FollowtheLeader.indd

LEADERS ARE POSITIVE

“Spiritual leaders are optimistic not because man

is good but because God is in control.” (John Piper)

Every leader must keep positively focused on his vision through the dual
prisms of Romans 8:28 – and the sovereignty of God. Without that
perspective, his life and leadership become naturally negative. As a result
of that wrong mind-set, everything becomes distorted by negativity –
and all of life then goes out of focus! By contrast, a proper heavenly
vision becomes the positive purpose and passion of a leader’s life that helps
him reach his potential – while leading others to that same goal.

Leaders are basically positive people. They have come to understand and
live by the “paradigm of plenty” rather than by the “paradigm of paucity.”
As author Stephen Covey says, the paradigm of plenty believes that there
is “...plenty out there for everybody”^4 – rather than barely enough to go
around. In contrast to the paradigm of plenty, he explains the opposite
negative mentality this way:

Most people are deeply scripted in what I call the scarcity

mentality. They see life as having only so much, as though there

was only one pie out there. And if someone were to get a big piece

of the pie, it would mean less for everybody else. The scarcity

mentality is the zero-sum paradigm of life.^5

Covey describes how this scarcity mentality tends to work itself out in the
minds and hearts of leaders:

Often, people with a scarcity mentality harbor secret hopes

that others might suffer misfortune – not terrible misfortune, but

acceptable misfortune that would keep them “in their place.” They’re

always comparing, always competing. They give their energies to

possessing things or other people in order to increase their sense

of worth...It’s difficult for people with a scarcity mentality

to be members of a complementary team.^6

When I first began to minister in Haiti over 30 years ago, I learned about
this scarcity mentality through the thinking and lives of the people there.
Haiti is one of the poorest countries in the world – and definitely the
poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. In that poverty-stricken
Caribbean island, there is a widely believed Haitian Proverb that says:
“God is a good Provider – but a poor Divider!” I believe that this is one