Vision: The Key to Becoming a Good Leader

In our journey to become good leaders, we've discovered that leadership deeply matters in every area of life. Whether you're a student, parent, CEO, entrepreneur, artist, retiree, or educator - we're all called to be good leaders. The Good Shepherd is our model leader, and we follow His example.

So far, we've accumulated three keys on our Good Leaders keychain: discernment, comprehension, and humility. Today, we're adding a fourth key that's essential for any leader: vision.

Why Do We Need Vision as Leaders?

Proverbs 29:18 tells us, "Where there is no vision, no revelation of God and His Word, the people are unrestrained." Some translations say the people "perish." But those who keep God's law are blessed.

While any CEO or pastor will tell you vision is essential to purpose, values, and culture, we're talking about something far greater than optics or aspiration. Good leaders develop vision that ranks at the level of revelation - like having holistic night vision capability to comprehend the landscape of a potential situation.

It's like 99 people walking past a big rock, but the 100th person has comprehensive vision and recognizes the gold veins within it. That's revelation.

What Blocks Our Vision as Leaders?

Many tolerate censorship of truth. Benjamin Franklin wisely noted, "Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech."

Revelation is useless unless you remove the censorship from your heart. The Bible calls it "stripping off the veil from your heart." The world calls it confirmation bias - choosing to only see or hear what confirms your beliefs, regardless of how right or wrong it is.

Leadership requires freedom of thought and vision. A veil over your heart is censorship of vision, and it will bring death to any venture and eventually death to one's will to be. Veils and vision are not compatible.

How Does Vision Work in Leadership?

We can learn good leadership wisdom from God's creation of the eye. Vision depends on your brain as much as your eye. The job of the eye is to detect patterns of light and translate those images to the brain to interpret them.

Interestingly, your retina with its 130 million light-sensitive cells still only creates a rough image - and it sees the world upside down. Your brain turns every image right side up and adds details so you can perceive depth, motion, color, and complex shapes.

Good leaders interpret perceptions, turning what's upside down right side up. The Bible tells us that every human being is born into a state of inverted life. We're all born spiritually dead, spiritually inverted and upside down. Our identity is upside down.

What's the Difference Between Vision and Revelation?

Standard vision is not even in the same realm as revelation. Jesus explained in Matthew 13:13, "This is the reason that I speak to them in parables: Because having the power of seeing, they do not see. Having the power of hearing, they do not hear, nor do they grasp and understand."

Without revelation, people can quote Jesus' words and still interpret them completely upside down. Second Corinthians 4:4 says, "The god of this world blinds the minds of unbelievers, preventing them from seeing the light."

Good leaders can tell the future. They use God's laws, precepts, wisdom, and the Holy Spirit's guidance to tell what's about to happen if correction isn't embraced. Their perception is not inverted or upside down.

The PBR Principle: How Vision Leads to Results

What you Perceive is what you Believe is what you Receive. Many people don't like what they're receiving but refuse to rethink how their outcome is directly tied to their believing. They're powerless to change their believing because they refuse to know the truth.

How can you believe the truth if you don't perceive the truth? Seeing right side up is truly a grace from God.

John C. Maxwell said, "The difference between average people and achieving people is their perception of and response to failure." But just as important to good leaders is the perception of success.

Don't ever believe your success. Be thankful, be grateful, but never put your trust in your success. Proverbs 3:5 says, "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding."

Why Is Patience Essential to Vision?

Vision plus patience equals perspective. And perspective translates into success.

If you have vision without patience, you'll always be at the bottom of some hill, striving at futility and going nowhere. You can't develop successful culture without the golden combination of vision plus patience.

James 1:3-4 tells us that when our faith is tried, patience goes to work and brings perfection: "Be assured and understand that the trial and proving of your faith bring out endurance and steadfastness and patience. But let endurance and steadfastness and patience have full play and do a thorough work, so that you may be people perfectly and fully developed with no defects, lacking in nothing."

Have you ever seen a leader without patience? They might have talent, gifts, rare intellect. But regardless of the outcomes in any enterprise, a deficit of patience guarantees that life is riddled with compromise and failure.

What Makes a Truly Successful Leader?

Making money for a company or adding thousands to a congregation doesn't make you a success. These are worldly metrics that impress boards. But if you're failing at your marriage, parenting, morality, and other core values that solidify a real legacy, you are a failed leader.

Warren Buffett once said, "I know many people who have a lot of money and they get hospital wings named after them, but the truth is that nobody in the world loves them." That's devastating failure.

Good leaders are loved without position, independent of wealth, without being transactional on their influence.

The Parable of the Three Bricklayers

There's an old parable of three bricklayers, each asked what they're doing:

• The first says, "I'm laying bricks." (He has a job)
• The second says, "I'm building a church." (He has a career)
• The third answered, "I'm building the house of God." (He has a calling)

They all seem to be doing the same thing. But when you consider their motive, heart, and perspective on the task, they're all doing something totally different. The third bricklayer has a heavenly vision for eternal consequence here on earth. This person is in partnership with Almighty God.

Life Application

Our fourth key on the Good Leaders keychain is perspective. Remember, perspective is success. When you have the right perspective, you've got success. Perceive, believe, receive - that's outcome.

Consider Thomas Edison's response when his laboratory and factory burned to the ground in 1914. At age 67, he told his son, "It's all right. We've just got rid of a lot of rubbish." The next morning, Edison was composed and optimistic. He viewed the tragedy as an opportunity to rebuild and improve upon what was lost.

This week, ask yourself these questions:

• What areas of my life am I seeing "upside down" rather than with God's perspective?
• Where am I substituting management (rules and regulations) for true leadership?
• What am I celebrating in my life, and what have I failed to be thankful for?
• Am I approaching my work like the first, second, or third bricklayer?

Ask God to correct your perspective and open your eyes. Expect big things as God floods your heart with light so that you can understand the hope to which He has called you. Remember: you've got to perceive it to believe it to receive it.

-Dr. Stephen Marshall