A lesson in leadership from Moses

The Ten Commandments was on last night.  It’s a great film, but it ends too early with the Israelites leaving slavery in Egypt.  There are a lot of wonderful stories about their life after Egypt and one in particular is a great lesson in leadership from Moses.

My friends Kristen and Denise from HomeschoolGroupLeader did an interview with me recently about what we as homeschool leaders can learn from Moses.

HGL:
What is the TOP way you’ve discovered that homeschool group leaders can avoid burning out?

Carol:
I think the best way is to learn from other leaders.

We’ve got a great example in the Old Testament of the leader Moses. What Moses failed to do was to delegate responsibility. So, the first way to avoid burnout is to get help.

What Moses was guilty of doing was sitting around all day basically listening to everyone’s complaints and dealing with them all himself. His father-in-law came out there into the desert where Moses was leading the Israelites, saw what he was doing and said, “What you’re doing is not good. You will wear yourself out. The work is too heavy for you. You cannot handle it alone.” He goes on to suggest a plan to Moses of how to delegate responsibility to trusted leaders and then they can entrust it down a level, too.

We should be following that Biblical model of leadership. It’s almost unbibilical for a leader to think, “I have to do this all myself.” That comes from pride. Sometimes it comes from a perfectionist tendency, and sometimes it comes because they can’t get any help. I know, of course, your book helps a lot with motivating members to help, but we also have to make sure that the leader doesn’t have the improper attitude of thinking, “I have to do this all myself or this is the only right way to do it.” That’s probably what Moses thought: “There’s only one way to do it—my way.” And he was corrected in that and we need to follow his example of getting help and delegating responsibility.

(the full interview can be found at https://hgleaderblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/wednesdays-wisdom-lesson-from-moses.html