Leadership Development 209
❖Playing for high stakes (Moses and the ten plagues, Esther risk-
ing her life to save her people)
❖Facing extremely harsh business situations (Noah and the flood;
Joseph and the famine; Job, who lost seven thousand sheep,
three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen, and five
hundred donkeys yet who maintained his integrity and rose to
prosper once again)
❖Struggling with complexity of scope or scale (Solomon build-
ing the temple)
❖Having the wrong background or lacking a needed skill or cre-
dential (David, poor shepherd boy, defeating Goliath and then
becoming the king of Israel)
❖Having to make a sudden, stark transition (Moses having to
leave Egypt with little notice and no clear map to his destina-
tion; the disciples giving up their nets and following Jesus)Former chairman of British automaker Rover, Sir Graham Day, con-
curs that difficult experience is often the best teacher. His organization
had become too complacent in a turbulent market and was beginning
to lose ground. ‘‘Rover’s need to establish what we now term a learning
organization came from the imperative to secure the company’s sur-
vival. Executives reported significant learning experiences stemmed
from hardships and learning from other people, both the revered and
the hated.’’^15 Moses learned a lot from his father-in-law, Jethro, but he
learned even more from his joustings with Pharaoh; without a Pharaoh,
there would never have been a need for a Moses.
Manfred Kets De Vries has referred to developmental assignments as
‘‘doing a Timbuktu’’—sending an executive in need of development to
a remote outpost with a number of difficult challenges.^16 If De Vries
had been writing in biblical times, he probably would have referred to
‘‘doing a Crete,’’ ‘‘doing an Egypt,’’ or ‘‘doing a Babylon.’’ Most of the
Bible’s leaders were shaped not by theoretical learning but by challeng-
ing, often harrowing experiences in which they were forced to take
dramatic actions to preserve lives and achieve group goals. They and
their mentors intuitively knew that ‘‘the only real training for leadership
is leadership.’’