Page 214 - The Bible On Leadership

200 THE BIBLE ON LEADERSHIP

and the flood, for instance, makes any ‘‘Outward Bound’’ or similar
‘‘outdoor education’’ experience seem like a leisurely float down a bab-
bling brook (which indeed many of them are). But as time passed, the
nation’s leaders began to realize that they would survive as a people and
a culture only if they had strong leaders who could defend them against
outside threats (Philistines, Egyptians, lions, and wolves) and internal
decay (loss of purpose, idol-worship, excessive jousting for power).
Particularly with the institution of the monarchy (but even before), it
was imperative that systems be put into place to assure the competency,
purposefulness, and morality of top leadership, and also that there was a
‘‘leadership engine’’ capable of producing the next generation of lead-
ers. Then as now, it was important to develop a system of mentoring
and role modeling and to provide developmental assignments to pro-
spective leaders, whether they were royalty or not.
Noel Tichy has written, ‘‘A person may have all the traits of a leader,
but if he or she doesn’t personally see to the development of new lead-
ers, the organization won’t be sustainable.’’ The ‘‘organization’’ that
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began with the Bible has sustained itself for almost sixty centuries; mod-
ern corporations would do well to borrow some of its techniques.

MENTORS,COACHES, AND ROLE MODELS

One of the most vivid images from the Bible is that of Moses mentoring
Joshua in the ‘‘tent of meeting.’’ These sessions are particularly intrigu-
ing because we do not know for certain what each might have said to
the other. We only know that when Moses went into the tent, ‘‘the
pillar of cloud would come down and stay at the entrance,’’ and that
‘‘his young aide Joshua son of Nun did not leave the tent.’’ (Exod.
33:9–11) Now I ask you, if your boss’s office was constantly surrounded
by a pillar of cloud, would you want to leave or would you want to
stick around to make sure you received all the mentoring you could?
And we can be sure a lot of mentoring was taking place in that tent,
probably not just simple job coaching (‘‘Make sure you have at least
twenty-five good trumpeters when you approach Jericho’’) but much