Page 152 - The Bible On Leadership

138 THE BIBLE ON LEADERSHIP

For chief operating officer, he chose Greg Brenneman, an outside
consultant from Bain and Company who knew Continental’s problems
intimately, perhaps too intimately. Bethune told him, ‘‘Greg, it’s an op-
portunity to be chief operating officer of a $6 billion company.’’ And
Brenneman replied, ‘‘Yeah, the world’s worst $6 billion company.’’
The new ‘‘Continental Team’’ had differing skills, but, like David’s
‘‘mighty men,’’ they had a similar attitude that united them: an
embracing of challenge and risk. ‘‘I wanted risk takers; I wanted
achievers,’’ says Bethune. ‘‘I wanted people who could see past the
airline we were to the airline we could become.’’ 15
A weaker leader would have selected weaker men, who undoubtedly
would have lacked the courage to make the bold moves necessary for
Continental to revive itself. David Ogilvy, head of Ogilvy & Mather,
used to encourage his managers to hire people better than they were.
Ogilvy would give each new manager a set of Russian nesting dolls, the
type where unscrewing the largest doll reveals a slightly smaller doll,
until the final doll is a tiny wooden lump. ‘‘If each of us hires people
who are smaller than we are, we shall become a company of dwarfs,’’
he would explain. ‘‘But if each of us hires people who are bigger than
we are, Ogilvy & Mather will become a company of giants.’’ 16
In similar fashion, Paul too advised his young prote ´ge ´s how to select
their teams. For example, he advised Titus, his disciple on the island of
Crete, to indeed select someone whose qualities surpassed his own:

The reason I left you in Crete was that you might . . . appoint elders
in every town, as I directed you. An elder must be blameless, the husband
of but one wife, a man whose children believe and are not open to the
charge of being disobedient . . . not overbearing, not quick-tempered, not
given to drunkenness, not violent, not pursuing dishonest gain. (Titus
1:5–7)

Paul had even more stringent criteria for Timothy’s team in Ephesus.
In addition to all the traits he had mentioned to Titus, he added that
‘‘the overseer must be respectable, hospitable, able to teach ...not
quarrelsome.’’ Deacons had to be ‘‘men worthy of respect, sincere, not