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THE THERAPIST PSYCHOLOGIST BOOK STORE
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Leading with a Limp: Turning Your Struggles into Strengths By Dan B. Allender ( WaterBrook Press )
Release Date: 2006-05-16
Average Customer Rating:
List Price: $19.99
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Product Description
Put your flawed foot forward.
Pick up most leadership books and you’ll find strategies for leveraging your power and minimizing your areas of weakness. But think about the leaders whose names have gone down in history. Most of them were so messed up that, if they were looking for work today, no executive placement service would give them the time of day.
God’s criteria for choosing leaders runs counter to the conventional wisdom. Our culture equates strength with effectiveness, but God favors leaders who know the value of brokenness.
In Leading With a Limp, you’ll discover what makes flawed leaders so successful. They’re not preoccupied with protecting their image, they are undaunted by chaos and complexity, they are ready to risk failure in moving an organization from what is to what should be. God chooses leaders who aren’t deceived by the myths of power and control, but who realize that God’s power is found in brokenness.
If you are a leader–or if you have been making excuses to avoid leading–find out how you can take full advantage of your weakness. A limping leader is the person God uses to accomplish amazing things.
To go deeper, check out the Leading With a Limp Workbook.
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 This book is wise, deep, profound, healing, tender, disruptive, unsettling, daunting, and comforting. Good read. ( rdshaff )
I just finished Dan Allender's Leading With A Limp. I started typing out a response to see what I was getting out of the book and it turned into a review. Please pass this on to whomever you like....
This book is wise, deep, profound, healing, tender, disruptive, unsettling, daunting, and comforting. Good read. It's easy to fall out of the "book loop." For our friends who can't read the book there is an interview with Steve Brown (google for Steve Brown's web site) and Allender that catches the Book's essence.
Quotes from the Brown-Allender interview:
"What [posturing] leads to is this dual life. Who I am before you, I know I am not behind your back. And so the discrepancy, that sense of contradiction, I think is an acid that eventually literally tears away at the very fabric of faith for most leaders."
And get this...
"I think if you were to peer into many leader's hearts, they remember believing. They remember the first love. But in one sense, the posturing has so eroded something of their own capacity to be real and to be alive...that they've become somewhat robotic and certainly distant. And that kind of leadership never is a person that you would want to deeply follow."
A quick Roy-language summary for the book:
Allender's thesis opens Chapter 13 - the essence of leadership is "maturity" not technique, not experience. The preceding chapters are a primer - Allender's foundation is that our story (ministry) comes out of relationship with God who "loves redemption more than life." God leads us (if we will follow) to see that our wisely shared/lived identity as God's redemptive story (my words) gives us a security to lead through the pressures/disorientations of ABC Church immaturity (attendance, building, cash - in short the business model church).
Allender builds his thesis with (real life) case-study-like examples, including (among both Biblical and modern) Paul's "Chief among sinners" proclamation and "strong" in my "weakness" language. This "foolishness" (per Allender) is the "tipping point" into "maturity" (freedom from posturing ...confidence). Chapters 7 and 9 were my favorites in Allender's primer - leading to Chapter 13.
Chapter 7 - "No More Jackasses - wrestling with betrayal without becoming jerk" was a gem.
Beginning with the leader's heart-hardening struggle through unavoidable and countless leadership betrayals, Allender describes the typical Church created narcissist-leader - hardened and separate, seasoned in betrayal, surrounded by self erected breakers against the waves of hurt coming to his emotional shore. Many who lead only feel ripples from the waves of genuine human need.
"Now consider the resulting leadership trap that seems impossible to escape; what a typical follower wants is protection from fear and freedom from choice, and he can find them in a narcissistic leader. The narcissist's fearlessness gives her the ability to stand boldly against aggression, and her independence allows her to make decisions without the complications of relational attachments. She offers strength and foundation her followers seek."
Chapter 9 - Worn to a Nub, describes our largest road block to maturity - business
"The leader who doesn't feel pressed to the wall often is not involved in a work that is advancing sufficiently against the forces of darkness. But the burned out leader has allowed the intensity and exhaustion of his calling to take away the pleasure of hope. Every leader is desperately in need of hope but two factors entangle us: unlimited need and expanding opportunity. And those factors do their best to extinguish hope."
Allender describes ministry disillusionment and our wrestling with God as the "tipping point" to our "returning hope." After our disillusionment and wrestling with God, we "take ourselves far less seriously" and leave room for our "limping-self" to cross Jabbok with a mission (recall the story of Jacob).
The Chapters following Allender's thesis (Chapter 13) are application in the language of priest, prophet, and king.
For me, Allender's unfolding thesis is reminiscent of Nowen's Wounded Healer. Allender's walk with us brings us to "realize" ....this is more than an explanation for what we are already feeling. While Nowen (for me) writes "what we have needed to hear." I think Allender helps us "gradually see" (discover) what has (for many of us) been missing.
I hope your day is good...keep reading good books!
Roy
Rev. Roy D. Shaff M.A, M.Div.
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Leading with a Limp with courage
I was impressed with the guts that Allender has to address some really tough leadership issues. This is not your typical leadership book. In fact, I haven't read another leadership book like it. I would recommend it to anyone who desires to explore all aspects of leadership, not just the good or flashy ones.
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 Sometimes leading God's way gets you martyred... ( danedelen )
Dan Allender's _Leading with a Limp_makes for a frustrating review because it packs some excellent insights into a book that leaves out far too much to be helpful. Think of this as the classic that might have been.
How does one lead with a limp?
1. Communicate well
2. Acknowledge your leadership limitations (to yourself and others)
3. Be vulnerable, but do so wisely
Those three ideas comprise the majority of the book.
Many have deemed this a profound work. But as someone who has read similar books (John Powell's books from the '70s immediately spring to mind), I wasn't as taken. If you're the more logical, linear type of person, _Leading with a Limp_ might come as a revelation. But if you're already predisposed to valuing feelings over stark rationality, this book won't break any new ground. You're probably already leading with a limp, and this book may only help you acquire a slightly larger cane.
While _Limp_ has some strong spots expounding on the three core ideas mentioned above, it fails miserably in helping those who have adopted limping leadership but got tarred and feathered for it. Sadly, many in ministry practice much of what Allender advocates, but have been run out of town on a rail for doing so. Allender's examples of how to lead the way he envisions never informs readers how to pick up the pieces should such an experiment in a limping leadership style fail miserably with the led. Trust me; as someone with many years in ministry, Allender's ideas can fail spectacularly. It would have been nice to know how to get back on one's feet after being body-slammed for leading with a limp. That lack hurts this book immeasurably.
Yes, read the book. Meditate on the parts you need to improve, but keep expectations low to middling. In fact, expect an angry, confused, or hostile reaction to this leadership style rather than miracles.
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 Not up to Allender standard ( terryphillips2 )
This book is good, but not great. I've read a couple of Allender's books that are much better so i expected great things from this one. The title and sunject matter is intriguing and i wanted so much to read about "leading with a limp" from someone who has been through the brokenness process. I sensed instead a tendency towards judgmentalism and arrogance. Maybe my expectations were too high.
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Leading with imperfections in view ( fookes )
So many leadership books paint the leader as a step above everyone else. And, in some senses, they do need to be. But the effect is a false image of the leader as perfect. Perfectionism is a trap for both the leader and those in his or her care.
Dan Allender successfully navigates this trap by putting his faults in view and showing us appropriate ways to do the same. He leaves perfection in the hands of God and calls us to humbly lead under God's care. He adeptly uses the OT roles of prophet, priest and king to illustrate the different parameters of a leadership role. This book is an important part of a leadership library!
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Addiction
