Decisive Leadership

On average, we are making thousands of decisions every day! Effective leadership involves making the right decision for the right reasons. Benefits of making the right decisions include:

• Accomplishes goals
• Leads others to accomplish goals
• Builds effective communication
• Builds trust with others
• Gives personal confidence
• Builds on making right habits
• Creates character of decisiveness.

Leaders in positions in the public spotlight are often criticized for wrongs made in the public setting. Often these "wrongs" can be traced back to making wrong decisions in the "little" moments in life. Often these decisions are a fruit of the wrong values as well. For example, if someone values punctuality, he or she will often make the decision to be on time, if not early. However, the individual who is late for an important job appointment probably has made similiar decisions before and therefore, have a habit of being late (and likewise, not putting value on punctuality).

When I was a junior in high school running at the State Track Meet, my relay members and myself came jogging out of the warm up arena onto the track. As we jogged onto midfield, still in our warm up sweats, we could hear a third and final specific call for us as a team to report to the starting line! Not only had the first, second and third calls been made for our race, all runners were lined up on the starting line and EVERYONE was waiting on us! Why were we late? A lack of leadership - my leadership as the senior anchor. While I want to blame our coach for making us participate in a last minute run to Wal-Mart to get rain gear, honesty will tell you the four of us didn't pay attention to the clock while warming up in the warm-up arena. If the stress of panicking and undressing in front of EVERYONE wasn't enough, we had the state track officials barking down our necks!

While this is a humorous example of a poor decision, many "poor" decisions can be avoided in our days if we follow three simple ingredients to wise decision making:

• Base your decisions on right facts
• Rely on wise counsel
• Base decisions based on clearly defined goals.

Give an example of a common problem teen leaders face where they feel their heads are "splitting" and then use the three ingredients to re-shape the "poor" decision into a good decision.

"Those who avoid decision making thereby decide to let circumstances and others make the decisions for them." - Dr. Bill Gothard