Monday, May 21, 2007

The Prophetic Warrior Shepard Statesman

One of my teachers once told us that his aim was to turn us into Prophetic Warrior Shepard Statesmen (and women I suppose, there were females in the room as well, altho as a matter of personal preference I'm inclined to sexism in such instances) I'm sure there's meant to be some sort of hyphen slash combination in that mouthful but I for one can't be bothered to work it out. An strange thing to say, and indeed a stranger thing to post on the internet, however the interns came out of class today analysing each other before moving on to Guybo and myself and what they were analyising was which of four categories we "fit". The options were: Agitator- angry little man (ok, not quite that harsh, but close). Prophet/Myth-maker- visionary who is very useful at the beginning of great undertakings and rather less useful towards the end. Statesman- leader who sees not only the vision but also the people he (more sexism) is leading and is capable of caring for them and holding their trust. And Administrator- a highly organised (and likely anal) individual who has the irritating ability to make things happen and more often than not block the things they do not want to happen. (Guess which one I'm not)
Now, I'll grant you that this is my rather skewed interpretation of a brilliant piece of work, and that each character has a vital role to play at different points in leadership, yes, even the administrator (and to be fair two of my favourite people in the world are the past and present parish administrators in Haddenham, so it is possible to do this job in a non-obstructionist manner, it's just that the generally anal temperament of administrators is not conducive to this). Back to the point; as the analysis moved around the room bringing great amusement with it for the most part, I set about reflecting on the impact of each of these roles and especially on how they work in my life and most recently in the organisation of the Breakout on Saturday. The group turned its focus on me last of all (I like going last for some reason, happens quite a bit) and the concensus was that I was a "Prophet-maker Statesman" which I believe was Grets attempt to combine the middle two characters into one. There was a definite agreement that I lacked the capacity to organise anything more complex than a piss-up in a brewery (not entirely accurate and something that unfortunately is the topic of many pieces of "construcive criticism" that come my way) but that I have some sort of capacity for leadership. Having been informed of this I went and grabbed the notes so as to work out what precisely they were talking about and then came the memory of my teachers aim which was the opening line of this here post.
Having unpacked that lunch-box of fun, I can no longer remember whether or not I had a point I intended to make or not. But it was an interesting thought process anyway. Will post my talk from the Breakout as soon as I find a copy of Guybos introduction to my talk, which multiplies the entertainment value many times over. Suffice to say for the moment that it was a good day and that I went to bed at 8 last nite and did not wake until 10 this morning!

1 comment:

Marcus said...

Does anyone here have the gift of interpretation?