Whether you’re a leader in the boardroom or the living room, people look to you for certainty. But when that’s no longer an option, clarity is the next best thing to certainty. In times of disruption, clarity will suffice.
Leading with Clarity
Highlights
- Leadership, for the most part, is about taking people on a journey. The challenge is that — most of the time — we’re asking people to follow us to places we’ve never been. In times of uncertainty, there aren’t any maps, there aren’t any instructions. We’re on our own but we’re not alone. We’re not alone because there are people looking to us for direction, reassurance, and hope.
- As a leader, you cannot provide certainty, not because you’re not a good leader! It’s because certainty resides in a realm you have no control over: the future!
- Whereas you cannot provide certainty, you must provide clarity! Parents, leaders, influencers, mayors, senators, you can be uncertain, but you cannot afford to be unclear. Our mandate, as leaders, is to be clear even when things are not certain.
- Clarity addresses uncertainty, it doesn’t remove it. While you can’t remove uncertainty, clarity is your best bet for equipping our families, our coworkers, our communities to navigate it.
- Clarity says, “I don’t know what the future holds but here’s what we’re gonna do in the meantime”. Clarity says, “I don’t know what’s gonna happen but we’re gonna prepare for whatever happens”. Clarity says, “Here’s the plan for now and we will adjust the plan as circumstances demand”.
- Uncertainty is not your enemy, it’s your opportunity to lead well. For some of you, clarity will actually establish you as the leader.
- Our role as leaders is to do all we can to ensure the people around us, who are following us, don’t lose hope. That they don’t despair. But at the same time, we have to refuse to pull any punches as it relates to the reality of the situation they are going through.
- If your personality and your temperament sets you up to be all sunshine and roses, and kinda dance around the brutal facts, you set people up for disappointment, right? On the other hand, if you have a tendency to wanna bury people under the facts and the statistics, and the forecasts and “woe is me”, you leave people with no option but despair.
- In times of uncertainty, is more important to know what to do than to know what is going to happen!
You can be uncertain but you cannot afford to be unclear. Our mandate, as leaders, is to be clear even when things are not certain.
Andy Stanley
About Andy Stanley
Communicator, author, and pastor Andy Stanley founded Atlanta-based North Point Ministries (NPM) in 1995. Today, NPM consists of eight churches in the Atlanta area and a network of 180 churches around the globe that collectively serve over 200,000 people weekly. A survey of U.S. pastors in Outreach Magazine identified Andy as one of the ten most influential living pastors in America.
Andy holds an undergraduate degree in journalism from Georgia State University and a master’s degree from Dallas Theological Seminary. He is the author of more than 20 books, including Better Decisions, Fewer Regrets; Irresistible; The New Rules for Love, Sex & Dating; How to Be Rich; Deep & Wide; Enemies of the Heart; When Work & Family Collide; and Visioneering.
His success reaches well beyond the Atlanta area. Over 10.5 million of his messages, leadership videos, YouTube videos, and podcasts are accessed each month.
Your Move with Andy Stanley premiered on NBC after Saturday Night Live in 2012 and on CBS after The Late Late Show with James Corden in 2017, giving him an even wider audience with which to share his culturally relevant, practical insights for life and leadership. Currently, over 10 million messages are consumed each month through television, YouTube, and podcasts, underscoring Andy’s impact not only as a communicator but also as an influencer of culture.
Nothing is as personal as his passion for engaging with live audiences, which he has pursued for over three decades at leadership events around the world. In high demand, he speaks at various annual events before audiences of both church and organizational leaders.
“I cannot fill their cups,” he often says of the opportunity to impact leaders in business and in ministry, “but I have a responsibility to empty mine.”
Andy and his wife, Sandra, have three grown children and live near Atlanta.
