The Power Paradox of Leadership
Ivan Satyavrata is the senior pastor of Assembly of God Church in Kolkata, India. He launched the Friday afternoon session of the 2014 Global Leadership Summit with a talk about power. I recorded these takeaways from his message:
- Power is the potential or ability to move reality, to make something happen.
- That is what leaders do. They manage power. It is what they use to make things happen.
- There is no such thing as leadership without power. The question is, how will we handle the power that has been given to us.
- A leader must be able to wield power in order to lead effectively. But she must, at the same time, be vulnerable and be a servant.
- Knowledge power can lead to intoxicating pride.
- Jesus knew all power was within his grip, yet bent down to wash feet. Am I holding my basin and towel as tightly as I hold my scepter of power?
- Jesus loved Judas as much as he loved the other disciples, but refused to use his power to manipulate Judas into submission.
- Great leaders refuse to use their power to intimidate or manipulate or control. Rather they use their power to give and add value.
- If you know the right thing to do, and you don't do it, that for you is evil.
- In the vast ocean of need, I do not have to be a Christian terminator and wipe away all the evil from the world. I just have to do what I can do to love, and be gracious, and make a difference.
- The true secret of any great leader's power is that when you feel the weakest, that's when you really are the strongest.