Don’t Swerve for Animals

The 5 Rules of Defensive Driving have proven very useful to me over the years, but my experience has shown me that there really should be 6 rules. You see I worked in the insurance industry for 15 years and most of that time was spent in the area of automobile accident claims. I saw every type of wreck imaginable. One of the most common and probably the most avoidable types of serious accidents were those that resulted from people running off the road trying to avoid an animal. Hundreds of times I saw the facts of an accident stated something like this, “I swerved to miss a squirrel (or some other animal) and I ran off the road… and I hit a tree, my car flipped over, I hit a house, I landed in the ditch… and on and on”. Keep in mind that these statement only came from those who actually survived the accident.

Does this apply to leadership? Does this apply to ministry?

The answer is a big YES in both cases. If you are an effective leader and/or are involved in an effective ministry then you will have critics (animals). They will try to run out in front of you and cause you to swerve off the road you are on. Our instinctive reaction would be to treat them like we do squirrels (or any other animal for that matter) and put ourselves, our families and our ministries at risk by quickly swerving to avoid them.

I believe the best action to take when we are confronted with critics, who will normally jump out in front of us when we least expect it, is to learn to slow down and not swerve. By slowing down you give them a fair chance to see where you are going and simply move out of the way or in some cases get in the car and go with you. I think that is fair.

If the critic simply won’t move and insists on coming at us, I believe we have only one remaining choice. We have to keep moving forward and we have to stay uncompromisingly locked into the vision God has called us, our ministry and our team to follow. So, when the critics come at us… we can try and slow down… maybe even lean our head out of the window and explain again where we are going and why… but we can’t swerve… that is too dangerous… no animal/critic is worth risking our (or those with us) life and the vision to which we have been called.

So what do we do when they won’t move? We run them over… in Jesus name! :o)

The 5th and final rule of Defensive Driving speaks to the idea that moving forward is safer than going backwards. If you ever see a parked telephone company van, power company vehicle, fire truck or police car you will rarely see them situated where they will have to back up when leaving their current parking place. The reason for this is that they spend a lot of time training their drivers to be proactive in avoiding accidents and one of the most proactive things one can do in that regard is to keep from having to back up.

To be sure, both in driving and in leadership, there are very necessary times to take a step backward. We all make mistakes or follow through on decisions that do not turn out as we had planned. In those instances it would be foolish to plow forward. When those situations arise, however, we want to make sure that we take notice and not put ourselves in that situation again.

An old Chinese proverb states, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” In the area of leadership I think we should add, “Fool me three times and I’ll be looking for another job.” I am overstating the point, of course, but I believe the burden falls on the leader when his team continues to have to back up because of repeating the same mistakes.

One of the answers to combating the problem of repeated mistakes is simply to own the ones we do make. We shouldn’t try to avoid them or conceal them from our team. We need to put them under the light of inspection and try to figure out what happened. As this process is worked through everyone on the team has an understanding of what to do when that situation arises again.

I don’t believe it is healthy to lead in a way that causes my team to fear mistakes. I desire to create an atmosphere where mistakes are an ok thing when they happen after proper planning and calculated risks. That being said, I would be negligent if I allowed our team to continue to do the same thing over and over again when it isn’t working (isn’t that the definition of insanity?).

Blaise Pascal wrote, “Jesus Christ and St. Paul have much oftener used this method of the heart, which is that of love, than that of understanding. Because their principle purpose was not so much to inform as to inflame.”

I really want to be like that… one who inspires (and is inspired) via a passion for the way truth translates to living life not one who translates knowledge (or feels smarter) because he learned something new.