Martin Luther's Exploring Leadership

In every movement, there is a set and determined leader. This leader is recognized as the head of the organization, and usually makes the decisions and determines what direction the movement is going to go. According the book “Exploring Leadership”, the three basic principles of leadership is “Knowing, Being, and Doing”. Each of these aspects of leadership were exhibited by Martin Luther in a unique way, because he was an unintentional leader of a movement that would shape history. However, even though Luther was not intentionally leading a movement, he still exhibited all of these qualities given by “Exploring Leadership” through his ideas, actions, and the actions that his followers took because of his ideas. When examining the leadership …show more content…
But in the case of Martin Luther, the absolute last thing that he wanted to do was to be made a leader of a movement away from the Catholic church as a whole. For this reason, there are some glaring holes in the leadership qualities and abilities of Martin Luther. One of these shortcomings would be that he struggled greatly with what “Exploring Leadership” calls “Relational Leadership”. In the book, it is stated that “Although a person could exert leadership of ideas through persuasive writings or making speeches, most leadership happens in an interactive context between individuals and among group members.” With this idea being the model of good leadership, Luther absolutely falls short of this mark. Luther himself was a very isolated man who kept to himself for the most part. Because of this, Luther did not have very many opportunities to go out and be a leader in the movement that he was unwillingly leading. This was most likely intentional, because he did not want to be a part of the movement, but it is interesting to see that the followers that came from his ideas and teachings still stayed true to him even without many instances of solid leadership qualities. There were many weaknesses in Luther’s leadership, but they were most likely very intentional. Luther himself did not want to spark a revolution, he wanted to spark a movement within an organization that was already established, the Catholic Church. Because of this, Luther most likely was not expecting to be seen as a leader, and was hoping that he would be able to elicit change from the distance. For these reasons, it can be proven that in many ways, Martin Luther was very lackluster in some of his efforts, or lack thereof, in his leadership abilities and