have confidence he is what he claims to be—that he is a man of
integrity and he’s not going to disappoint or embarrass them. All
this lifts them to a higher level. Carl Henry told me, with a kind
of chuckle, ‘When Billy asks you to do something, you kind of
want to find a way to do it. You don’t want to let him down.’”
Inspiring and challenging others, and watching them rise to
their full potential, is the complex yet enormously rewarding role
of the leader. Warren Bennis observes that the successful leader is
not the “one with the loudest voice, but the readiest ear,” and that
“the real genius may well lie, not in personal achievement, but in
unleashing others’ talents.”
When the talents of others are unleashed, it multiples the
leader’s impact. The truth is, leaders must work not only with
Ph.D.’s like Woody Wirt and Carl Henry
and brilliant businessmen like Allan
Emery and George Bennett. Ordinary
people too must be inspired and mobi-
lized. Bill Pollard cautions, “Build your
team around the talents and skills of the ordinary person, not just
around the special skills and talents of those few extraordinary
people.” Every person has been created in the image and likeness
of God, with the potential of the extraordinary and with the real-
ity of their immortality. Leadership’s responsibility is to unlock
this potential and to respect and nurture this immortality.
Similarly, Peter Drucker—always realistic about the limitations
of human beings—has written that an organization’s test is “its
capacity to make common people achieve uncommon perfor-
mance.” In The Effective Executive, Drucker balances these dynam-
ics with an astute analysis of leadership strategy: “The effective
executive knows that it is easier to raise the performance of one
leader than it is to raise the performance of a whole mass. He
therefore makes sure that he puts into the leadership position, into
the standard-setting, the performance-making position, the man
who has the strength to do the outstanding, the pace-setting job.”
Drucker goes on to explain: “The task of an executive is not to
change human beings. Rather, as the Bible tells us in the parable
Empowering Soul MatesI’d rather get ten men to do
the right job than to do the
job of ten men.
DWIGHT L. MOODY