Lessons in Leadership: A Weekly Reading of the Jewish Bible (Covenant & Conversation Book 8)

lowest of the low. Those who are loyal to other people find that other people are loyal to them. Those who are disloyal are eventually distrusted and lose whatever authority they might once have had. Leadership without loyalty is not leadership. Skills alone cannot substitute for the moral qualities that make people follow those who demonstrate the

individual character.”2 The Rambam in The Guide for the Perplexed says that this is a basic feature of the human condition. Homo sapiens is the most diverse of all life forms. Therefore cooperation is essential – because we are different, others are strong where we are weak and vice versa – but it is also difficult, because we respond to challenges

“Do you think that I am offering you authority [serara]? I am offering you the chance to serve [avdut]” (Horayot 10a–b). As Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “Everybody can be great…because anybody can serve.”6

Leaders need confidants, people who “will tell you what you do not want to hear and cannot hear from anyone else, people in whom you can confide without having your revelations spill back into the work arena.”

The Rambam lists among those who have no share in the World to Come someone who “imposes a rule of fear on the community, not for the sake of Heaven.” Such a person “rules over a community by force, so that people are greatly afraid and terrified of him,” doing so “for his own glory and personal interests.” The

Optimism is the belief that things will get better; hope is the belief that together we can make things better. No

Leaders respect differences but, like the conductor of an orchestra, integrate them, ensuring that the many different instruments play their part in harmony with the rest. True leaders do not seek to impose uniformity. They honour diversity.

thinking less of yourself but as thinking of yourself less. The great leaders respect others. They honour them, lift them, inspire them to reach heights they might never have reached otherwise. They are motivated by ideals, not by personal ambition. They do not succumb to the arrogance of power.

leader does not stand above the people. He serves the people, and he serves God. The