The Right Focus in Leadership

A call to remain focused only on what we can control

My two fellow pastors and I recently self-assessed our leadership in navigating a thorny situation within our church. The outcome we preferred failed to actualize, so we took some time to evaluate our decisions. Should we have done something differently? Did we miss anything along the way that might have changed the outcome? Was the less-than-ideal outcome the fruit of our poor leadership?

We have these kinds of conversations frequently. In fact, all leaders probably resonate with this line of questioning. My wife and I have had similar conversations regarding parenting. Hindsight is 20/20, they say. If we knew then what we know now, we probably would have done things differently.

The problem, of course, is that we never know the outcome while we are in the trenches making decisions. That information is not available to us. Only God knows how a situation will turn out. Only he knows the full consequences of a human decision, and he does not typically let us in on that secret. Good leadership, therefore, must be process-focused leadership. Since the leader can never guarantee any outcome, wise leadership focuses on improving the process so that good outcomes are most likely.

In other words, since we cannot always produce the exact outcomes we prefer, we should at least make sure we are pursuing truth, acting virtuously, following wise habits, and prioritizing faithfulness to God along the way. If our process is righteous, we can rest in the knowledge that the outcome resides in the loving hands of God.

We see Paul model this approach in Acts 20:26 when he declares to the Ephesian elders, “I am innocent of the blood of all, for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God.” In other words, Paul rests in the rightness of his process—he declared the whole counsel of God. He did what he was supposed to do. Since he was faithful in the process, the outcome, whatever it turned out to be, would not be his responsibility.

I think that’s a liberating model for leaders to follow. We can’t control the outcome, but we are responsible for the process. God doesn’t hold leaders accountable for outcomes; he will, however, call us to account for the process.

Sometimes self-evaluation will reveal errors in our process. When that happens, we ought to respond with humility by admitting our role in the bad outcome and fixing what’s broken in the process. Our new and improved process still won’t guarantee good outcomes, but the experience of learning from our failures will make us better leaders going forward. Bad outcomes always provide opportunities for growth, but only if we’re humble and willing to admit our own failures before God and the people we lead.

Before Tim Keller died, Collin Hansen asked the gifted pastor and author why he never wrote a book with his wife, Kathy, about parenting, especially since the couple had written a very successful marriage book. Keller responded that, even though their three boys had turned out well as adults (outcome), they didn’t necessarily feel like they had been the best parents (process). In fact, they perceived that friends of theirs had been better parents than them (process) without enjoying good outcomes. The Kellers hesitated to write a parenting book because they could not guarantee the outcome that so many parents want.

I love Keller’s humble wisdom. He refused to take credit for the success of his adult children because he recognized his own parenting failures. In fact, that’s another mark of wise leadership—just as the wise leader can’t always be blamed for bad outcomes, he never takes credit for good ones. God brings about good outcomes despite the leader’s flaws.

However, I think Keller also missed something important here. He wrongly assumed that good leadership advice guarantees good outcomes. However, as we’ve seen, good leadership advice focuses on the process, not the outcome. The Bible is full of wisdom about parenting, and all that material should inform our process. Our inability to guarantee good outcomes should not lead us to ignore all that God has revealed about formulating a good parenting process.

Of course, our inability to guarantee preferable results should not cause us to ignore outcomes. In fact, to create a faithful process, you must orient that process toward viable goals. When Paul preached the whole counsel of God, he did so in hopes that his hearers would respond in repentance and faith. When parents map out a plan for leading teenagers, they ought to orient that plan toward the goal of producing mature and responsible adults who love Christ. The preferable goal informs the wise process, but the wise process does not guarantee the preferable goal.

In conclusion, a good leader rests in the understanding that we are powerless to guarantee outcomes. If we believe we can bring about the outcomes we desire, we will blame ourselves when those outcomes don’t actualize. God doesn’t need us to bring about good outcomes. He’s got that part. He calls us to pursue faithfulness. That’s something that, by his grace, we can handle.