Everyone has a certain set of primary talents. Some folks are athletic. Others, easy going. Some are visionaries. Others are charismatic. Some talents are difficult to pinpoint and others are quite blatant.
Aside from the primary or most obvious talent are other talents that don’t come quite as naturally. Perhaps a musician is great at hearing the music and playing it by ear, but struggles to learn how to read music. After time, the musician learns to play just as well using music as they do by ear.
The key is recognizing your primary strengths while also realizing your secondary talents. Very rarely are great things done with a single skill.
This seems to be the case with many leaders: they naturally possess either charisma (excitement or enthusiasm) or vision (having a goal or a place to go). Charismatic leaders wing-it, constantly relying on their skills with people to compensate for their lack of long-term vision, while visionaries often forget to take other people along.
Visionaries without charisma lead a handful of people while dreaming of great things. Charismatic leaders take people on a merry-go-round of life, gleefully enjoying the ride but never getting anywhere.
I write all of this to say that we should examine our natural strengths and use them accordingly. But we should also work toward maturation in the other areas of our lives that don’t come quite as easily. And I speak even more strongly to leaders, because their failure to consider their talents and develop them causes problems for many other people.

The leaders of a group define who a group is. More specifically, the eminent leader defines who the group is and how they act. The subordinate leaders help to influence a situation, but the primary leadership always is the determining factor of a group’s character.
The first response to such a statement is denial, “No, I can think of groups that are completely different than their leader.” But even that seems to indicate my point: if the group isn’t influenced by the leader, then it is a sign of weak leadership that does not affect the quality of a group. So even in the negative sense, the leader defines a group.
The whole situation made me consider the role of spices and herbs in food. Take chili, for example. Chili is mainly composed of meat (and beans, if you believe in that sort of thing), but yet the flavor is dominated by a few ounces of very potent spices. These spices infiltrate the rest of the food and infuse it with concentrated doses of flavor. In this case, the few dominates the many.
And so in leadership, good leaders, although fewer in number than their constituents, dictate the flavor and direction of group by their very nature. And like most spices and herbs, good leadership sometimes goes bad. It can go bad because it loses its flavor or it can go bad by literally spoiling and making the food toxic. Likewise, herbs and spices are food specific, that is, I wouldn’t want to douse my ice cream with an ounce of salt or paprika.
So it makes me wonder: how many leadership positions are filled by ‘old spices’ and how many are filled with ‘incorrect spices?’ And if these two don’t apply to the situation, how many times do leaders infuse too much or too little flavor?
I think the application of this concept is far reaching and thought provoking. I’m not writing this to say that every leader I’m around is a failure, but simply as a manner of reconsidering my role as ‘leader’ and my role as ‘follower.’ And of course, I also am thinking about your role as leader and follower as well.
What do you think?