Common Mistakes Leaders Make When Giving Advice

In the previous lessons, we saw how all of us, especially leaders, are called to give wise counsel.  However, wisdom isn’t readily available or recognizable.  

Giving wise counsel isn’t a trivial task: it can make the difference between life and death for someone.

So now let’s take a look at common mistakes even well-intentioned leaders can make when attempting to provide "wise" counsel.

Remember: the stakes are high, so checking yourself or the leaders in your community for these areas of self-awareness makes a huge difference.         

1. Reckless: Giving opinions before seeking understanding         
2. Retreating: Dodging responsibility or shifting to God         
3. Regressing: Returning to their Worldly comfort zone  

Each form has its own subtleties, so glancing at the surface may allow some of these flawed approaches to provide wise counsel to persist.  Let’s look at each one.

Reckless

The definition comes straight out of Proverbs 18:2 (and echoes Proverbs 12:18):

A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing his opinion.

Jumping in with an opinion, trying to fix before empathizing, flip-flopping, rushing to conclusions, are all examples of someone being reckless with their advice.

Retreating

This is behaving like Jonah, who literally fell asleep at the wheel instead of providing wise counsel to the Ninevites.

This can include staying arm's length, offering to only pray, giving a Christian cliche, avoiding the mess, not devoting time, avoiding hard discussions.

Regressing

Even after being born again, Christian leaders can succumb to their own idols, their pride, the patterns of the world, their fleshly desires while trying to give advice.

This can mean copying what others say and do, going back on ones own opinions that have not been subjected to Christ-like thinking, trying to appear impressive or righteous, making legalistic recommendations.

It's alright if you find you or your team fall into one or more of these categories.  

Our final lesson will give ways to be a wise counselor to someone seeking guidance.

Questions:    

1. How would you evaluate the way you have given advice based on the three categories above?    
2. How have you and other leaders been taking intentional ways to not make these mistakes?    
3. How would you feel if you were the recipient of someone who gave advice based on one or more of these flawed approaches?