How Faith Empowers Leaders

Faith tends to conjure up ideas of religion first.  This has the effect of causing many people to avoid discussing it.  It’s exactly what makes faith for leaders and leadership particularly important.

Faith goes far beyond religion.  It ties directly to how a leader makes decisions and how leadership interacts with their team.

Let’s look at faith for leaders in religion, ideas, intentions, and people…

What’s the Place for a Leader’s Religious Faith?

Naturally, you must decide this.  But consider, if you have strong religious faith and convictions, then you should not hide them.

Similarly, your religious convictions should not be something you attempt to force on your team or company.  There are exceptions such as religious-based firms, organizations, or non-profits.  In these exceptions, you won’t have to force your beliefs, but you can be more direct with them.

Regardless of the environment you lead in, your religious faith will guide you.  When your team or organization understand this, they will make better decisions for you.  They will also understand a major source of your ethics and morals.

How a Leader’s Faith Guides Intentions and Ideas

Faith reaches far beyond religion.  Faith also is your fidelity and sincerity to your intentions.

What does this mean?  It means that leadership must act in good faith.  You can’t be a good leader if you frequently direct actions or make promises you don’t follow through with.  This would reveal you as a person who is not of good faith.

Do you think your leadership position will strengthen if your team doesn’t believe you’ll act in good faith on your directions and promises?

Why a Good Leader Must Have Faith in the People They Lead

Often, leadership requires you to direct people into action with little or no evidence of why the action is important or vital.

Your team must act on faith.  They must take the course of action you set without question.  This is particularly common in the military.  But it’s certainly not limited to the military.

To earn this kind of faith, you must also demonstrate faith in your team.

This can be done in many ways.  One of the best ways is delegation.  The leader that delegates actions and decisions to team members is one that shows faith in their team.

Discrete delegation is one of my 7 core principles of leadership found in my book, Overpower Oceans: 7 Leadership Principles that Crush Your Most Powerful Mental Barriers.  How to use the principle effectively is covered in detail there.

My faith helped me trust in myself and my teams.  I lead in various situations from educational to war.  My faith in God, Jesus and Christian beliefs helped me make best the decisions I could for my teams.

My ability to have faith in my team leaders both above me and below me in the chain of command was also vital to my success.  Faith of all kinds is something every leader must embrace to fully empower the success of their team or organization.

If you’d like more on the leadership principles, you can grab the first 3 chapters of Overpower Oceans free by clicking the button below.