Abraham Lincoln is quoted as saying: “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” I feel like I could end this blog post there and solicit feedback. But I’ll go on…
I’m reading a book by Wayde Goodall called Success Kills. Catchy title, huh? The book asks questions about why leaders fail once they achieve a level of success. And this book follows Goodall’s earlier work titled Why Great Men Fall. Of course, women in leadership (or anywhere, for that matter) are also not immune to the challenges faced when one acquires power and authority.
In his newer book, Goodall focuses on leaders in the church and in ministry who have lost it all when they experienced significant failures. The content reminds me of another book I read several years ago as part of a men’s group: Overcoming the Dark Side of Leadership by Gary McIntosh and Samuel Rima. I see at Amazon that there’s a new, improved edition of this book out, published in 2007, and I think I would recommend it over the Goodall book for reasons I won’t go into here.
Many years ago—probably 25+ years—a friend offended me by saying, “Any one of us is capable of any kind of sin; it doesn’t matter how dark or twisted it may seem.” I said, “No way. I don’t buy that. I’m capable of a lot of things, but there are certain things I know I’m not at risk of, things I just won’t do.” He responded, “Then that’s precisely where you’re at risk because you won’t build defenses in those areas.”
My hope in bringing up this topic is that we would be more aware of the potential we each possess for massive moral failure—whether we are corporate CEOs or camp directors or conference staff members. Whatever our level of power or responsibility, it can go to our head, cloud our thinking and cause us to lose our focus if we let it.