Mark Batterson: 17 Tips for High-Impact Leaders

As we approach our annual planning retreat and evaluation season, I feel like it’s time for me to do a self-evaluation.  Here are seventeen reminders for leaders.

1. Tough decisions only get tougher.

You are only one decision away from a totally different life.  I believe that.  One change in diet or exercise can radically change your health status.  One change in spiritual disciplines can open up new dimensions of grace and power.  One change in a relationship can lead to intimacy.  What do you need to stop doing or start doing?  Your destiny isn’t a mystery. Your destiny is the cumulative decisions you make.  What tough decision do you need to make?  What are you waiting for?

2. Negativity is cancer.  Kill it or it will kill you.

I am wide open to rebuke.  Constructive criticism is the avenue to excellence.  But I have zero tolerance for negativity.  How do you stop negativity?  Positivity.  One of the ways we do that at NCC is sharing wins before every meeting.  It reminds us that God is moving, and we get to be part of it. Sharing wins creates positive energy.  And it’s positivity that gives us the energy we need to deal with negativity.  Don’t let one staff member, one board member, or one small group member hijack what God has called you to captain.

3. No Margin = No Vision.

If you try to be all things to all people, you’ll become nothing to nobody.  I have focus days and meetings days.  I meet with people on my meeting days.  I meet with God on my focus days.  I need days where there is nothing on my agenda so I can read or write, dream or rest.  The lack of margin will kill your creativity.  If you don’t control your calendar, your calendar will control you.  It starts with establishing boundaries.  Then you need to guard against the Messiah complex.  You can’t save everybody.  In fact, you can’t save anybody.  You aren’t doing anybody any favors if you make yourself available to everybody all the time.  Take a break.  Take a day off.  Take a vacation.  Take a sabbatical.

Don't Miss

6 Warning Signs of Leadership Failure

Team-killers in Church Leadership

4. If you listen to God, people will listen to you.

People don’t need a word from me.  They need a word from God.  I want my messages to have a prophetic edge to them, and that happens when I get into the presence of God.  The presence of God is where problems are solved and dreams are conceived.  Get in the presence of God.  At the end of the day, I am nothing without God’s anointing.  I need to keep an ear tuned to the people, but more importantly, I need to keep an ear tuned to the still small voice of the Holy Spirit.

Read Page 2 >>

Mark Batterson is the lead pastor of National Community Church in Washington, D.C., a multi-site church and a leading fellowship in the nation’s capital. Meeting in movie theaters and Metro stops throughout the D.C. area, NCC is attended by more than 70 percent single twenty-somethings. Mark’s weekly podcast is one of the fastest growing in America. His book, In A Pit With a Lion on a Snowy Day: How to Survive and Thrive When Opportunity Roars peaked at #44 on Amazon.com’s best-seller list. He has just released his newest book entitled, Wild Goose Chase: Reclaiming the Adventure of Pursuing God. He and his wife Lora live on Capitol Hill. They have three children.

More from Mark Batterson or visit Mark at www.evotional.com/