Do you exhort based on each team member’s needs? (132-4)

Effective leaders help their team develop as leaders and at times this will mean correcting unacceptable behavior. Read Proverbs 3:11-12.

God’s Word gives leaders a model to follow. Think through the powerful implications of verse 12. Few things are more difficult for a leader than to give a firm rebuke to a team member yet a leader who truly loves their team will be found as quick to exhort and discipline their team as reward them. From my own experience it is tough enough to exhort and correct teammates when they make a careless or inadvertent mistake but when someone on the team purposefully imposes their own will to violate the established criterion for behavior or protocol the job is just that much more difficult.

Effective leaders use a variety of communication techniques to exhort those around them to strive for higher levels of performance. In so doing they empower their teammate and prepare them for leadership roles. A skillful leader knows their team and only uses the proper amount of strength in their exhortation for the individual and the specific act. As a leader in your home if you have more than one child you know exactly what I mean. Within my own family my four children were so different that one was repentant and truly changed behavior with just a stern look and one required (lets just say) a lot more contact. Exhortation, properly handled and delivered, spurs your team on to higher levels of achievement and turns them into a leader.

Have you given the proper amount of thought to each of your team members to understand what style of exhortation will motivate and correct behavior and what style of exhortation will crush their spirit? Wise leaders do not ignore the need to exhort and are able to flex from their preferred style of exhortation to the style that is most effective to achieve changed behavior.