The Conviction to Lead: 25 Principles for Leadership That Matters

by R. Albert Mohler Jr.

If our leaders are not passionately driven by the right beliefs, we are headed for disaster. At the same time, if believers cannot lead, we are headed nowhere.

The leadership that really matters is all about conviction. The leader is rightly concerned with everything from strategy and vision to team-building, motivation, and delegation, but at the center of the true leader’s heart and mind you will find convictions that drive and determine everything else.

Convictional leaders propel action precisely because they are driven by deep convictions, and their passion for these convictions is transferred to followers who join in concerted action to do what they know to be right. And they know what is right because they know what is true.

I believe that leadership is all about putting the right beliefs into action, and knowing, on the basis of convictions, what those right beliefs and actions are. This book is written with the concern that far too much of what passes for leadership today is mere management. Without convictions you might be able to manage, but you cannot really lead.

Convictional intelligence is the product of learning the Christian faith, diving deeply into biblical truth, and discovering how to think like a Christian.

The Christian leader stands out as one who has developed intellectual habits that are consistent with biblical truth.

The Christian leader must have mental reflexes that correspond to biblical truth.

That story frames the mission and identity of the organization, and explains why you give your life to it. The excellent leader is the steward-in-chief of that story, and the leader’s chief responsibilities flow from this stewardship. Leadership comes down to protecting the story, bringing others into the story, and keeping the organization accountable to the story. The leader tells the story over and over again, refining it, updating it, and driving it home.

Leadership that matters grows out of the leader’s own belief that the story is true, that it matters, and that it must both expand and continue. The story must be believed with conviction, told with conviction, and stewarded with conviction.

Every Christian has the responsibility to develop a worldview that is authentically Christian, but leaders face that duty in a way that is even more urgent. We have to be faithful in the discipleship of the mind before we can expect faithfulness and maturity in those we lead.

Passion arises naturally or not at all. It happens when convictions come to life, and deep beliefs drive visions and plans. The passionate leader is driven by the knowledge that the right beliefs, aimed at the right opportunity, can lead to earth-shaking changes.

When the effective leader sees a problem, the passion to solve it comes from within. The convictions and beliefs are already in place, and they allow the leader to see and define the need or opportunity. Almost like a reflex, the leader finds that plans and strategies and ambitions are coming into view, along with an insatiable motivation to see the right things happen.

Leaders of character produce organizations of character because character, like conviction, is infectious.

We know that character matters when we hire a baby-sitter. How can it not matter when we are calling a leader?

A good leader stands out when character is matched by competence and the central virtue of knowing what to do.

True credibility rests in the ability of others to trust what the leader can do.

Leadership may once have been conferred by rank and privilege. It may once have been something that was characterized by a command-and-control, top-down, do-as-I-say style. But no more. Those days are long gone. Today, leadership is an aspiration. It is something you have to earn every day, because on a daily basis, people choose whether or not they’re going to follow you. It’s something you keep trying to achieve and never assume you’ve fully attained.

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Leadership doesn’t happen until communication happens. The leader may have the most brilliant strategy in his mind, the most breathtaking vision in his sights, and an irrepressible passion in his heart, but if these are not communicated to others, real leadership just doesn’t occur.

To be human is to communicate, but to be a leader is to communicate constantly, skillfully, intentionally, and strategically.

the leader will spend more time communicating than in any other activity.

This is the pattern we find in the Bible, and for this reason the church’s central responsibility is also to communicate—to teach and preach the gospel. The church is led by those who teach, and taught by those who lead.

If a leader has to look for a message, his leadership is doomed.

The statement that leaders are readers is an exception to that rule. When you find a leader, you have found a reader. The reason for this is simple—there is no substitute for effective reading when it comes to developing and maintaining the intelligence necessary to lead.

Leaders read even when no one else seems to be reading.

Those who would lead with conviction must read with conviction.

Leaders get things done. Faithful leaders get the right things done in the right way. The essence of leadership is motivating and influencing followers to get the right things done—putting conviction into corporate action. This requires the exercise of power. We can try to call it something else, but it comes down to the fact that the leader is the one who defines the reality, announces the plan, and directs every part of the organization toward the goal. At every stage in this process, power is involved.

the power of office allows the leader to force change within the organization. Don’t get weak knees now. Any leader unwilling to force change is destined for ineffectiveness. The faithful leader uses this power sparingly, but uses it nonetheless. In a healthy organization, this power is always there if needed, but the leader’s first job is to use influence and persuasion and focused collaboration to get the job done.

most leaders will find that if they steward this power well, the organization actually operates on a high level of trust and effectiveness. This may be counterintuitive, with many people assuming that any use of the power of office to force change will be resisted. But this is a false assumption. The truth is that people within an organization feel most secure when the leader leads. They know that their own hard work will not be thwarted by institutional lethargy. They can have confidence that, at the end of the day, the leader who holds that office of trust will force action if necessary.

“Managers are people who do things right and leaders are people who do the right thing.”

While we can agree that many good managers are not really leaders in the visionary and strategic sense, leaders absolutely must manage.

A leader who takes a hands-off approach to the budget isn’t leading, but merely suggesting. Effective leaders give intensive personal attention to the budget because that’s where the real convictions of the organization show up.

The convictional leader always has something to say, and that message is the expression of deep beliefs, the very beliefs that brought the organization into existence and give it a reason for being. The leader times, defines, and isolates certain convictions for emphasis, but the entire body of conviction arrives when the leader arrives.

Pastors and preachers will understand that preaching shares much in common with other forms of public speaking, but it also stands out in one urgently important aspect. Preaching is the exposition of a biblical text, not the invented message of the human preacher. The preacher starts with a specific biblical text, and that text sets the agenda for the message. Preaching God’s Word is quite different from delivering any other message.

We can learn a great deal from the secular world and its studies and practices of leadership, but the last thing the church needs is warmed-over business theories decorated with Christian language. Christian leaders are called to convictional leadership, and that means leadership that is defined by beliefs that are transformed into corporate action.

We have turned to a God that we can use rather than a God we must obey; we have turned to a God who will fulfill our needs rather than to a God before whom we must surrender our rights to ourselves. He is a God for us and for our satisfaction, and we have come to assume that it must be so in the church as well. And so we transform the God of mercy into a God who is at our mercy. We imagine that he is benign, that he will acquiesce as we toy with his reality and co-opt him in the promotion of our ventures and careers.

The knowledge that our calling is a stewardship is both liberating and limiting. We are liberated to lead, but we are limited in our reach.

there are several aspects of leadership as stewardship that demand a closer look. The leader is almost always steward of more than any job description can cover. In fact, convictional leaders are called to fulfill a stewardship of breathtaking proportions.

Leaders have to be concerned not only with what their organization is doing but with what it ought to be doing.

Leaders simply cannot avoid making important decisions, and effective leaders stand out because they are both courageous and skilled in making the right decisions again and again.

This is because theories do not make decisions, leaders do.

Organizations thrive when leaders make the right decisions, and they fail when leaders make the wrong ones. What is often less obvious is the fact that organizations can suffer worse when leaders refuse to make any decision at all. Indecisiveness is one of history’s greatest leadership killers.

The decision must not be made until the leader is ready—and the leader is not ready yet.

Fourth, pause for reflection. This is not a stage measured in time, but in mental action. It does not mean delay, it means reflection. Did you leave anyone or anything important out of the equation? Does this feel right to both head and heart? Are you ready to own this decision and stand on it? Given your convictions, will you be proud of this decision in time to come? If so, then press on, and waste no time in delay.

Fifth, make the decision, and make it count. Weak leaders make weak decisions. Effective leaders make solid decisions and see them through. If indecision is a fatal flaw, equivocating afterward is just as deadly. Convictional leaders make the decision, communicate it throughout the organization, and stake their reputations on it.

Part of the confusion lies in false understandings of humility. Humility does not mean that everyone has the same gifts or the same level of giftedness. It does not mean that everyone makes the same contribution to the mission, or that leaders are not invested with a unique level of authority and accountability.

the average American home now has more access to news than the White House Situation Room had just a decade ago.

Keep this firmly in mind: Never apologize for having a message and for wanting that message to receive the widest possible coverage and exposure. That is why you are leading. You are the steward of beliefs and convictions that your organization represents and to which you have committed your life. Your organization exists to serve the mission defined by those beliefs, and you have been charged to lead. So lead, and never apologize for leading.

I appreciate Stephen King’s candor when he says that the writer’s most important equipment is a room with a door and the writer’s determination to close that door.

Observers of leadership have long noted that leaders often overestimate what can be accomplished in a single year, but underestimate what can be accomplished in a decade. That is a truly helpful word, and each of us has only so many decades in which to live.