Whose Agenda are You On – Yours or God’s?

I was reading Luke recently and took note of a passage found in 4:42-44.  “At daybreak, Jesus went out to a solitary place.  The people were looking for him and when they came to where he was, they tried to keep him from leaving them.  But he said, ‘I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns also because that is why I was sent.’ And he kept on preaching in the synagogues of Judea.”

To put this in context, the day before, Jesus had just healed Simon’s mother-in-law of the fever and healed many others as well.  So the word about Jesus was spreading like wildfire in the town where He was. It was like a wealthy man came to town handing out money and more and more people wanted to their piece of him (or more accurately, they wanted to get something from him). Yet, early the next day, Jesus got up and sought out from His Father what was on the Father’s agenda for Jesus that coming day.

But He was gaining so much notoriety in that town, surely He should have stayed to soak it all in, heal some more people, maybe get elected as the mayor of that town – after all no one else had come and made such a favorable impression.  No one else had such a positive impact on the people.  That is precisely the way many of us probably would have responded.  We may have said, “hey, it seems like I am really needed in this community – if I say for awhile, I can really do some good.” What we are really interested in is being noticed and looked up to by others.  Not that there is anything wrong with that, it is just that it is not how God wants us to decide how to spend our day!

Jesus gives us a lesson on how we should set our agenda each day.  Jesus began the day by spending time with His Father to hear what was on His Father’s heart.  That and that alone would establish His schedule for the day.  Notice what the people tried to do – “they tried to keep him from leaving them.”  They knew what a valuable person Jesus was and they didn’t want to let Him go or share Him with anyone else.  The people were focused on what they could get out of the situation.  But God had other plans and purposes. Jesus sought to see where the Father was working – that was His assignment for the day, and not what the people wanted Him to do. In the passage quoted above, Jesus said that His plans were different because He heard from His Father what was important for that day – and it wasn’t in the town where He was – it was elsewhere.

After the Resurrection, Peter and some others went fishing and were out all night. They didn’t catch anything.  Interestingly, there was no mention that they went to God beforehand to determine if that was what He wanted them to do that evening. The next morning, Jesus was on shore and after hearing that Peter didn’t catch anything, He said to drop the nets on the right side of the boat (See John 21:1-6). You remember what happened next – they caught so many fish, their nets were about to break!

Ask God each day for His revelation as to where He wants you to invest your time that day. Ask Him to let you know which side of your boat He wants you to drop the nets. Whatever you do in obedience to God’s agenda will produce far greater results that what you can possibly do on your own.

Do you seek out the Father each day and allow the Holy Spirit to set  your agenda for the day? Do you try to seek out where God is working?  Are you on the lookout for the people who may be seeking godly counsel?  Or are you too busy attending to what you think is needed to be successful today?

Leaders: Pride or Humility?

Proverbs 11:2 says, “When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom.”  With pride, we are self centered and believe we have a strength, skill, talent or accomplishment that we have achieved.  When we are self centered like this, we can no longer learn because we are so focused on how good we already are.  Pride is destructive, there is no doubt about it.

When we are humble, we know it is not because of anything that we have done and we are fully and completely reliant on God for strength, skill, talent and provision or accomplishment – anything good.  That is when we have an openness to gain wisdom – only when we take the focus off self and put the focus rightfully on God and how He plans to use the skills He has provided us.

As I look at the proverb quoted above, I find that there is a definitive action that happens depending on the attitude that I have.  If I have an attitude of pride, then disgrace will come.  Notice the proverb is emphatic – it does not say that disgrace might come, or the odds are better than even it will come, or that it will come on alternating Tuesday’s – it just about guarantees that disgrace will come.  It makes me pause and ask the question, is having pride worth the disgrace that will come?  Is pumping myself up so I feel better or that others will look highly upon me worth it when I know that at some point, I will encounter disgrace?

If I have an attitude of humility, then wisdom will come.  We know from other proverbs that wisdom is more profitable than silver and yields better returns than gold (2:14); wisdom is supreme (4:7).  We also know that fools despise wisdom. Therefore, if we want to have wisdom, one sure way to get it is to have an attitude of humility.  Having an attitude of humility is not about being weak or powerless or any of the other negative connotations that are typically associated with being humble.  Rather, a attitude of humility is displayed when we truly believe that we must still learn, be open to other ideas, that people all around us are more skilled than we are in certain areas, that we don’t have (or need to have) all the answers.

As a leader, do you desire wisdom?  Certainly, the answer is yes.  How do you acquire wisdom?  One way is to have an attitude of humility.  Another is to have an attitude of continued learning from those you can trust.  See the post Who Are You Listening To for more ideas on this.

What has been your experience?  How do you contrast pride and humility? Have you experienced a time when your attitude of humility has resulted in wisdom?  Have you experienced a time when your pride has led to disgrace?  Share with others so we can all learn.

Appointing Leaders

The first realization we as Christians must have is that God appoints leaders. This is clear in the biblical accounts of how leaders came to be leaders. We must submit the selection of our organization’s leaders to God in prayer and seek His counsel, plan and direction. Proverbs 13:10 (NLT) comes to mind: “Pride leads to conflict; those who take advice are wise.” Another Proverb (16:9 NLT) provides good advice as well, “We can make our plans, but the Lord determines our steps.”

When selecting and appointing leaders, we will make mistakes when we choose to make that decision without any input from other godly people or by not utilizing various information sources to clarify and validate our thinking. It stands to reason that an objective assessment must happen prior to the selection, promotion or appointment. The assessment must include obtaining counsel and advice from other wise, godly people who share in the overall vision of the organization. This is a process that will take time and should not be rushed into for any reason.

We recently conducted a survey of almost 600 business owners and leaders asking them about their leadership development practices.  (Contact me via email wbliss@blissassociates.com for results of that survey) Interestingly, 86 percent of the respondents to this survey indicated they would be interested in an objective process to assess the capabilities of their leadership team. (Contact me directly to learn more about an objective process.) Chief executives or other leaders who believe they are sufficiently wise in their own knowledge and experience to appoint and develop leaders by themselves are sadly mistaken. These decisions are made by people with a great deal of pride who trust their own instincts. In reality, these people have their own agenda; rarely is this agenda aligned with God’s agenda for the organization. Those mistakes inevitably cost hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars. These kinds of selection mistakes can be the forerunner of an organization’s failure.

CEOs of family companies who automatically appoint one of their children as their successor, simply to keep the business in the family, often make fatal mistakes as well. Without utilizing careful selection criteria, without submitting the appointment to prayer and seeking God’s plan, these selfish or self-centered decisions lead to disaster and quite often the demise of a once thriving organization. Unfortunately, I can tell you about dozens of clients who have taken this path.  I came along side to help when they began to experience the impact of the mistakes that were made.

Appointing leaders who are just like us is also a strategy fraught with errors. Aside from the obvious possibility of one’s swelled pride and ego leading to “like me” bias, appointing people who are just like us limits what the organization can do and limits where God might want to take the organization. We must appoint leaders based on what God desires the organization to accomplish in the future, not what has been accomplished in the past.

When selecting, appointing and developing leaders in a Christian-run organization, it is critical that those leaders are like-minded in their faith and walk with Jesus. Scripture tells us to not be unevenly yoked (II Corinthians 6:14). Paul was speaking to the Corinthians in a variety of contexts, including in a business or organizational arrangement. Ensuring that a leader’s heart is aligned with God’s eternal objectives is an important and critical criterion for appointment into a leadership role. Leaders who are not evenly yoked will tend to have different and oftentimes conflicting values about what is important.

Leaders who have different principles or moral values will inevitably take the organization to places that God does not intend for them to go. This is painfully clear in the Old Testament when recording all the kings who came after Solomon in both Israel and Judah. For an organization to achieve what God has intended, it must be populated with leaders who believe in and follow God’s principles to the core. Doing it any other way, while it might lead to temporary success or accolades, will surely lead to longer term failure.

We are told in Scripture that God will hold us accountable for our actions. This is certainly applicable to us as leaders.  In every leadership development or selection decision, why not have as one of your filters determining if Jesus will say, “Well done, my good and faithful servant.”

Do you have any stories to share?  Please let me know what you have experienced, or can add to this discussion.

Overconfidence Can Ruin a Leader

Last week, I attended the Catalyst Conference in Atlanta.  It was attended by about 13,000 leaders – primarily church leaders, yet business leaders as well.  The speakers were great – one talk that I really enjoyed was given by Malcolm Gladwell, the author of Blink and the Tipping Point among others.  His talk was entitled “The Mistakes Experts Make” and it was a truly outstanding talk.

During his talk, he asserted that the mistakes experts, and leaders, make can be due to overconfidence. When leaders think they have all the knowledge that is needed to properly address any given situation, they suffer from having too much overconfidence in that information. When leaders are overconfident, they have a tendency to become arrogant.  What’s more is that they don’t listen to other information sources around them who may want to provide alternative points of view, or alternative data points that have been either overlooked or just been made available.

Gladwell gave a few good examples of how this overconfidence has played out in live situations.  I am sure that you can identify some situations that you are aware of where overconfidence has resulted in large mistakes.  I know I can in my own life and business as well.

So what can we, as leaders, do to avoid the overconfidence trap:

•    Make it a habit to always be seeking new information, not just from those we trust, but also from those who know more than we do (and we should have people on our team that know a lot more than we do).
•    Realize that how ever good we are at compiling or gathering information, and processing that information, we can never be good enough, especially when it comes to making major decisions that will impact the lives and livelihood of others.
•    Regardless of how wise Plan A seems to be, always, always have a Plan B and perhaps even a Plan C.
•    Realize that the tools and techniques that got us to where we are today may not be enough or appropriate to get us where we want to be tomorrow.  I am not suggesting dishonesty or loosing integrity; I am suggesting that the methods that enabled us to achieve the position we (or our organization) enjoy today will probably not be sufficient for tomorrow.
•    Regularly check your humility meter.  Humility will not allow you to be overconfident but pride in your own abilities, strengths and experiences certainly lead to overconfidence.

What comments do you have about overconfidence?