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Lead your family... like who? If it wasn't titled 'Lead Your Family Like Jesus', would you really take advice on family leadership from a man who not only never had one, he never even had a wife or any relationship with a ‘significant other’ - and largely abandoned his own mother just to follow his career? Probably not.
It’d be like taking flying lessons from someone who’d never even been up in an elevator. Fortunately Ken Blanchard - with family focused novelist, Tricia Goyer, and fellow leadership teacher, Phil Hodges, have stepped in to fill in the apparent experience blanks... and explain their choice of title.
Ken Blanchard, of course, knows a lot about all kinds of leadership. Best known as the co-author of the 1980s businessman’s self help sensation, ‘The One Minute Manager’, the active, affable and mentally agile seventy four year old is the spiritual lead speaker of The Ken Blanchard Companies.“Leading like Jesus as a parent, is first a spiritual matter.”
Working his way up his list of priorities; work responsibilities, family, and God at the top, the 13million copy author turns his attention from commerce to domesticity to show how the principles of Christ centred leadership apply as much to the home as the workplace.
It’s not about leading your family the way Jesus might lead your family; it’s about leading your family as though you were perfectly following Jesus. The key to that is simply put, though more difficult to put into practice: it’s about becoming the servant-leader your children need you to be.
Leading like Jesus is about having an eternal perspective on the good of the family rather than focusing on the temporary and its immediate advantage to you. That means approaching each decision with the question in mind: “Am I seeking to serve God and the well-being of my family members, or am I seeking my own self-interest?”
“The key to successful leadership is influence, not authority.”
Leadership, Ken insists' is all about influence – it’s not about forcing others into your way of doing things, it’s about encouraging them into your way of thinking. Success depends on your taking control of ‘Four Domains’:
The Domain of Your Heart: This is where you establish your character and the values you live by.
The Domain of Your Head: This is where your viewpoint resides and the beliefs that will govern your actions.
The Domain of Your Hands: These are the things you actually do and the way you do them.
The Domain of Habits: How you continually refocus and reinforce your influence toward those you lead and serve.
“The best way to teach people is by telling a story”
Ken’s book isn’t a cold set of rules for you to follow. It’s a collection of guidelines and principles against which you measure your progress toward your goal of becoming a Christ-like influence in your own home.
‘Lead Your Family Like Jesus’ includes many personal stories that illustrate how things can go wrong and how they can be put right when you set before yourself the right role model, and decide to influence your family as the servant leader, following Christ’s example.
The principles of Christ centred leadership don't just apply at home. In 'Lead Like Jesus', the author takes effective principles from the life of Jesus, proved in dozens of stories from his life experience, and shows how mastering the two internal and two external domains gives you a practical and transformational model for influencial leadership in your church, community and workplace, as well as in your family life.
