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Leader, Develop Your Standard and Maintain It
Brian Kreeger • Nov 03, 2021
Devoid of consistent, true, humble, and complete self-examination, a Christian nonprofit leader cannot be successful in the long term.
The most successful leaders I interviewed found that consistency between their personal and professional lives was a major key in that success. A leader who is a different person in their personal life than the person they project in their professional life will have difficulty.
There is no leader who can claim that who they are personally does not affect their professional and organizational success.
So, what is your personal standard to examine against?
Establishing your standard helps you gauge your strengths, weaknesses, and room for improvement in your self-examination. Your standard is a reflection of your core values.
(This blog focuses on starting a conversation centered on preventing the fall of nonprofit leaders. I write it from a Christian perspective, but all leaders will benefit. Be sure to sign up to receive these articles via email every Tuesday at
briankreeger.com as well as taking a look at previous blog articles. In addition to receiving these articles two days before they hit social media, you will receive the article "5 Early Indicators of a Christian Nonprofit Leadership Fall" along with the Contents, Introduction and the Appendix (My story) of my book,
The Courageous Ask: A Proactive Approach to Prevent the Fall of Christian Nonprofit Leaders.)
If we are not living up to the standard we have set for ourselves (no matter what it is based upon), human nature often takes over, and we compare ourselves to a lower, more comfortable standard we can accomplish.
We tend to change the standard to make ourselves feel better, which gives us an inaccurate picture of ourselves. That is why I encourage writing who you are (your standards) on paper at the beginning of a new leadership assignment when you are feeling confident and on the right track. It’s harder to change a standard that you’ve written when you were not in a position of justification, which sometimes happens in our struggles.
For instance, if I am not living up to the personal standard I have set for myself concerning fatherhood, I will compare myself to someone down the street. “Sure, I don’t see my children a lot because I get home late from work, but at least I don’t travel two weeks out of the month like that guy.” Or how about our role at our nonprofit: “No, we are not hitting our fundraising targets this year, but did you hear about the ministry across town? Plus, it’s not as bad as last year.”
Self-examination starts with
truth and requires the continued comparison to it.
The late American psychiatrist M. Scott Peck wrote in his book The Road Less Traveled, “What does a life of total dedication to truth mean? It means, first of all, a life of continuous and never-ending stringent self-examination. We know the world only through our relationship to it. Therefore, to know the world, we must not only examine it but we must simultaneously examine the examiner.”
“Our relationship to it.” That would mean that without “never-ending stringent self-examination,” we will have great difficulty in relating to the world around us, which would include our role as a nonprofit executive.
As a Christian, self-examination comes with the territory and creates particular standards. There is plenty of scripture dedicated to the command to examine ourselves.
Sometimes it is the person
who doesn’t acknowledge their weaknesses who is most susceptible to them. Have you acknowledged your weaknesses?
Leaders have a skill for determining the causes of problems and finding solutions to those problems, including HR problems, funding and financial issues, mission focus, community perception, volunteer recruitment, etc. They are skilled at pushing their organizations toward excellence by continually analyzing and solving problems. They spend their day making judgments and decisions about the life of the organization.
But do they expend the same energy making judgments and decisions concerning their own life after careful analysis? And do they act on those judgments?
Many do, and those are typically among the most successful in their field.
At some point, people who recognize the importance of this and make a conscious effort at accomplishing it find that they naturally examine themselves as a part of everyday life.
But that is not everyone, so let’s look at some ways to get started as you train your mind to do it naturally with very little effort.
There are any number of ways
to examine yourself. Personally, my day begins by reading a devotional that starts me off examining myself.
The One-Year Walk with God Devotional by Chris Tiegreen always gives me at least one aspect of life to focus on in my relationship with God. It only takes me about 10 minutes, but that introspection gets my humility juices flowing as I recognize I have to depend on God to get me through my day unscathed. As a Christian, isn’t that what Gospel-centered self-examination comes down to—recognizing your need of Him in all facets of life?
Based on your listing of who you are and who you desire to be, you may want to write down a list of five attributes that you will use in evaluating which direction your life is going. You should be sure to use attributes that cover a wide swath of your life—for instance, professionally, family, spiritually, etc. I recommend changing the list weekly. You might make a commitment to do this at a particular time every day. Maybe even write it in a journal.
Using scripture is another way to examine yourself, as using the standard is always best. For instance, if I am in conflict with someone, I will go to the love verses in 1 Corinthians 13 and place my name in the verse instead of the word love: Brian is patient, Brian is kind, Brian does not boast and is not proud…. Talk about self-examination! It is rare that I read scripture and don’t self-evaluate.
Prayer also does the same thing. I am amazed at how many times I pray, and God delivers to me conviction, or my eyes are opened in a particular area of my life.
As I have written many times in these articles, solid relationships with peers, accountability structures, and those around a leader can, and should, prompt valuable self-examination.
You may find that you are able to develop a technique that is unique to you and your particular life situation.
While self-examination and evaluation
are definitely vital in the life of a Christian leader and are clearly biblically based, a leader needs to make sure they are allowing for balance in the examination, and it is done in a healthy way in light of God’s grace and mercy.
Remember, Psalms tells us that, “He does not treat us as our sins deserve,” and, “He does not repay us for our iniquities.” 1 John also tells us, “If we confess our sins He will forgive us and cleanse us of them.”
There are many examples out there of highly skilled Christian leaders who so harshly judge their lives and who they are that it brings them down and squelches any faith that may have catapulted them onward and upward in the first place.
Pastor Jared Mellinger writes, “Grace transforms examination from a tyrant and a burden into a means of faith, love, and hope. Self-examination doesn’t have to be buckets of water thrown on the fires of our faith. Instead, it can be fuel. We can see where God is at work in us, and we can move forward with the confidence of knowing that He who began a good work in us will bring it on to completion.”1
Having personal and professional standards is vital in the success of any leader. Continually measuring against those standards, and acting upon what a leader finds, is even more vital.
Be Courageous!
Be Proactive!
1Jared Mellinger, “Self-Examination Speaks a Thousand Lies,” Desiring God, June 7, 2017, https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/self-examination-speaks-a-thousand-lies.
Be sure to sign up to receive these articles via email every Tuesday at
briankreeger.com. In addition to receiving these articles two days before they hit social media, you will receive the article "5 Early Indicators of a Christian Nonprofit Leadership Fall" along with the Contents, Introduction and the Appendix (My Story) of my book,
The Courageous Ask: A Proactive Approach to Prevent the Fall of Christian Nonprofit Leaders.
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