Love and faithfulness keep a king safe; through love his throne is made secure (Proverbs 20:28).

Leadership is tricky business.  How does one manage to effectively corral dozens of divergent views and help lead a group towards a shared goal or vision?  It's not easy!  Thousands of books, articles, seminars, and speeches have been made to explore this phenomenon of leadership and followership -- but these resources, when you really start to look at them, offer widely varied answers to the questions of leadership.  Some suggest that the key to leadership is making compromises; others say that an uncompromising vision is a leader's greatest asset.  Some say that leadership is about consolidation of power; others say that it's about distribution of power.  Some say that the mark of a good leader is his professionalism; others say that a good leader is distinguished by his personalism.  Suffice to say:  it can be really hard to make heads or tails of the whole leadership thing!

Into this dialogue about leadership dynamics, Proverbs 20:28 speaks with a voice of wisdom and simplicity -- suggesting that perhaps love is one of the most strategic factors in leadership.  And I, for one, feel persuaded towards this course of action and attitude.

As I think through the various leadership influences from my own life, it really does seem to me that the most enduring, most effective, and most impactful leaders in my life were the ones who genuinely loved the people they were trying to influence and who, consequently, won the love and faithfulness of their followers as well.  Yes, I can think of charasmatic personalities, gifted visionary voices, strong wills, and overwhelming authoritative arguments that were used along the way, too.  But the leaders who I still trust and allow to speak into my life today are the ones who have led by loving.

Where there is no love and faithfulness, a leader is forced to constantly be watching his back -- preparing for the seemingly-inevitable coup that will sneak up behind him.  Where the only binding factor in a leader-follower relationship is positional authority, a leader will never be able to establish the heart-level motivation that is ultimately necessary for any lasting influence.  And where visionary voice or persuasive arguments are overemphasized, in a sort of market-capitalistic take on leadership, it's inevitable that followers will flake off over time, when a better "product" comes along.  But when a leader is established through love and faithfulness -- developing relational influence over time -- the leader-follower relationship can weather the toughest storms of life and stand the test of time.  The leader can rest secure in the love of his followers, while the followers rest secure in the love of their leader(s).  The more I think about it, the more I realize that this is the way that I ultimately want to lead -- in my family, in my ministry, and in the community around me.  I want to lead with love, and let everything else fall in place from there.