JIM LEYLAND

During the 2008 baseball season, veteran manager Jim Leyland led the Detroit Tigers to the American League pennant. He had taken over the helm of a baseball team that come within a game of setting the modern day record for the most losses by a baseball team in a single season.

Leyland is a leather-faced, chain-smoking "old school" manager, who emphasized hard work and fundamentals. He believed in his players' abilities and demanded that they live up to their potential and play like professionals. He was outspoken and blunt. Loyal to his players, he had already won a World Series with the Florida Marlins. His personal success kept him from being enamored by any superstar. It kept the superstars from thinking they could dismiss him or control him.

His team did not win the World Series. That honor went to the St. Louis Cardinals. Two years later, despite a tremendous spending spree by the front office, his team began the season with one of the most abysmal starts on record. Although he had one of the most awesome lineups in the major leagues, too many players started too late performing at their potential and his pitching staff failed him utterly. Leyland remained unchanged. He took control of his team in such a way that he did not let them descend into mediocrity. He challenged them to live up to their potential ... and his pitchers to stop thinking they were entitled to their jobs.

The 2009 season is still just two weeks old, but already the Tigers are beginning to be the team everyone thought they should be in 2008. And if Jim's leadership skills remain as potent as they have been, you could very well have a repeat of this photo come October.

John Maxwell once said, "Everything rises and falls on leadership." The test of a leader is not triumph but adversity. As Solomon wrote in Proverbs 24:10, "If you fall apart in a crisis, there wasn't much to you in the first place." The Message Translation