Leadership: Just Do It!

Make Tough Decisions

A leader is someone who makes decisions, and making decisions can be tough but someone has to do it.

While training for warfare, we were taught to make decisions quickly. Sometimes decisions can be made and planned well in advance, but that is normally not the case when fighting battles. In wartime, leaders must take the best information that is available and make a decision based on that intelligence. The idea is to make the best possible decision quickly so that you can keep the enemy on the defense, constantly forcing him to consider and then respond to your decision. By the time he responds to your first decision, you have already made two or three more, which confuses him and destroys his efforts.

I’ve often considered how the basic warfighting principle of decision making applies to leaders in spiritual warfare. Far too often, Christians lead churches, organizations, ministries, and mission efforts with little thought of the spiritual implications of even the most basic decisions. There is little consideration of our present enemy, Satan, who does not want our efforts to succeed.

Yet, the ministries can succeed and be blessed when leaders make the decisions to begin in prayer, seek God’s guidance through the Bible, and trust God to anchor the results of their decisions (which may not be the results that you expect).

Making decisions can be difficult. There are several challenges that can cloud the decision-making process:

Expectations of others * Fear of Isolation * Criticism * Lack of confidence * Stress * Fear of Rejection * Lack of preparation

When these challenges guide our thought process, we either delay making the right decision or we make poor ones. A delay in making the right decision is actually a decision in itself that can be detrimental to the leader and those being led. We all know that poor decisions or decisions that are made too late can have long lasting negative affects.

So, we must learn to make tough decisions. The time for good decision making is not tomorrow or next week, it’s now.

I recall that a friend recently visited my home with her young son. She constantly reminded him, “Make a good choice. Make a good choice.” I thought to myself, that’s the way to train a Godly leader.

How does making tough decisions challenge you as a leader? What prevents you from making difficult decisions?

© Natasha S. Robinson 2011

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