What You Don’t Know About Making Decisions

Leaders show their mettle in many ways—setting strategy and motivating people, just to mention two—but above all else leaders are made or broken by the quality of their decisions. That’s a given, right? If you answered yes, then you would probably be surprised by how many executives approach decision making in a way that neither puts enough options on the table nor permits sufficient evaluation to ensure that they can make the best choice. Indeed, our research over the past several years strongly suggests that, simply put, most leaders get decision making all wrong.

The reason: Most people treat decision making as an event—a discrete choice that takes place at a single point in time, whether they’re sitting at a desk, moderating a meeting, or staring at a spreadsheet. This classic view of decision making has a pronouncement popping out of a leader’s head, based on experience, gut, research, or all three. Say the matter at hand is whether to pull a product with weak sales off the market. An “event” leader would mull in solitude, ask for advice, read reports, mull some more, then say yea or nay and send the organization off to make it happen. But to look at decision making that way is to overlook larger social and organizational contexts, which ultimately determine the success of any decision.

The fact is, decision making is not an event. It’s a process, one that unfolds over weeks, months, or even years; one that’s fraught with power plays and politics and is replete with personal nuances and institutional history; one that’s rife with discussion and debate; and one that requires support at all levels of the organization when it comes time for execution. Our research shows that the difference between leaders who make good decisions and those who make bad ones is striking. The former recognize that all decisions are processes, and they explicitly design and manage them as such. The latter persevere in the fantasy that decisions are events they alone control.

In this article, we’ll explore how leaders can design and manage a sound, effective decision-making process—an approach we call inquiry—and outline a set of criteria for assessing the quality of the decision-making process. First, a look at the process itself.

Check out the rest of this article here

How Do We Develop Spiritual Leaders?

One of my great frustrations has been the lack of understanding of Spiritual Leadership on the part of many congregational leaders and the lack of training for leaders to help them grow as spiritual leaders. Here is a great study series that takes this challenge seriously- it is a long and intentional process but well worth it - at the end of this intro are the links to this free down loadable resource.

The Leading Edge: A Study Series to Develop Spiritual Leaders

Spiritual Leadership is developed through relationships and applying the truth in our lives. We seek to develop leaders using "Focus Groups," which is a gathering of 4-5 emerging leaders and a mentor, using mutual accountability and a series of studies. "The Leading Edge" study series is the basis for developing leaders in the context of ministry to the business world.

The leader and the members of the focus group must discern the needs of the group as well as the individual and select a course of study that will be effective. This material is designed to help each grow as a leader.

The Leading Edge begins by focusing on your assessment of yourself, then our relationship with God. Next it examines personal issues of character, looking at how to build a team, and next we examine various aspects of our calling. Finally we look at the competency of casting vision. Flexibility is offered to let this material serve the members versus being a overwhelming study.

You can download the full study here.

You can download the inventories here.
Spiritual Leadership Inventory - word document
Spiritual Leadership Inventory - PDF

You can download the study chapter by chapter here.

Unit 1 Spiritual Leadership

1. Spiritual Leadership Inventory
2. Foundations for Developing Leaders
3. Spiritual Leadership - Christ at the Heart of a Leader

Unit 2 Servant Leadership

4. Servant Leadership - Being a Leader with Character
5. Servant Leadership - Building a Ministry Team

Unit 3 Visionary Leadership

6. Visionary Leadership - Calling
7. Visionary Leadership - Competence

Unit 4 Leaders Guide

8. Application - Focus Groups
9. Appendix - The Call of God

Ropewalk: 7 Strands for Creating leaders

This is a great article written by my friend Rick Bartlett, it is well worth the read.

While living in the UK, my wife, Karen, and I saw many new sights. One was an extremely long, narrow alley behind a shop in the village where we lived. When we asked about it, we were told, “It’s the ropewalk.” I did a bit of research and discovered that the ropewalk was the name of the place where rope was braided for industrial and nautical uses. The ropesmith would place the long cords into a frame, which would rotate, thereby twisting the strands into a rope.

I see these following seven strands of leadership development practices like the fibers of a rope. On their own, they’re easily broken. But when they are brought together, they’re difficult to break. My dream is that every church would create a “ropewalk” in their context.

Seven strands

Based on biblical, historical, and developmental issues, these are seven key practices for training young people to become leaders in the church:

1. discernment,
   
2. calling,
   
3. rite of passage events,
   
4. mentoring,
   
5. spiritual formation,
   
6. service/leadership opportunities,
7. and commissioning.

Read the whole article for greater detail on the 7 strands.