Leadership and service

Oddly enough, as I was washing the skillet in which I prepared scrambled eggs for our egg and cheese tortillas, I started thinking about leadership vis-à-vis crap jobs. I've also had amorphous ideas brewing for a while about gifting and the utilization thereof.

Then it hit me. In figuring out responsibility within a group, a leader should first see if there is anyone who is gifted at or likes doing a certain thing, say, cleaning toilets. If not, then that is for that group a "crap job" (pun not necessarily intended). At that point, it is the leader's responsibility to do that job.

It's important to weigh gifting before "servant shepherd" leadership. Only when it is clear that there is a dearth of gifting does the leader do the right thing and be the servant in that particular task. It should also be clear that there's no BSing (pun also not really intended) when people are claiming gifts. The leader should not allow any individual to curry favor by taking the crap job. Then gifting and service are both allowed to flourish.

This is idealistic for sure, and there may be situations where it is utterly impractical and totally counterproductive. But I think there's some merit here, and I'd like to hear your thoughts.