This is a very short class on a particular aspect of leading. I learned it from the TV series called "Wagon Train" which I watched as a kid. One of the main characters was the scout... and that's what I want to talk about... scouting.
This scout was forever being sent off to check up ahead and see if there were any Indians, or if there was a pass through the mountains, or to search for water, or whatever. It struck me that the people rarely ever saw the scout, and yet he probably covered several times as much ground as the rest of the people in the wagon train did, because he was always running on ahead and then returning with his report.
Obviously, when it came to finding a path through mountains or other unfamiliar territory, he often had to go out and back quite a number of times before he was confident that he had found the best path. To anyone looking down on the camp from above (like we humans might when watching a bunch of ants), it would have seemed that this guy was the most confused guy in the whole company, because he was here, there, and everywhere while the others just sat around calmly waiting for a decision to be made, and then they would move off... almost always in the best possible direction.
Well, it's like that with leading. Sometimes you have to consider a hundred different possibilities before you come up with the right one (and even then it might not be the absolute best possibility). And anyone who gets close enough to you to observe you going through all this trial and error, search and find type activity, could easily think that you were a pretty screwed up leader. Nevertheless, it's a lot of what leading is all about.
Others may not see or appreciate all that you go through, and they may even get frustrated that you seem to keep chopping and changing, from one thing to another, as you search for the best possible way to get the job done. But if you stick with it, and stay desperate before God, you should eventually lead your wagon train through the wilderness and over the mountain to victory.
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