As I read through “Concepts of Leadership” by Bernard M. Bass, I begin to reflect on the fact that in some of the oldest text discovered there is evidence of leaders and leadership. The article states, “Leaders as prophets, priest, chiefs, and kings served as symbols, representatives, and models for their people in the Old and New Testaments” (49)—I find myself reminiscing on the idea that there has always been a somebody who has a following/ and or a leader.
At my last college, I took a class on the Bible—history and literature. After taking that class I began to understand the differences between the power that the Roman army had above all else. Even though Jesus had apostles and followers; he was a leader to them, but the Roman army had more power, and Pontius Pilate, the man in charge are killing Jesus, had a sense of leadership. Although his power and leadership can be seen in many eyes as evil, he had the leadership power to be able to defeat.
Bass also suggests in his text that there are “leadership rivals” in times of civilization coming fourth (50). Again, we can see that through the Bible, but we can most definitely see the rivalry in everyday life. To become the caption of a sports team, to be elected as a chair or a president in an organization, working your way to the top of a business chain. We see rivalries every day and because of that now I see the importance of studying leadership and hopefully being able to determine how I can better myself for the moments I must be a leader.
I enjoyed your connection to your theology class from your old college. As Dr. Bezio was talking about in class, History and Theology are both Humanities and are closely linked together. There are many leaders found in the bible that we learn about to study how they were as leaders and what traits they possessed, effectively combining the close-knit schools of thought of History and Theology.
I really liked your last paragraph regarding the “leadership rivals of everyday life” because it does indeed put things in perspective and makes you think about every interaction and relationship you form with someone else or a group, because leadership is indeed everywhere. I find myself thinking about moments when I must be a leader as well, but also wondering about situations when I must be a follower- to learn something valuable from someone else, a trait someone has that I want to emulate, or to learn how not to be that type of leader if they do not exhibit the qualities I want to have.