Mentoring Leadership Essay

Leadership has always been an important principle that shapes and motivates people to become better. It serves as a catalyst providing opportunities for members to recognize their strengths and grow from their experiences. Seeing this, to better understand Jesus’ style of mentoring leadership, it is then crucial to identify common elements shaping this approach and relate it with specific strengths and weaknesses. By actively determining these areas, it can create appreciation of how Jesus was able to hone his disciples to continue and expand his principles and teachings. Analyzing Jesus’ ministry, it can be argued that he seeks to promote a mentoring leadership style. This specific method corresponds to the ability of a leader to provide necessary means to train members to continue specific objectives. The main purpose of this style it to establish continuity and promote transcendence from an individual leader to several followers and expand the ideas or skills taught (Towns, 2007). Seeing this, Jesus’ participation and interaction with the disciples remains to be rooted in giving each one the capacity to pursue his teachings and become the fundamental groundwork for Christianity. Assessing the key strengths of this leadership approach, it can be argued that this process provides opportunities for the leader to become a teacher, communicate, and inspire members to follow. Under the first precept, a mentoring leadership style promotes the individual to become a teacher (Towns, 2007). Here, Jesus readily gives himself to be of service to his disciples by means of educating them about the scriptures and the values necessary to become a true Christian. Such dynamics then increase the ability of members to appreciate and relate with the purpose of Jesus both as a leader and a teacher. The second facet involves enhancing communication process. Here, Jesus’ ministry revolves around taking care of his disciples and becoming patient to their needs. Though the way Jesus communicates to his disciples may at oftentimes be metaphorical, he makes it a point to establish good connections with each one. This then trains the disciples to become committed towards reinforcing communication and dialogue as it remains to be a crucial precept to help promote the process of evangelization and conversion (Towns, 2007). The last part involves inspiring members to become better. Given the dynamics of Jesus’ ministry, he was able to put his words into actions and gain the respect of his disciples. Due to this, he was able to further his teachings and also allow members to recognize their individual inputs in the application of their specific leadership style (Towns, 2007). Due to this, Jesus was able to shape the value of his followers according to what he believes is essential. On the other hand, the weaknesses of this leadership style include (1) failure, (2) expectation of immediate results, and (3) live a life of isolation (Towns, 2007). In the first aspect, failure corresponds to the inability of a leader to create and develop the mentoring process. The most applicable example of this to Jesus’ life was the betrayal of Judas Iscariot and his limited ability to imbibe the teachings of Jesus. The second one looks into how some disciples expect immediate results from what the mentoring leader says. Applying this to the case of Jesus, the Bible has elaborated various scenes in the Gospel where the disciples question various principles and tenets of Jesus’ teaching. This then impedes the ability of disciples to fully take advantage of progressing and incorporating the ideas and values taught by Jesus to each one (Towns, 2007). Lastly, Jesus’ mentoring leadership style also promotes a life of isolation. Since Jesus is too focused to achieve his purpose and role in life, he found limited time to spend for himself and open up to his disciples about his personality and life (Towns, 2007). Though this cannot be entirely seen throughout Jesus’ ministry, this also served to provide confusion and misunderstanding among his disciples on specific occasions. In the end, Jesus’ mentoring leadership style illustrates both strengths and weaknesses in application. The strengths mentioned highlight how this approach can provide the opportunities for members to grow and continue the principles taught by the leader. However, the limitations of this approach also impede the ability to further encourage transcendence and growth. Regardless of these inputs, Jesus was successful in molding followers according to his purpose and beliefs due to his unconditional care given to his disciples together with the time and patience given.