Custom «Values Driven Leadership by Aubrey Malphurs» Essay Paper Sample

Value driven leadership, as Malphurs defines it in his book, involves the mental and conscious participation of a leader. It involves a leader using his ethic commitments in the daily course of management activities. According to Malphurs, value driven leadership can be applied in financial, social, and in the environmental fields. Some of the main features in this type of leadership include honest, commitment, humility, loyalty, trust and care. The analysis of these features, Maphurs poses that they should be applied among the churches. Value driven leadership as approached by this writer forms the basis of operation for value driven leaders’ especially religious leaders like pastors. Value driven leaders bear a strong sense of responsibility and commitment to whatever they do. The enthusiasm that is shown when preaching can be used to judge what type of values a leader acknowledges. The level of education or the positions that a value driven leader holds, as the book says, tends not to be a determinant to the methodology and capabilities when preaching.

Malhpurs equates a person who does not know values of value driven leadership as no better than a person suffering from amnesia. Values help a person define his boundaries, levels of contact and the influence he has on its society. A person or a leader must realize that its duty is not only to receive for the society but give back to the society too. All leaders have dreams. Even though not similar, they all dream about the world they would like to live in. These dreams are the values. Success and development is a journey that every leader or company must go through. Values play a role in making leaders consider their destination but not the journey alone. Without values to drive leaders, there is no destination or start to the journey. It is at this point, according to Maphurs, pastoral preaching comes in to instill these values.

According to the writer, there is no definite source of value based leadership neither is there a definite area for its application. It can be developed and be applied in any part of the of a church for the good of the entire church. It can also be discovered in any stages of leadership. However if discovered late it may not serve the intended purpose. It turns out to be more of a show off. This drives a leader to use it for financial benefit and fame rather that earn the honor and respect the society offers

Malphurs holds that values come from our own backgrounds as leaders and companies. These backgrounds include our families, technology, education, the media and religions around us. However the values that a person or a company makes a decision to make is based on their beliefs. For instance what is the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear of the word ‘leader’? The first answer would to state that a leader is anybody who has the authority to command you on what to do. This places a subordinate in a position to do something not because he wants to but because he is told to. On the other hand, if incorporated with value driven leadership, a leader can be defined as someone you feel proud following.

Value driven leaders, as this book states, give the impression that they do not believe they should be followed but are sure that their values will please to the congregation. Congregation should feel a great urge to follow their church leaders by free will and not as a matter of sheer commitment. Being a church leader alone, Malphurs regrets, does not make someone a good leader. A good leader is one who is driven by his conscious and the will to do well. This realization makes a leader to exhibit humility, justice and love. Malphurs emphasizes in this book that a church leader must ask what is the need of communicating humility during preaching? Without humility, there is no respect and without respect there is no coordination and neither is there a working environment. By communicating humility, people are able to respect one another and feel more comfortable with one another.

Malphurs sates in this masterful book that value driven leaders see themselves as part of the community they exist. Their services go beyond the usual providence of services. They go further to show the care and affection they feel towards their communities. Malphurs considers such value driven church leaders as those empathetic and consider the problems other people as their own. In order to ensure maximum performance as servants of the church, the writer proposes that there is need to create personal strategies and plans. These plans enable the successful incorporation of our personal values into both the physical and the spiritual environment. Malphurs provokes church leaders to think why does preaching exist? He answers this by saying that preaching exists not because church leaders lack something to do, but because they bear a sense of responsibility towards their people and their society. Church leaders are not charged with the responsibility, they do it simply because they care. If all leaders would care and consider every single aspect around them, everyone would prosper.

This book puts forward that a successful leader driven by value balances the three pillars of value driven leadership. These pillars are profit, people and planet or the environment of existence. A great deal of leaders is using this strategy in the world today. Ever wondered how leaders get the honor of earning the loyalty of the society? They consider what of importance not to them but to the society. Value driven leaders, according to this book, are not greedy and are generous and considerate. Malphurs finds pity in the bitter truth that most leaders in churches world over jump onto conclusions and hasty judgments based on their selfish gains. Greed has taken the better of them, profit is their main target and the people no longer exist. He however believes that if put and rebuked in preaching, at long last equality of mankind might be attained.

Malphurs believes that justice and fairness are values worth instilling among church leaders. According to his book, value driven leadership goes further to equip leaders with the appropriate criteria for selecting opportunities coming their way. A church or a business does not survive and grow by simple grabbing any opportunities that come its way. Its survival and growth is determined by the opportunities it chooses. Value driven leaders are in a better position to make these choices. They put into consideration the probability of growth and ways of cubing the current challenges.

Commitment is given center stage in this book. Committed leaders, as Maphurs says, are placed in better positions to realize their potentials and capabilities. It is a catalyst between ambitions and performance. It creates a sense of transformation that acts as the driving force for many leaders. It creates a greats urge for leaders to be part of something. Leaders in churches, as the book states, feel that they should be part of the successful and developing team. They want to feel like they are doing something positive for their communities. They are dedicated to whatever they do for themselves and the community too.

In order to become a value driven leader, this book puts forward a number of factors to put into consideration. First, a person must be ready to sacrifice. Being a value driven leader, says Malphurs, involves the ignorance of set procedures in order to do good. Most companies and church leaders as well make decisions that affect themselves and the society as a whole. They do this based on criteria. This leaves the society in a position where it cannot state its preferences. Some of these decisions may affect the society in a rather negative way. Close observations by Malphurs points to the truth that most of the decisions are made in closed doors with no external involvement of other parties. In case some of these decisions affect the society in a negative way, value driven leaders will throw the rule book out the window and stick to what is right. They will make decisions based on their principle and value point of view. Rather than just making decisions and jumping into conclusions leaders should strive to look into the implication and courses of problems.

Malphurs cautions leaders should make sure that they reduce the effects that the decisions they make have on the society. It involves putting into considerations the values to incorporate in the whole process of decision making. The behavior a person has is determined by the objectives and things that a leader hopes to achieve. Being ready to sacrifice should be preached among people in order to appreciate each other and see the need to co-exist in a society. Sacrifices, Malphurs says, do not always have positive implications on the people making them. But by making sacrifices we go the extra mile of expressing unconditional care towards people around us.

To conclude, this book by Maplhurs is a masterful which is recommended for people managing churches and other organization. The writer attacks the topic of value drifen leadership in a quiet and patient authority. The writer observes that church leaders and managers of organizations should note that being in business alone is not enough to be considered productive. Getting from the society should not be the driving force for good leaders and companies in the world today. They should know that they have a responsibility toward the society, they are part of the society and whichever means they conduct themselves, defines the society they create. The leaders and companies of today should use their values.