Proverbs for leaders

“Seasoned leaders ought to be able to pinpoint their guiding principles on the important stuff of leadership and distill them down to memorable sound-bites that can be called upon at a second’s notice to inform a critical decision,” says Bill Hybels in his book Axiom: Powerful Leadership Proverbs. The book is a collection of 76 of Hybels’ own leadership proverbs, with an explanation of the story behind each.

Many of the author’s distinctive phrases will be quite familiar to those who are frequent attenders of his leadership conferences, such as: “Make the big ask,” “Vision leaks”, “How are you doing… really?” and “Finish well.” It is difficult to choose any particular proverbs as being worthy of highlighting amongst such a large selection, but one thing which struck me was the balance which the author advocates between risk-taking and safety. In Chapter 12, he advises us to “take a flyer”, but not to “bet the farm”. Churches should continually be taking big risks, but those risks should not be so large that the situation is unrecoverable in the event of failure.

There were no major surprises in the book, and many of the stories and pieces of widsom which it contains have been recorded elsewhere. Nonetheless, I have always found it worthwhile to read whatever Hybels publishes, and this book was no exception. The advice which he gives is almost invariably good advice, and the book is liberally sprinkled with anecdotes which make it easy to read and understand. Highly recommended.