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Leading with a Limp: Turning Your Struggles Into Strengths QUOTES

Leading with a Limp: Turning Your Struggles Into Strengths QUOTES

1 " Courage is fear that has said its prayers.”5 "

― Dan B. Allender , Leading with a Limp: Turning Your Struggles Into Strengths

2 " The reluctant leader doesn’t merely give accolades to others. It is her true joy to see others awaken to their potential and exceed their greatest dreams. It is the hope of every good teacher to have students who take their work further than the teacher was able to do. To be surpassed is the ideal. To be replaced is the goal, not a sign of failure. "

― Dan B. Allender , Leading with a Limp: Turning Your Struggles Into Strengths

3 " Disillusionment takes us to the question: what does it profit a man if he gains this world and loses himself? And disillusionment exposes that while we were supposedly serving the kingdom, we somehow became the king, and when we thought we were following Jesus, we inexplicably made him a servant of our dreams. The only real tragedy is the leader who never allows disillusionment to wear him to a nub and expose the godlessness of his busyness. "

― Dan B. Allender , Leading with a Limp: Turning Your Struggles Into Strengths

4 " Sane, reasonable, play-it-safe people are not sufficiently engaged in life to generate great stories. Instead, they sit back and wait for a leader-storyteller to come along and get them caught up in a life worth living. "

― Dan B. Allender , Leading with a Limp: Turning Your Struggles Into Strengths

5 " To admit we are foolish, weak, and in need of repentance gives the vindictive and self-righteous camp plenty of ammunition to turn against us and to turn others against our leadership. But the alternatives to living in and living out truth are far worse: we either hide from truth or we choose to spin our sin and our story. "

― Dan B. Allender , Leading with a Limp: Turning Your Struggles Into Strengths

6 " We live in a culture where the acknowledgment of wrong or the ownership of risk and failure is paramount to forfeiting the game. "

― Dan B. Allender , Leading with a Limp: Turning Your Struggles Into Strengths

7 " Anyone who wrestles with an uncertain future on behalf of others—anyone who uses her gifts, talents, and skills to influence the direction of others for the greater good—is a leader. No one is a mere follower. If you are a follower of God, for instance, then you are called to lead. Every believer is called to help someone grow into maturity—and such is the core calling of a leader. "

― Dan B. Allender , Leading with a Limp: Turning Your Struggles Into Strengths

8 " Paul calls leaders not merely to be humble and self-effacing but to be desperate and honest. It is not enough to be self-revealing, authentic, and transparent. Our calling goes far beyond that. We are called to be reluctant, limping, chief-sinner leaders, and even more, to be stories. The word that Paul uses is that a leader is to be an “example,” but what that implies is more than a figure on a flannel board. He calls us to be a living portrayal of the very gospel we beseech others to believe. And that requires a leader to see himself as being equally prone to deceive as he is to tell the truth, to manipulate as he is to bless, to cower as he is to be bold. A leader is both a hero and a fool, a saint and a felon. "

― Dan B. Allender , Leading with a Limp: Turning Your Struggles Into Strengths

9 " De-cide. Homo-cide. Sui-cide. Patri-cide. The root word decidere means “to cut off.” All decisions cut us off, separate us from nearly infinite options as we select just one single path. And every decision we make earns us the favor of some and the disfavor of others. "

― Dan B. Allender , Leading with a Limp: Turning Your Struggles Into Strengths

10 " We should expect anyone who remains in a formal leadership context to experience repeated bouts of flight, doubt, surrender, and return. Why would this be God’s plan? Why does God love the reluctant leader? Here is one reason: the reluctant leader is not easily seduced by power, pride, or ambition. "

― Dan B. Allender , Leading with a Limp: Turning Your Struggles Into Strengths

11 " The leader’s character is what makes the difference between advancing or de-centering the morale, competence, and commitment of an organization. The truth about confession is that it doesn’t lead to people’s weakness and disrespect; instead, it transforms the leader’s character and earns her greater respect and power. This is the strange paradox of leading: to the degree you attempt to hide or dissemble your weaknesses, the more you will need to control those you lead, the more insecure you will become, and the more rigidity you will impose—prompting the ultimate departure of your best people. The dark spiral of spin control inevitably leads to people’s cynicism and mistrust. So do yourself and your organization a favor and don’t go there. Prepare now to admit to your staff that you are the organization’s chief sinner. "

― Dan B. Allender , Leading with a Limp: Turning Your Struggles Into Strengths