What do you want to do with the power?

Simon Walker has written a great book that I am revisiting (it is now very marked and under-lined). He taught one of the most helpful programs at Vicar factory. His book Leading out of who you are is well-worth exploring.

"It is for this reason and this reason alone that the moral character of the leader is the most fundamental condition which will determine the quality and legitimacy of their leadership. The conviction that you lead out of who you are is not merely leadership theory-it concerns the very well-being of the led. It is itself an ethical imperative that followers must demand in their leaders. For this reason too, no amount of leadership development courses, training materials, books and resources about how to create vision, how to influence followers, how to set and achieve goals, can offer much to the legitimacy of leaders today. Almost exclusively such materials work on the assumption that accumulating more power is a good thing- and they are designed to empower the leader and enable them to become more personally powerful. And whilst this may offer some strategies about different ways to use power, at the end of the day, they do not and, indeed cannot touch the deeper moral question that lies in the heart of each leader. What do you want to do to people? This is the question that lies beyond the scope of the training institution or the academy"

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