under. They are the kind of species that might directly or indirectly lead their leaders. There could be more, but here are the 10 you need the grace of God, wisdom from above and carefulness to deal and succeed with.
1. THE MIRIAM-AARON CATEGORY
These are biological relatives to the leader. They could be your parents, siblings or elders. These are people who have known you before you embarked on your calling. They tend to be stuck with the Isaiah-White they knew before and never appreciate you as a leader practically. These might be under your leadership but they despise you and belittle you. They take you for granted in whatever you say and ask them to do. Jesus said a prophet is never respected in his hometown, and am sure he this is what he meant.
Eventually, this MIRIAM-AARON category starts questioning not only your leadership but your choices. These will not respect you just because they knew you since you were a child. They want the people you lead to respect you as their leader but through them. In other words, this category feels comfortable to be considered as the patrons of the leader. While you are a leader to all people, to them, you are a boy. When they pick up a microphone, they will address you as, my boy, my young brother, my son etc. and the intonations will be that which brings the leader into subjection to them. How you handle these people as a leader sets you apart and helps your leadership. (Exodus 12)
2. THE BROTHERS TO JOSEPH CATEGORY
This category challenges their leader’s vision not based on statistical facts but based on their relations with the vision bearer. When a leader shares his vision, this category connects the vision to the existing circumstances and reduce the vision to the present reality. They fight and discourage the vision, not because the vision is wrong but because they don’t like the vision bearer. Since they don’t like the leader as a person, the vision doesn’t make any sense either. This category will not challenge or even kill the vision but they will deal with the vision bearer.
Leaders must understand that sometimes people like the vision but not you. So before you try to explain the vision, ask yourself whether their problem is with the vision or with the vision bearer. Prophet Samuel never liked Saul as a person besides Saul’s mistakes. Pilate asked the crowd: whom should I release between this murderer and this saviour and healer? The crowd said: “give us the murderer”.
As a leader, you must not drop the vision, for whether they like you or not, in the near future, the vision will catch up with them and circumstantially, these very people will work with whom they never liked. (Genesis 37)
3. THE ABSALOM CATEGORY
These are people who feel entitled. They suffer from the spirit that I call: I DESERVE IT. They are talented, sometimes young and beautiful. They are better than their leaders in most things physically. They are close to the leadership and their closeness to power abuses their psychology of leadership. They desire to lead and that desire doesn’t help them work on their personal development but rather tempts them to dethrone the leaders they are close to.
Because this category feels entitled, they look at their leaders as obstacles to their growth. When a leader grants him a chance to lead or even teach, they focus on making sure that they do better than the leaders so that the audience can draw a contrast. They start creating sects within an organisation and divide the sociology into two; those for the leader and those for them.
These people do not properly recognise you (their leader) or your efforts in public but castigate you in their private discussions and all they point out is what you have failed. People easily believe them since they are close to the leader (2Samuel 14-15)
4. THE PETER-LIKE CATEGORY
These are people whose love to you as their leader is based on how wrong they understand you and your mission. They will pledge to stand with you through thick and thin but don’t be moved to rely on their promises for all they say is based on their misconception. They are not bad people. When you are stuck, they will follow but from a distance. When held at gun-point, these guys will straight away deny they ever knew you, even when they are looking into your eyes.
This category will go into panic mode and start saying and making decisions out of paranoia. All they do in the process will misrepresent the mission and as a leader, you will have to clean their mess after the crisis. (Mathew 26:31-37, 51, Luke 22:54-62).
A leader must be informed that some people may not actually understood what they are practically fighting for. Jesus as a leader knew this about Peter and prayed for him in these words: “When Thou Art Converted, Strengthen Thy Brethren” Luke 22:32. Judas Iscariot was not a bad disciple as many of you have been trained to believe. Judas was a disciple who misunderstood the mission of his leader throughout their time together and grasped it when it was too late (John 12:4, Mathew 26:25, Luke 24:28).
5. THE PHARISEE CATEGORY
This category is an actors club. They act and publically demonstrate right-living, purposely to expose the failures of the leader. These work towards exposing the leader’s nakedness. The day they find that leader in an unsuitable situation, they are the first people to publish it. Once they find their leader in an adulterous act, they won’t mind whom the leader was with, they will drag the leader out of the room naked, call the media and parade him through the streets.
This category has no obligation whatsoever to protect the image of their leader. They want to prove to the world that you do not practice what you preach. The Pharisee category can be detected in their speech pattern, they are themselves holier than thou and expect their leader to be holier than them.
The Pharisee category are expert sinners in concealing their sin to ensure they become credible judges of those sinners who have failed in the act of discreet. The Pharisee category will always misquote you and make sure they misrepresent your words. They are the people who ask trapping questions to make sure you say what you don’t have to say or actually say it in the wrong way or wrong forum. They do all this to make sure they incite the public and other stakeholders against you.
The Pharisees asked Jesus questions like: Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar? How rational is a physical resurrection? What is the greatest commandment? As a leader, you need wisdom and Grace to deal with these. (John 8:1-10, Luke 18:10-14, Mathew 22:15-22)
6. THE BAAL PROPHETS CATEGORY
These are your advisers. They are people you sit with in board meetings and make serious decisions. They could be your fanatics or dependents. The problem with this category goes beyond the Biblical stereotype of them being false prophets. The fundamental issue with this category is that they continuously offer a scrutiny-free praise and worship to you as a leader.
They Just make sure you are happy and in the mood to sign their paycheque or gift them. The advise they give you is constrained within that agenda. They will not tell you the truth even when they know it, they just investigate your interest and appetite and serve you exactly with that.
Political leaders have majority of these, pastors of big churches have plenty of Baals, and CEOs have these Baal-like managers around them. They are always singing; “our man, our hero”, “you are right”, etc. they are the YES-YES men. These are the people around you who will make those who tell you the truth appear to be the real enemy.
The Baal leaders will fail you, and walk past you as they join the next regime after you. These Baal category are sometimes well researched and respected individuals, which in most cases drags the leader deep into the deception and never detects them until it is too late. (1Kings 22)
7. THE KORAHITES CATEGORY
The difference between the Korah category and that of the Absaloms is that while the Absalom type feel entitled and actually want to replace you as the leader, the Korah category has issues with Authority over authority. In essence, these are leaders who have a problem with the hierarchical structure of leadership only when they rank second on the ladder.
While they have many other people below them, they ignore that and focus on you who is above them and question your authority. They want the leader above them to be of the same level with them but of course not everyone else. They don’t raise the four challenges of hierarchy in leadership (i.e. 1. Lack of Autonomy, 2. Slow Communication, 3. Interdepartmental rivalry, 4. Dependency on Strong Leaders) as the main challenges.
Their issue is honouring you as their leader. They stir rebellion based on catch-phrases of we are all equal, we are all leaders, we are all priests in the priesthood of Jesus Christ etc. and before you know it, the entire sociology is in anarchy. As a leader, you need wisdom and carefulness to deal with this lot. (Numbers 16)
8. THE AARON-LIKE ASSOCIATES CATEGORY
This category are people who have been working with you for a long time. You trust them with just about anything. However, it has never appeared to you as a leader that these Aarons are good as long as you are with them. They have been in the same car with you and know way too much about how to drive a car to the extent that though you have never seen them driving, you cannot question whether they practically know how to drive. The shock about the ability of these people as leaders strikes you after you see what happens in your absence. This category will, in a flip of a second, succumb to pressure and compromise the minute you leave matters in their hands.
This category’s strength and consistency depends on your presence and supervision. These can only be trusted through you but not isolated. The moment (as a leader), you disassociate yourself with these associates, they drop down to the level of the public and think and act like them. The associate to Elisha was faithful as along as he was in the presence of his master Elisha. When he walked away from his master, he became corrupt and started taking goods from people in the name of his boss. (Exodus 32, 2Kings 5)
9. THE HAMAN CATEGORY
As a leader at the top, you must be careful with the Hamans. This category has personal battles with specific individuals in the organisation or Institution. They want to remain clean and make sure no one understands they have a personal problem with an individual. So, what they do is to cunningly turn their personal problems with particular individuals into institutional problems.
They will attach those individuals they have issues within your organisation to the policies of the institution and present these people as the culprits. Soon board meetings will be called to discuss an individual, and if you as a leader you are not careful enough to investigate the matter deeply, you will draw all the institutional mercenary to fight the battles of Haman.
The Hamans are the category that present a very appealing proposal to your organisation and the company is quick to invest in it, yet in reality, they (the Hamans) are the actual beneficiaries. They will motivate you to start branches and start new departments just because they want to be the heads. As a leader, you must be careful with these Hamans (Esther 3).
10. THE ANTIOCHAN-PAUL CATEGORY
These are the people who will not mind how and where you are, as long as you are wrong, they will tell you off. They will rebuke you in the presence of your subordinates and make sure everyone understands how wrong you are. They are not trying to expose you as an individual but fighting the wrong thing you are doing. Do not take it personal for honestly, they have nothing personal with you. There is always a background they are coming from.
Paul had started a mission in Antioch and had preached the gospel differently from the way it was preached in Jerusalem where Peter had come from. Peter exhibited the Jerusalem way of the gospel and since him and Paul served the same master, he implied somehow that Paul agreed with him or that Paul was wrong. The public rebuke of Paul to Peter is intended to address the confusion about the gospel.
Paul is defending his mission field that a fellow leader is about to mislead. He is not attacking Peter’s personality and character, but his mission. Now there is a thin line between these two, but a leader must seek the wisdom to tell this difference. If you fail to see this, then you will never be friends with the Antiochan-Pauls in your institution or organisation. (Galatians 2)
God bless you I invoke TRUTH, REASON and FAITH (2Tim 2:7)
Pr. T.I.M WHITE
The Gospel Hawker
iTiS Well of Worship Fellowship (John 4:24)
iTiS Well of Worship Fellowship (John 4:24) 