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The Christian Leader's Guide to Making Decisions Michael Zigarelli From: Management by Proverbs Click here for a printer-friendly version of this article
It’s a relatively straight-forward question: How should Christian leaders make decisions? The answer, it seems, is equally straightforward: Christian leaders should make decisions the same way that any Christian should make a decision: seek God’s will and then do it. God is sovereign. God reveals His will to us. And it’s our role to follow Him in humility. Therefore, arguably, “What is God’s will?” is the only question we need to ask when making decisions. Simple, right? It would be except for two major complications. First, sometimes, though our spirit is willing, our ears are weak. We think we hear God and know His will, and we act on this confidence, but what we are really hearing is not God at all. Rather, it’s our self-talk shaped by years of secular management training, bad habits, and assimilation to the corporate culture. But because we’re so sure that we are godly people doing God’s will, we don’t critically analyze the process by which we reach decisions – a misstep that culminates in decision-making that largely is independent of God’s counsel. Ironically, this cavalier approach to “hearing” God ultimately renders us deaf. Our overconfidence begets oversight. Second, sometimes, though our spirit is willing, our hearts are hard. That is, there are times when we are truly in touch with God’s will, but we simply elect not to pursue it. This is what some call “the knowing-doing gap.” In the Garden of Eden it was simply called “pride,” and it’s an ailment from which no one is immune. This too culminates in decision-making devoid of divine direction. Indeed, there are other obstacles to godly decision-making as well, but as an antidote for these primary ones – our ear and heart conditions – we Christians in leadership positions can use a time-honored tool called a “decision tree.” It’s a series of questions designed to keep before us non-negotiable scriptural principles for decision-making. In doing so, it gently but effectively combats the overconfidence and self-reliance that so often infect our choices. What are these questions? Personally, I’d recommend devising your own set to keep you on track. To stimulate your thinking, though, let me present one approach, pictured below. As you see in this graphic, to evaluate almost any option before us, we can ask four questions.
A Decision Tree for Christian Leaders
Question 1: Is the option legal? Don’t break the law. That’s axiomatic. Granted, it’s possible that a higher law may mandate an exception here (e.g., Jesus turning over the tables in the temple (Mark 11) or Daniel’s refusal to pray to the Babylonian king (Daniel 6)), but those times will be exceedingly rare. Almost never in scripture did God ask someone to break the law. In fact, God teaches us to submit to earthly authority (see, e.g., Romans 13).
Question 2: The Servanthood Test: If people are affected, can you envision Jesus treating them this way? When making decisions, God-honoring leaders balance “servanthood” (the needs of individual stakeholders) and “organizational stewardship” (the financial needs of the organization). That is, they seek courses of action that reside in the intersection of these tenets of the faith. Questions 2 and 3 of the decision tree act as guardrails here. In an organizational context, we can think of servanthood as “making a top priority of identifying and meeting the needs of individual stakeholders” (customers, employees, shareholders, suppliers, creditors, local community, etc.). It means to conceptualize all people as children of God, created in His image, and to treat them with love and respect in every decision that we make. Jesus both teaches and personifies this principle in places like John 13 (Jesus washing the feet of His disciples), Matthew 20 (Jesus teaching that a godly leader is one who serves), and in the ultimate act of servanthood, His sacrifice for us on the cross. That’s why in the decision tree, this “Servanthood Test” might be captured well by the question: if people are affected, can you envision Jesus treating them this way? This is a critical threshold question, a clear prerequisite for us. As imitators of Christ, we are not to take any action that He would not. So options that do not pass this litmus test should send us back to look for better options that are consistent with the character of Jesus. Which of these “better options” should we select? That’s where Question 3 comes in.
Question 3: The Stewardship Test: Will the option enhance organizational performance? Serving individual needs is a central virtue, but at the same time, we need to remember that there’s more to our faith than servanthood. On the job, God also encourages us to be mindful of the corporate good when making decisions. This is what I’d call “The Stewardship Test.” Here’s the basic theology. Everything belongs to God and we are to manage (i.e., “steward”) these God-owned resources in accordance with His will. We find stewardship taught throughout scripture, namely in the Dominion Mandate (Genesis 1:28), in the Psalms (“The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it, the world and all who live in it” (24:1); “for the world is mine and all that is in it” (50:12)), and in the Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25). The application to decision-making is patent: Christian leaders are to act as stewards, not owners, of their organizations and of the capital resources at their disposal. These things belong to God and, traditional Christian theology maintains, God’s will is that we sustain and grow the organization He has entrusted to us. Under our care, five talents are to become ten. However, the same caution applies here that applies to Question 2 above. Just as it’s myopic to reduce Christian leadership to servanthood, it’s also myopic to reduce it to good stewardship of the organization. “Do right by the organization,” say some well-intended Christian leaders, “and you will have honored God in your work.” Truth be told, though, that’s a little like Boeing saying: “The right wing of the plane is more important than the left, so let’s cut costs by eliminating the left wing.” Such an aircraft would clearly never reach its goal. In the same way, Christian leaders do not reach their goal of godly decision-making through an unbalanced, steward-dominated approach. In fact, they crash the plane, rationalizing away the moral responsibility to care for individual stakeholder needs. Whether that stakeholder is an employee in need of more time off or higher pay, a prospective customer who wants the full story about your product, a small supplier who can be coerced into reducing his price, or a community desiring that a plant not be relocated, an exclusive focus on the right wing of “organizational stewardship” abandons the left wing of serving individual needs as Jesus would. That does not mean that servanthood trumps stewardship, though. We cannot do without the right wing, either. Rather, it means that the central challenge for the Christian leader is to retain both ideals when making decisions – to affirm servanthood and stewardship, pursuing those initiatives, policies, and practices that pass both tests. Often, there is broad overlap here, if we will take the time to identify it, and these options will be God-honoring. Still, one question remains: what of those times when there seems to be no overlap – when all the Jesus-like servanthood options appear to fail “The Stewardship Test,” adversely affecting the financial bottom line? That’s when we ask Question 4.
Question 4: Have you discerned from God how to resolve the tension between servanthood and stewardship? Veteran leaders will tell you that they’ve experienced a lot of moral ambiguity during their careers. Often, the choice is not between right and wrong; rather, it’s between right and right. It’s right to enhance organizational performance. But sometimes, it also seems right to take an action that will probably have a negative return on investment. Giving away expensive product, as Merck does with its drugs in developing countries, is one example. Paying suppliers more than market rate so that they can make a better living and contribute more to economic development, as Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts do with coffee farmers, is another. Refusing to open on Sundays so that all employees are assured a day of rest, as Chick-fil-A does, is a third example. In each case, stewardship steps back to serve a common, arguably greater good. There are other times, though, that the ideal of servanthood must be subordinated for the sake of the collective organizational good. Cutting loose a chronic under-performer, mass layoffs to remain solvent, and reducing factory pollutants no further than the law requires are but a few examples. Accordingly, for Christians, there will be times when, even though an option may not survive one of the litmus tests in the decision tree, it still passes God’s test for decision-making. But how would one know? Not through a flow chart. Ultimately, any decision-making model that claims to be consistent with a Christian worldview must rely on God for answers. Practically speaking, that means we marinate every step of our decision-making in prayer and discernment. How much more necessary, then, is discernment when godly ideals compete with one another? It is especially at these moments that we need to slow down even more, to reflect more deeply, to gather more advice, to recognize and reject any faithful misinterpretations of scripture we may have formerly embraced, and to substitute instead a humble, patient, and radical discernment God’s sovereign will, letting Him lead our leadership. We are to defer rather than to default, receiving God’s direction on a case-by-case basis. Hence, Question 4: “Have you discerned from God how to resolve the tension between servanthood and stewardship?” If the answer is “yes,” then move forward in faith. If “no,” then don’t move until the answer is “yes.” For sure, this more circumspect approach to decision-making is not always swift, but importantly, neither is it hasty. Though it cannot guarantee that we will always make God’s choice, it guards against the common maladies of overconfidence and self-reliance, guaranteeing, at least, that we will always seek His choice, and not our own, when making decisions.
Sidebar When You Can’t Just “Do It” By design, decision trees are tools for deciding what should be done, not necessarily how to get there. Often, it’s this implementation stage that trips up Christians, more so than does making the decision itself. Dozens of obstacles litter the pathway from decision to execution, obstacles that are both internal to us (concern for our reputation, impatience, poor persuasion skills, etc.), and external to us (corporate policies, resistant people, limited budgets, etc.).
So, even if we know the right thing to do, sometimes we can’t just “do it” as easily as might be implied by a decision tree. Quite the contrary, execution requires circumspection. Usually it demands shrewdness, diplomacy, patience and humility. And almost without exception, it requires a resolute spirit – a willingness on the part of the decision’s champion to “do it.”
Books and articles on effective leadership remind us regularly that great leaders combine zeal and grace to challenge the status quo and advance breakthrough ideas. Moreover, the influence literature has uncovered the essential tactics necessary for getting buy-in for our decisions – time-honored tactics dating from Socrates to modern-day empirical studies. And, importantly, some contemporary Christian literature shows that many of these “best practice” approaches to execution comport with scripture.
To become more adept at implementing your decisions – at the “Do It” element of leadership – consider investing some time in the following books:
Excerpted from Management by Proverbs, Moody Press 1999; Xulon Press, 2008. All rights reserved. Used by permission. Michael Zigarelli is an Associate Professor of Management at Messiah College the editor of Christianity9to5.org.
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