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Leading with a Limp: Take Full Advantage of Your Most Powerful Weakness

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Brief Summary

Allender's purpose in writing Leading with a Limp is to awaken leaders to the simple hard truth...you're in for the battle of your life . His goal is to encourage emerging and established leaders to grow a sense of inner confidence that will enable them to overcome the difficulties and challenges of leadership. His central thesis is that as leaders expose weakness and failure, a common experience for all at one point or another, this actually becomes a wellspring of strength to lead from.

The core assumption upon which everything else in this book is built: to the degree you face and name and deal with your failures as a leader, to that same extent you will create an environment conducive to growing and retaining productive and committed colleagues

A pericope discussing God's requirements in relation to a leader's character, approach and attitude to power, pride and ambition follows to frame up a discussion regarding the need for leaders to develop a humble, self effacing, transparent and authentic reluctant leadership as an exposure of their weakness and a revelation of God's goodness .
Major Features

According to Allender, learning to lead with a limp is the consequence of appropriate, open and effectual disclosures made in the midst of six challenging realities: crisis, complexity, betrayal, loneliness, weariness and glory .

He develops a model by overlaying two lists, one the antithesis of the other, over six challenge realities in an attempt to describe a three dimensional matrix that equates to the multifaceted web of relationships and responses a leader has to negotiate . These positive effectual or negative ineffectual responses equate to possible response to each of the realities.

Negative/typical ineffectual responses to challenges:
1. Crisis - Cowardice,
2. Complexity - Rigidity,
3. Betrayal - Narcissism,
4. Loneliness - Hiding,
5. Weariness - Fatalism.
6. Glory - Secrecy


Positive/options for effectual solutions to challenges:
1. Crisis - Courage,
2. Complexity - Depth,
3. Betrayal - Gratitude,
4. Loneliness - Openness,
5. Weariness - Hope.
6. Glory - Disclosure

Allender then details the paradox of a well-documented successful failure. This is actually a clever parody of the biblical narrative of Isaac, Rebecca, Esau and Jacob. Allender uses this narrative as an example of ineffectual responses being turned around. The middle chapters are dedicated to dealing with each of the challenges, a chapter for each, in the light of both effectual and ineffectual responses.

Strengths and Weaknesses

Leading with a Limp counters a common leadership theory that encourages leaders to operate out of strengths and minimise weaknesses - effectively encouraging leaders to live a life of denial.

Finally, here is an author that doesn't shrink back from the harsh realities of leadership and the associated challenges and difficulties involved. Allender's stories gloss over nothing. He provides meaningful insights, understandings and avenues of response so that even the most battle weary leader may find resources beyond the normal in the goodness, providence and grace of God to live with integrity, embrace failure and weakness, and keep leading effectively.

Allender's theology of leadership makes sense of the suffering servant of Isaiah (Isa 52:13-14), God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble of James and Peter (Js 4:6, 1P5:5), The greatest of all shall be your servant (Mk 10:43) and The first will be last and the last will be first (Mk 10:31) of Jesus teaching and the treasure in jars of clay (2 Cor 4:7) and my [God's] power is made complete in weakness (2 Cor12:9) that Paul articulates.

For the insecure leader, frequent disclosures of habitual failure and weakness may give rise to a self-indulgent form of narcissism or be a mask for other attempts at self-fortification. Allender addresses this with the exhortative qualification, don't just acknowledge failure...dismantle it...publicly .

Allender's frank and honest accounts of the experiences and situations leaders encounter are powerful stories that for some may be potentially overwhelming. Those in a bad place emotionally or susceptible to melancholy may find the book a bit depressive, but in Allender's mind that's probably a good thing. There is not a lot of salve on the surface here. It is more like a cup of cement with a clarion call to harden up through surrender! Having said that, if there is any salve, it is that failure isn't final and weakness doesn't discount a person from leadership - it qualifies them. According to Allander, as failure, weakness and vulnerability is embraced and effectually disclosed, it becomes the stimulant that spawns growth, builds confidence and instils strength in those who are prepared to learn to lead with a limp.

If you ever feel isolated and alone as a leader, this book is for you. If you ever wonder how you can lead in the midst of your many flaws as a person, then this book is for you.

Dan Allender does a fantastic job helping the reader become more comfortable with the weaknesses he/she has as a leader. Most leadership books are how-to...this is not. This is not simple steps to becoming more effective. This book is more of a gentle consolation. More than instruct you it sympathizes with you...and in the process, guides you. The takeaways are realizing other leaders are just as flawed as you. When you begin to realize this and lead in the midst of your weakness, not avoiding them, you become a more trustworthy leader.

Allender encourages us to stop avoiding the shortcomings we have, to face up to them, and to lead in the midst of them in a way that is courageously humble. A must read for all those in leadership who think if their weaknesses are exposed no one will follow (actually, it's quite the contrary).

As the leadership mentor to women from every continent, career path and denomination, I have often wondered how to effectively communicate the contents of this book... and here it is! Dan has done it!

"Leading with a Limp" is loaded with profound, practical and practically never-verbalized truths that every God-appointed leader needs for success.

Balanced, beautiful, provoking and dead-on!

A few of my favorite sentences from just one page:

"A broken leader is no longer driven by the need to impress people or to secure their approval. A broken leader has already known shame, so there is little fear of being found out or further exposed as a failure...

"The opinions of others are both data and delight, but she doesn't live and die
by the way others judge her.

"Strong approval is a delight and is a humbling reminder that even a blind squirrel occasionally bumps into an acorn...

Love it! Love it!

If you are a leader, read this book!
If you are the trainer of leaders, require it!

I was probably more excited to read this book than any other book I've bought this year. I knew from the title that Dan Allender understood what real leadership looked like and that he was not deceived into thinking that leadership is all about power and charisma like so many people seem to be fooled into believing today. I am a big advocate of the servant-based leadership style.

He makes some very good points throughout the book especially about how reluctant leaders are probably the type of leaders you want in your organization, not ones who are self-appointed or have the best list of credentials on paper.

One of the overarching themes in the book is that "bad stuff" is going to happen to you when you are a leader - people will betray you, quit on you, call you names behind your back - how will you respond? Will you put on a false mask and try to cover up the problems or will you be yourself and be open and honest with people; even to the point of showing them your weaknesses?

I failed to see the correlation though between the book's title and the book's content. Some of the Biblical ties were weak and there was never a clear definition or description offered at any point.

At times I found myself skipping pages because I grew tired of the writing style - I would argue that he uses far too many analogies. It's not that I mind analogies but in some chapters there seemed to be one or even two on every single page and most of them were based on cliche logic and catchy phrases. It would've been better if he had just made his point and moved on because the analogies became a distraction to me.

Overall a decent book with a few nuggets of truth to add to the global leadership discussion. Perhaps I had my expectations set too high to let myself just enjoy the book. If you did enjoy this book though or if you like reading about servant-based leadership then I would highly recommend Leadership and Self-Deception.

This is such an honest, helpful book.

It is more accurate and truthful to the reality of leading than other's I've read, and I've read many. Dan's ideas are paradoxical in the best sense.

I bought it the other day on a whim in Barnes & Noble, after reading a bit of it standing up at a shelf. Today is Father's Day, and I enjoyed two hours reading it this afternoon, on "my day" when I can do pretty much anything I want. A gentle page turner. I'm smiling as I write this review.

I read this book in order to teach from it for our Celebrate Recovery Leadership Retreat. I could not get enough of this book. I have never read a book so insightful to the 'sins of man." It is rare to find a book that so honestly addresses the very normal things that people struggle with. The teaching went amazing and there are 15 people waiting in the wings to order the book so that can read it for themselves.

Terrific book. It will fundamentally shift the way you approach leadership.

Take a look at this one quote, and you'll know what I mean:

"The real weight on [a leader's] shoulders lies in the need to decide. To decide requires a death, the dieing to a 1,000 options. The putting aside of a legion of possibilities, in order to choose just one. Someone has to decide. Someone has to look out into the future. Someone has to stand on the edge of the cliff and say, "You know what... I'm jumping. That's what a leader does. That's what a pastor does."

I highly, highly recommend this book.

Bought this for a friend he said he liked it. It was for a class.

Every Leader should read this and require his/her leaders to read too. This isn't milk. It's a prime cut of meat for those who desire to be a leader after God's heart. Enjoy!

this book teaches, how to really lead others...
also yourself...
great book / great condition / fast shipping = good !!!