Unhealthy Leadership: Alone on an Island of Recognition with Flatterers and no Frank Friends

Jesus pursued

• obscurity and 
• humility and 
• solitude.

Jesus knew what power was like because he knew what Caesar and Rome were all about. Those who know themselves know the temptations to power. Those who want fame and celebrity don’t. The way to avoid celebrity is to be more like Jesus and to spend more time with Jesus and more time looking at Jesus.

From Katelyn  Beaty's book: Celebrities for Jesus: How Personas, Platforms, and Profits are Hurting the Church.

Celebrity--defined as social power without proximity--

has led to abuses of power, the cultivation of persona, and a fixation on profits and numbers. Proximity itself gets to resolving the temptations of celebrity. Friendship, in other terms. Plutarch advised emperors and rulers to surround themselves with friends, not flatterers. Friends speak frankly to friends while flatterers are all about flattery. Proximity permits someone to know the real you and speak to you honestly. This is not the same as accountability programs. It is about transparency with others we can trust, and who trust us, and who can speak into our lives. Who’s your friend?

No real accountability. Unhealthy leadership turns a person into a persona without close relationships. Plutarch wrote an important essay on this that contrasted flatterers with frankness, the latter being what top leaders need the most – BUT those leaders have personalities that push away frankness. Personas like this "feel love" in the adoration of the crowds, but adoration is not love. What they need are frank friends. Most of these persona types push frank friends off the stage, they discredit them, they gossip about them to others, they manipulate others to discredit them and thus the very person they need— a frank friend — is gone.