10 Signs You Are More Prideful Than You Realize
Though all of us struggle with pride, we often don’t recognize pride in our own lives and leadership. C. S. Lewis called pride the great sin and the sin we see in others much more easily than we see in ourselves. Following are ten signs leaders are more prideful than they realize. I wrote the list […]
The NBA Championship and How the Mighty Fall
In his business book, How the Mighty Fall, Jim Collins chronicles what causes great companies to crumble. The first stage is hubris. The dictionary defines hubris as excessive pride. When the Cleveland Cavaliers beat the Golden State Warriors last night to win their first NBA championship behind monster performances from LeBron James and Kyrie Irving, […]
You’re Not a Leader If You Never Say You’re Sorry
You are not a good leader if you never tell people you are sorry. There are a myriad of issues in the heart of a leader who never apologizes. If you never apologize, at least one of the following is also true: You reveal you think you are infallible. If you never apologize, if you […]
The Harm of Leadership Leapfrogging
New leaders are always in great demand. New opportunities and growth keeps the demand high, and sadly the supply is often low. We have, in many places, a leadership development problem. New opportunities and growth confront leaders with the constant need for more leaders. A new opportunity arises for your ministry and you look for […]
3 Ways to Implode as a Leader
We shouldn’t be surprised when great leaders implode, when their inner lives cave in dramatic fashion. We should grieve, pray, and love, but we shouldn’t think ourselves better and we shouldn’t be caught off guard. David, a man after God’s own heart, imploded spiritually, and this adversely impacted lots of lives in the process. Sadly, […]
Four Ways Pride Destroys the Team
What can the frequency of “I” in a quarterly shareholder letter tell us about an organization’s future? LJ Rittenhouse is known for her ability to predict the future performance of a company by studying the leader’s quarterly letters to shareholders. By looking, even scientifically, at the candor of the leader, Rittenhouse hypothesizes about the culture […]
Three Signals We Are Filled with Pride
According to C. S. Lewis, our pride is our greatest sin because we hate it in others while simultaneously being unconscious of it in ourselves. Others smell the odor of our pride and are repulsed by it, but often we are oblivious to our own stench. The story of King Uzziah (2 Chronicles 26) is […]
Not Smelling Our Own Stench
In The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg tells a fascinating story about the launch of Febreze. The researchers and product development team at Procter & Gamble really believed they had developed a product that consumers longed for—a product that would eliminate, not merely mask, bad smells. During the product development phase, people expressed a deep […]