Joseph M. Stowell’s Redefining Leadership: Character-Driven
Habits of Effective Leaders offers a gentle and compelling reminder of the
importance of leading as Christ led – humbly and modestly.
Immediately, Stowell establishes the
difference between outcome-driven leaders and character-driven leaders – and he
spends the rest of the book guiding his readers on how to become the latter.
Who a leader is as a person is paramount; our results are an effect of our
character. Stowell helps his readers to reexamine how they lead and who they
are as they lead. He segues into the truth that a leader is ineffective unless
he is a follower of God, and he concludes his book by delineating some of the
beatitudes from which would-be “kingdom leaders” learn “core kingdom attitudes”
(137).
This is a book that I will keep in
my professional library and reference often. While the depth of many leadership
books that claim to be “Christian” are scrawled Bible verses as chapter
subtitles, this book is nearly scripture-based – and at any rate, Biblical
principles drive this book’s focus. I will reference this book because it is
clear that Stowell seeks the Word and his tips are inspired from it. One of the
main ideas that I gleaned from this book is that Jesus was a “countercultural,
counterintuitive leader” (89). Our world teaches that leaders need to be
confident and results-oriented, but Jesus was humble, modest, reliant, and
meek. Stowell titles Chapter 6 “Where Have All The Shepherds Gone” and makes me
want to focus on being a shepherd-leader (87).
I recommend this book to others. It
is an unpretentious and gracious guide to leading as a follower of The Leader.
The
publisher has provided me with a complimentary copy of this book through
BookSneeze®. I was not required to write a positive review.
