A conductor of the symphony or director of the choir is needed because the job to be done requires a community of persons to do it mixing melodies and harmonies and rhythm and silence that create musical art and meaning. Leadership in the church or its institutions grows out of a community that, as a community, has as its vocation the accomplishment of goals and purposes that only a community can accomplish. It takes all of these people to accomplish the vocation of the school, and only they can accomplish it. The vocation is integral to the community. Because leadership is a function of the community, the vocation of the leader is rooted in the vocation of the community.
Leadership is a necessity that communities require in order to accomplish their vocation.
The literature I have seen on leadership focuses a great deal on the attributes, skills, and characteristics of leaders. While I am sure all leaders have attributes and skills, I think we need to give much more attention to the vocation of the community and the community s responsibility for nurturing leaders, as well as its responsibility to function as a lead-able ensemble. Presidential effectiveness is seen in terms of the community s accomplishments. Understanding that leadership is rooted in the community s calling requires a greater commitment to evaluating presidential efforts in terms of the accomplishment of the community s vocational purpose. This would be a very different way of understanding presidential success.