Joshua Henson

Seeking Others’ Interests: Leading with Goodness

With leadership scholars frequently emphasizing transformational, ethical, and even servant leadership, it is still difficult to imagine an effective leader characterized by goodness. Leaders are envisioned as strong, charismatic, even supporting at times, yet their role in relationship to followers or even organizational stakeholders seems to leave little space for them being seen as good. Despite the seeming disconnect between this virtue and the conceptualization of leadership practice, the definition of goodness as a positive quality characterized by interest in the welfare of others, frequently manifested through generosity, does not necessarily preclude its role in a leader’s character. This chapter examines this specific type of care for others and attempts to find appropriate application in leadership theory while providing possible practices in which goodness can be manifested for the benefit of individuals and organizations.

Unusual Power: Leading with Gentleness

While gentleness is not typically on a list of leadership characteristics, we can see from the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday that the concept of a gentle leader has both Old and New Testament roots. This chapter will analyze this type of gentle leadership that is able to flourish in the midst of resistance and injustice while finding leniency in the midst of judgment. The contemporary model of social power base theory provides a framework for applying these ancient insights to contemporary leaders. It is out of this comparison that not only a more fascinating understanding of biblical gentleness is seen but also how gentleness becomes exemplified by the cultural desire to see gentleness that offsets stern laws.

Validity and Reliability of the Nine Scales

This chapter reports the validity and reliability of the nine scales using the Essential Servant Leadership Behaviors (ESLB) scale to test for convergent validity, Cronbach alpha scores for scale reliability, and pre-post t-tests to show test-retest reliability. Pearson r scores for the nine scales which ranged from .83 to .91 demonstrated strong correlations. Cronbach alpha scores ranged from .92 to .98 showing strong scale reliability. The pre-post t-tests showed no significant difference between the pre- and post-tests. The chapter recommends future research studies to further test for validity and leadership development longitudinal studies to test changes in scale results over time.

Use of the Scales

This chapter provides suggestions for item wording if using the nine scales as a 360-degree evaluation. The chapter also recommends both bar graphs and radar charts to graphically present the results. Finally, the chapter gives two hypothetical examples of managers’ results from the nine scales and how to interpret the charts. These examples may be useful for conducting leadership development programs.

The Practice of Helpfulness: Leading with Kindness

The contemporary trend to emotional intelligence and leader empathy provides a strong connection to human virtues such as kindness. Similarly, kindness has enjoyed contemporary popularity through the mantra “random acts of kindness.” Particularly useful in empathic leadership styles, kindness is a key to providing emotional support, helping subordinates grow, putting subordinates first, and ethical behavior—all aspects of a range of empirically proven leadership styles. This chapter analyzes kindness within a biblical framework. Beginning with the narrative of showing kindness to foreigners, kindness is shown as general helpfulness, but more specifically as uprightness in relations with others or being helpful or beneficial to others. This chapter examines how kindness can be utilized within contemporary organizational leadership.

Something to Celebrate: Leading with Joy

One of the keys to effective leadership is a practice that gets little attention: celebration. Leaders celebrate. They celebrate success, excellence, accomplishments, and, more importantly, they celebrate their followers. The Biblical understanding of celebration is grounded in the concept of joy. The analysis will show that joy is indicative of an inner state of gladness and the communal state of rejoicing. The analysis will begin with a review of the Biblical exemplar of the establishment of the Feast of Purim after God’s deliverance of the Jews in Esther 9 and continue with a concise study of the Greek word for joy, chara, and of relevant New Testament and Old Testament contexts of the word, specifically an investigation of the relationship between joy, the establishment of communal celebration, and the development of traditions. The analysis will show how communal celebration helps to establish coalitions, encourage cooperation, and develop organizational positivity.

Building Coalitions: Leading with Peace

Jesus said: “Blessed are the peace-makers” (Matt. 5:9). In contemporary organizational leadership contexts, effective teamwork requires connecting people through social contracts. Effective leaders create a culture of collaboration whereby followers develop mutual respect from which high levels of engagement and productivity come. Peace is highlighted throughout the Old and New Testaments. The analysis will show that relational harmony is an outcome of respect, trust, support, and care. The analysis will examine the covenant relationship between David and Jonathan, as well as other Old and New Testament texts, to demonstrate the nuanced nature of the Biblical understanding of peace. The analysis will show both the antecedents to and effects of peace in the contemporary organizational context, focusing on building trust, mutual respect, organizational harmony, and collaboration.

Calm in the Storm: Leading with Patience

In recent years, leadership issues related to ethics (and, most prominently, ethical failures) have been frequently drawn into the public spotlight. Concurrently, leadership research has shifted toward virtue-based theories and the consideration of leader character. Although patience has been rarely discussed in the context of leadership, the important of patience can be understood considering its role as a virtue. The virtue of patience describes a condition of tranquility while waiting for an outcome or persevering under provocation. Although patience can perhaps most clearly be exemplified in the Judeo-Christian context as the characteristic of a God that did not abandon His people despite their frequent disloyal treatment of Him, this virtue can be a powerful tool for proactive, rather than reactive, leaders. This chapter considers a biblical understanding of patience and how this characteristic can be incorporated into modern leadership contexts.

Fruitful Leadership: Leading with Love

Given the considerable turbulence throughout global societies, there is a ground-breaking shift in the way organizations view leadership. At the center of this is a shift toward leading with love and respect. The construct of love transcends Sacred and secular organizations. The chapter will examine how organizations can move from dysfunctional to functional conflict through leading with love. The analysis will show love to be the cardinal virtue from which all other virtues come, and that its position in Paul’s list of fruit was rhetorically designed to emphasize love as the preeminent source of all leadership virtues. The analysis will show that context of the use of the term in the fruit of the Spirit is descriptive of benevolence, affection, goodwill, and charity. Using the relationship between David and Jonathan as a starting point, the exegetical analysis will transcend the Old and New Testaments to examine the Biblical conceptualization of love and apply it to contemporary organizational constructs such as compassionate leadership, organizational culture, self-giving, and leadership motivation.

Controlled but Not Controlling: Leading with Self-Control

Contemporary leadership contexts are rife with stress, competitiveness, and demanding expectations. These contexts litter the newsfeed with examples of leaders who have lost control in either their professional or personal lives. Genesis provides the story of Joseph and his inimitable degree of self-control in the presence of those who have forgotten and forsaken him. Out of this study of mastering, curbing, and restraining one’s desires and passions one might wrongly deduce that self-control limits freedom. However, the study of ancient material suggests just the opposite—that it is out of freedom that the most effective self-control is cultivated. This then begins to explain an aspect of the effective leadership characterized by Abraham Lincoln, Nelson Mandela, and police officers.