Friday, February 3

A LEADER’S PRAYER

This quote has been included as a light-hearted view of some of the possible concerns of any manager and is not intended to be an espousal of any one faith or culture.

It appears as published in 1976, before the days of gender neutral language.

A LEADER’S PRAYER

Dear Lord, help me become the kind of leader my management would like to have me be.  Give me the mysterious something which will enable me at all times satisfactorily to explain policies, rules, regulations and procedures to my workers even when they have never been explained to me.

Help me to teach and to train the uninterested and dim-witted without ever losing my patience or my temper.

Give me that love for my fellow men which passeth all understanding so that I may lead the recalcitrant, obstinate no-good worker into the paths of righteousness by my own example, and by soft-persuading remonstrance, instead of busting him on the nose.

Instil into my inner-being tranquillity and peace of mind that no longer will I wake from my restless sleep in the middle of the night crying out ‘What has the boss got that I haven’t got and how did he get it?’

Teach me to smile if it kills me.

Make me a better leader of men by helping develop larger and greater qualities of understanding, tolerance, sympathy, wisdom, perspective, equanimity, mind-reading and second sight.

And when, Dear Lord, Thou has helped me to achieve the high pinnacle my management has prescribed for me and when I shall have become the paragon of all supervisory virtues in this earthly world, Dear Lord, move over.  Amen.


From: Handy, C. ‘Understanding Organizations’, p98, Penguin Books, (1993)

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