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I want to share something with us that I believe is important in our leadership endeavors. Now, we are looking at: The Demands of Productive Leadership and I believe that what we are going to be sharing with ourselves today is going to be one of the things that we set our leadership productivity on a pedestal that will give you and I, you know, some level of joy and happiness in our leadership. Now, let us begin by looking at what effective leadership is. One of the hallmarks of effective leadership, actually, is productivity. I believe over time, we’ve talked about effective leadership, and what exactly effective leadership means. But when you put together everything that makes your leadership effective, or that will make our leadership effective, one of those things that we look at is productivity.
Listen to Podcast: The Demands of Productive Leadership
The desire of every leader is to be productive in their leadership endeavors. It is the desire of every leader to be productive, one way or the other in their leadership endeavors and leadership assignment. As a matter of fact, I don’t think there is any leader anywhere who prays to be unproductive in what they do. Every leader seeks ways and means through which they try to meet the demands of their leadership responsibility, and also to be successful at it. So, every leader’s desire is actually to be productive one way or the other. Now, when we’re talking about productive leadership, productive leadership, therefore, entails consistently taking focused steps and action by the leader on that which is most valuable and important towards attaining the set goals and objectives of the organization.
Now, this is very important for us to consider as leaders. When we’re talking about what productive leadership means. It actually talks about consistently taking focused steps and action and most importantly, by the leader on things that are most valuable and important towards attaining the set goals and objectives of the organization that we are leading. So, we will discover that highly productive leaders don’t fall from the sky, highly productive leaders don’t possess some special magical skills or talent. Peradventure we have come across some productive leaders that we admire and that we look up to. You see, it is not as if they fall from the sky or they appear from some magical planet that we don’t understand. But when we are talking about highly productive leaders, they are simply men and women who have given themselves over time to the demand of their productivity in leadership.
So, when you see a productive leader, for example, you will discover that he or she over time, has given himself or herself to the demand of their productivity in leadership. So, what does that mean? It simply tells us that productivity in leadership has demands. The question we may then ask ourselves is, what are these demands? What are the demands of productivity in leadership? Now, let me quickly show us a few of them and then we will learn one or two things from them. Now the very first demand of productivity in leadership actually is a routine lifestyle that is consistent with the task of our leadership. The very first demand of a productive leadership or productivity in leadership is a routine lifestyle that is consistent with the task of your leadership.
Now, every productive leader has a routine lifestyle that they have given themselves to over time, and that has become part and parcel of their leadership life. So, when you see a productive leader, he or she has given himself or herself to a routine lifestyle that is consistent and that has become part and parcel of their leadership life. Now let’s look at an example from the life of Jesus Christ who is our model leader. If you look at the book of Luke 5:16. The Bible says: So, He Himself often withdrew into the wilderness and prayed. The Bible showed us in that Luke 5:16 that Jesus often withdrew into the wilderness and prayed. Now, if you look at the word, often in that particular verse, it actually describes what a person does frequently or what a person does many times. So, we can infer from that Luke 5:16 that prayer was Jesus’s routine lifestyle as a leader.
So sometimes when you’re looking at the life of Jesus, and how effective and productive he was while he was on earth, one of his routine lifestyles that the Bible showed us is that Jesus gave himself to prayer. If you also read Luke 6:12, just the next chapter, the Bible also says: Now it came to pass in those days that He went out to the mountain to pray, and continued all night in prayer to God. So that was an example from the life of Jesus. Jesus had prayer as a routine lifestyle. So, in your leadership, productivity in leadership is usually and most times; a result of what you have given yourself to doing routinely, which is of course towards the goal and objectives of that leadership. So, yours, for example, may not be prayer, as we saw in the case of Jesus, but being a productive leader, will demand that you have a routine lifestyle that is consistent with your leadership. Now, this is the very first demand of productivity in leadership.
The second one that I want to quickly show us is learning. Learning is another demand of productivity in leadership. Now, there is hardly any productivity secrets that cannot be learnt. There is hardly any productivity secret that you have seen anywhere in any leader across the globe that cannot be learnt. And this is why most times highly productive leaders give themselves to reading and learning and advancing their knowledge-base as leaders. if you are going to be a productive leader, you must give yourself consistently to learning. And one of the ways through which we learn is actually true reading, you must be a leader that loves to read, there must be something that you are reading as a leader, that is adding value to your leadership on a daily basis. Now, if you look at an example of Jesus, again, in Luke 4:16, the Bible says: So, He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up. And as His custom was, He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up to read.
So, we can see from here that one of Jesus’ secrets to being a productive leader was also reading. The Bible says, as His custom was, He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up to read. And that is why sometimes, you will discover that Jesus sometimes said to the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, when they were astonished about the amount of knowledge that Jesus had at age 12, you know, at the age of 12, they were looking at Jesus, when he was asking questions and answering questions in the synagogue. They were so astonished about the amount of knowledge that Jesus had. Now the secret of that effectiveness for Jesus as we have seen in that Luke 4:16, is actually reading. So, Jesus was and avid reader. Reading was part of his learning skills. And no wonder in Matthew chapter 19:4, Jesus answered the Pharisees when they were asking Him questions about marriage, he asked them whether they have not read the Scriptures.
So, learning is a demand when it comes to productive leadership and that learning most of the times come via reading. Learning could also be attained through other means, like watching documentaries, and what have you. But reading is actually important to learning. So, if you are going to be productive leader, you must give yourself to learning, there must be something that you are learning. And the last one I want to show us is collaboration. Productivity responds to collaboration. You see, there is an element of collaboration in leadership that usually gets the job done. A leader may be able to get certain things done by himself or herself. But there are other areas in which high productivity requires effective collaboration. Now look at the example of Jesus, Jesus had an assignment to get the gospel of the kingdom of God preached to the whole world. Now Jesus couldn’t do this all alone. So, Jesus recruited twelve men, his disciples.
Now, these twelve men preached in certain regions in Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria, and they further raised other men who joined them. Now, through them, the gospel was propagated and handed down to different missionaries who in turn went into different nooks and crannies of the world and today, we have billions of Christians worldwide who professes, you know, the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ. But don’t forget, it began from one man, Jesus, and it went to twelve men, and to different missionaries, and by extension, to the whole world. So, this is what effective collaboration does in productive leadership. Leaders one way or the other must learn how to collaborate if they’re going to be productive in their leadership.
So, looking at the demands of productivity leadership, we have been able to look at just three things that is going to be required of us if we’re going to be productive in our leadership. And the first one we examined is a routine lifestyle that is consistent with the task of our leadership. And the second one we examined is learning; you must give yourself to learning and learning most of the times comes via reading. You must be a leader that reads everything that is required in your leadership area. And the last one we saw is collaboration. If you’re going to be a productive leader, you must learn to collaborate in your leadership endeavors.
This is where we are going to draw the curtains on this episode of Leaderview, I believe you have picked one or two things that you are going to apply in your leadership assignments going forward. Thank you for the gift of your time. Please don’t forget to like this podcast, share it and also drop your comments with me in the comment section. Till next time on Leaderview, remain effective and productive in your leadership.
God bless you.
[Centre for New Dimension Leadership]
