From “The Dream Weaver”
I was eating lunch with a friend who has a PhD in leadership development, I asked him, “Based on all your research and experience, what would you say is the most important secret to developing world class leaders?”
He put his fork down. “Well its not a course, a lecture or a book,” he said. He then picked up his fork and started eating again.
His answer intrigued me. I asked him to explain.
“The single best way to develop leaders,” he said, “is to take people out of their safe environment and away from the people they know, and to throw them into a new arena that they know little about. Way over their head, preferably. In fact the more demanding their challenges the more pressure and risk they face, the more likely a dynamic leader will emerge.”
At first his theory surprised me. It sounded unsafe and unkind. But on second thought, it reminded me of many of my own experiences in the wasteland.
In fact God used a similar approach to raise up a leader in the wilderness, on the journey from Egypt to the Promised Land.
(p. 117)