Kris Vallotton • Oct 08, 2015

10 Principles for Leadership

Here are 10 principles for leadership that I’ve learned from years of owning businesses and serving in leadership at Bethel.


1. Reward what you want and confront what is unhealthy. If you give ice cream to a screaming child to shut them up, you just rewarded the behavior you don’t want. If you extend mercy when the situation calls for discipline, you muddy the message. Furthermore, you teach people that God responds to tantrums. The truth is that self-pity opens the door for every kind of evil in your life.

2. Be consistent and dependable so that the people who follow you can predict your actions. If your leadership style and core values depend on your mood, soon no one will follow you.

3. Don’t create expectations you can’t fulfill. Trust is built on you doing what you said you would do. Therefore, under promise and over deliver.

4. Confront attitudes before they become behaviors so people learn how to change their minds, not just their actions.

5. Don’t punish failure, only confront it. Make it clear what was wrong and why. Then give them proactive steps to get it right.

6. Never develop a plan FOR people, instead develop it WITH them so they take ownership of the strategy. Teach them how to think, not just what to think. So if they come up with a bad plan, ask them questions that lead them to see that their way of thinking was wrong.

7. Don’t withdraw love in order to discipline, otherwise the best discipline feels like punishment.

8. People learn more from observation than through articulation, so model what you are teaching.

9. Silence is not empowering and absence is not deploying. Be present with the people you are leading. Remember, empowering is not inactive, it is proactive.

10. Throwing someone into the deep end of the pool won’t teach them how to swim. It will teach them to hate water and to not trust you.

What are some principles of leadership that you have learned? I’d love to hear your comments.


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