Changi Chapel

Jethro arrives to visit his son in law Moses and finds him leading alone. He says, “What you are doing is not good” (Ex. 18: 17).

This is one of only two instances in the whole Torah in which the words lo tov, “not good,” appear.

The other is in Genesis 2, where God says, “It is not good [lo tov] for man to be alone.”

We cannot lead alone. We cannot live alone. To be alone is not good.

Also…

A leader needs three kinds of support:

(1) allies who will fight alongside him,
(2) troops or a team to whom he can delegate,
(3) a soul-mate or soul-mates to whom he can confide his doubts and fears, who will listen without an agenda other than being a supportive presence, and who will give him the courage, confidence and sheer resilience to carry on.

Maimonides in his Commentary to the Mishnah[4] counts this as one of the four kinds of friendship.

He calls it the “friendship of trust” [chaver habitachon] and describes it as having someone in whom “you have absolute trust and with whom you are completely open and unguarded,” hiding neither the good news nor the bad, knowing that the other person will neither take advantage of the confidences shared, nor share them with others


Power works by division, influence by multiplication.

Power, in other words, is a zero-sum game: the more you share, the less you have.

Influence is a non-zero game: the more you share, the more you have.

Kings had power – including that of life and death (see Joshua 1: 18).

Prophets had none, but they had influence, not just during their lifetimes but, in many cases, to this day.

To paraphrase Kierkegaard: when a king dies his power ends. When a prophet dies his influence begins.

Lets make it clear to all that leadership is service, not a form of status.

But a leader must also be aware that not everyone is humble. Every Moses has a Korach, every Julius Caesar a Cassius, every Duncan a Macbeth, every Othello an Iago.

In many groups there is a potential trouble-maker driven by a sense of injury to his self-esteem. These are often a leader’s deadliest enemies and they can do great damage to the group.