Leaders Manage - Themselves

Proverbs 31:4-5 (MSG) Leaders can't afford to make fools of themselves, gulping wine and swilling beer, lest, hung over, they don't know right from wrong, and the people who depend on them are hurt.

• Proverbs 20:1 (MSG) Wine makes you mean, beer makes you quarrelsome-- a staggering drunk is not much fun.


• 1 Peter 5:8 (MSG) Keep a cool head. Stay alert. The Devil is poised to pounce, and would like nothing better than to catch you napping.


• Titus 2:12 (MSG) We're being shown how to turn our backs on a godless, indulgent life, and how to take on a God-filled, God-honoring life. This new life is starting right now....


• Thessalonians 5:6 (MSG) So let's not sleepwalk through life like those others. Let's keep our eyes open and be smart.

What are we filled with? That is the question. There is a role responsibility that comes with leadership that is well beyond personal pleasure. Leadership is always about those that are being lead.

It was David Ogilvy, who told his successor when asked what one piece of advice he could provide, is reported to have said, "No matter how much time you spend thinking about, worrying about, focusing on, questioning the value of and evaluating people, it won't be enough. People are the only thing that matters and the only thing you should think about, because when that part is right, everything else works." Leaders must first manage themselves and for some, that might begin with simply dealing with how much they drink. But, I'm thinking there is something deeper here than simply an instructive warning about managing liquor, wine and beer.

It is Peter Drucker in his 1999 HBR article on Managing Oneself who pointed out that "history's great achievers – like a Napoleon, a da Vinci, or a Mozart - have always managed themselves....[and later in the same article] Success in the knowledge economy comes to those who know themselves - their strengths, their values and how they best perform."

Scripture is telling us that managing self begins with rejecting the shallowness of the world and focus on being filled with the Spirit. A leader filled with anything else ends up sleepwalking through life.

I was struck, not be the admonition to not drink, but by a question I had to ask myself: “What do I have in my life that is equivalent to ‘gulping wine and swilling beer?’" Whatever it is in a person's life that fills them to excess leaves no room for the Spirit. Paul's charge in Eph 5:18: "...but be filled with the Spirit." As a leader - and we all are in some way, no matter our position - being filled with the Spirit is what will give us wisdom and power and protect us from foolishness. It is what gives us the ability to understand the strengths that God has given us. It helps us understand the Gift of the Spirit we have been given when we joined the family of God through Christ.

I'm sure we have seen the self-indulgent life that has damaged athletes, politicians and business leaders. Christians must be vigilant because we are warned that the Evil One is "poised to pounce." Drinking is a path to self-indulgence - but there are others: power, pornography and pride to name a few.

Are you open to being filled with God alone?

Copyright (c) 2006 by P. Griffith Lindell