What A Herd Of Sheep Taught Me About Leadership
In my late twenties, on my first trip to Israel, a man read me a passage from the Talmud. He translated it loosely: 'where there is no man, be the man.' Then he offered an alternative: 'where there is no person, be the person.'
Step into the gap. If no one's leading, lead.
But that wasn't the whole lesson. The same passage holds a contrary truth: where there is a person, let them be the person. Or, where someone is already filling a space, let them fill it. Don't take over just because you can or think you should.
That was a paradigm shift for me. I'd been taught that leadership looks like being the one in front. The figurehead, in the spotlight, whom everyone follows.
A few days later on the same trip, we did an exercise in shepherding sheep and goats. No instructions, just: get them from one place to another.
I tried coaxing them. Didn't work. I tried walking ahead and hoping they'd follow. Definitely didn't work. I tried creating makeshift leashes to guide them. You guessed it: didn’t work.
What did work was walking behind them.
They moved in the right direction. From a distance, it looked like they were leading themselves (or me), when, in fact, my intentionally directed steps behind them signaled where to go, and they got there with ease.
That's the type of nuanced leadership I believe in now. Not the one where you're always at the front, being watched. The one where you know when to step in and fill a real gap, and you know when to step back and let someone else lead, even if it looks less impressive from the outside.
Consider:
Where are you leading from the front out of habit, not necessity?
Where has someone else already filled a space you keep trying to occupy?
What would it look like to lead the way a shepherd does, from behind, trusting the direction is still yours?