Don’t leave it to merely to your advisers. In contrast:
Any good leader must develop a substantive base. No matter how talented your advisers and deputies, you have to attack challenges with as much of your own knowledge as possible. (Rudy Giuliani)
"But Everything is Important"
That’s why we need to go beyond the common practice of distinguishing the urgent from the important to distinguishing the imperative from the important.
Don’t just think in terms of urgent vs. important. Think in terms of imperative vs. important.
Leadership: What Not to Do, 2
Rudy Giuliani:
A leader who distances himself from his staff at the first sign of trouble might save a few popularity points, but it’s shortsighted. Eventually, no one wants to work for someone like that.
Leadership: What Not to Do
Here’s a good example of authoritarian leadership from Hans Finzel’s classic The Top Ten Mistakes Leaders Make
The most important thing worth noting here is that the leaders weren’t being authoritarian on purpose. That’s the thing about authoritarian leadership: it’s often a subtle thing that someone doesn’t even know they are doing. This doesn’t excuse it, but it shows us that we need to be careful to reflect on our own leadership styles. For we can fall into an authoritarian approach sometimes without even knowing it.
Here’s the example that Finzel relates from one of his students:
My organization was looking for a new regional leader. Those making the decision had somebody picked out. However, before finalizing it, they were going to meet with different people to receive feedback on the individual they had chosen.
I gave them my serious concerns and observations. Even though they took the time to listen to us, they really didn’t hear what we were saying. In the end, our input and feedback was rejected. And our predictions came to pass.
How did this whole situation make us feel? We concluded that the leaders at the top had already made up their minds regarding their choice, and that, almost as an afterthought, they had decided to talk to us “underlings” to try to get our rubberstamp approval.
It made me feel as if they didn’t really want or need my input. If they would have listened to us, we would have been spared the pain, misunderstanding, and hurt when it became obvious to everyone that this individual was the wrong choice for leadership.
Is it Wrong to Ask God to Bless Your Plans?
Sometimes it is said that we shouldn’t make our own plans and then ask for God to bless them; we should ask God what his plans are, and align ours with his.
Now, this is good advice if this is meant at the high level — that is, if the definition of “God’s plans” here is “God’s moral will revealed in Scripture.” God’s plan for us, in this sense, is that we do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with him (Micah 6:8; Matthew 23:23). That’s our mission in life.
God also gets more specific: in marriage, we are to marry only another believer. In our jobs, we are to have full integrity and work with enthusiasm and skill as unto the Lord. In our giving, we are to be generous.
In this sense, we are to seek God’s plans, not our own. That is, God has defined our ultimate priorities in life. We are to seek what he has revealed for us, rather than just coming up with whatever we want to do.
Now, within this framework, there are many areas that God’s word does not address specifically. Should you seek to have another child or not? Should your company add those 3 new positions? Should you buy this house or that one? What major should you chose, and what are your overall objectives for your career?
In this realm, as long as our ultimate aims are governed by and stem from God’s moral will, we are to make plans. And, the teaching of the Scripture is that we don’t look for some specific sub-plans that God has for us. Rather, he wants us, indeed, to make our own plans (with Scriptural wisdom and prayer) and seek to accomplish them.
More than that, the teaching of the Scriptures is that, in the main, we should look for God to bless our plans. Our plans will change and adapt, because God is ultimately sovereign. But it is striking that, when addressing the subject of godly planning, the Bible emphasizes not only that the success of our plans is subject to God (Proverbs 16:9), but that, when we plan in dependence on him, God seeks to bless what we do. He doesn’t say “you should have done this or that — that’s what my plan was.” Instead, he says: “Commit your work to the Lord, and your plans will be established” (Proverbs 16:3).
Commit your work to the Lord — don’t be godless in your work and planning — and your plans will be established.
Likewise, Psalm 37:4 tells us: “Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.” Whose desires will he give you? Yours.
Too often as Christians we almost paralyze ourselves by thinking that our desires and plans don’t mean anything — that God plans on defeating our godly plans time and again because he has some other plan for us different than what we sought to do.
The emphasis of the Bible, though, is that God wants you making plans, he wants you doing this in reliance on him, and he wants these plans to reflect his ultimately priorities (glorify him, love others, seek justice). If you are doing that, the Scriptures indicate that you should look for God to work with you in your plans. He surely will adjust and improve them, but your plans will be established — that is, when he changes them, he will change them for the better.