Character or Results … What Makes a Good Leader?

By Tyler McKenzie

In 2008, President George W. Bush awarded Anthony Fauci the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his work on AIDS relief. This is the highest civilian award in our country. Fast-forward 12 years, Dr. Fauci became the most controversial scientist in our country. Fauci served in the Trump administration as the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. He was our chief immunologist when a pandemic hit. After a year of contentious leadership, in December of 2020 he admitted to the New York Times that when speaking to America about herd immunity, he nudged the numbers up to persuade more people to get vaccinated. The best research said it took 60 to 70 percent of the population for herd immunity to be achieved, but Fauci pushed the numbers higher in media appearances. He admitted that these numbers weren’t tied to hard data. Rather, in his judgment, the public adoption of vaccination was critical to national health.  

So, he lied.  

In Plato’s Republic, he maintains that it is not only acceptable but moral for political elites to lie to the masses if their end goal is social flourishing. Plato called it the “noble lie.” In street talk, Plato argues that a good leader ought to be dishonest if they judge it’s for the greater good. Think about the nature of leadership biblically. What is the more important trait for a leader? To be, first and foremost, a person of character who tells the truth or a person of accomplishment who gets results no matter the cost? We would all agree that both character and results are important for a leader. Which one wins out when they compete?  

I have always found it fascinating that in Paul’s famous chapter to Timothy on church leaders (1 Timothy 3:1-13), he says little about what they do and much about what sort of person they should be. The character portrait he paints is framed by one essential expectation: church leaders are to be “above reproach.” Reading this chapter, one begins to wonder if character matters more than competency to Paul. Paul cites leadership as a spiritual gift elsewhere (Rom 12:8), but this chapter makes a strong case for the primacy of character over results.  

Leadership Failures Everywhere 

What about outside the church? Should character be the supreme priority? It depends on who you ask. Anymore, there seems to be a dearth of character at the top of our org charts and on our national stage. Everywhere we look, we see moral failures in leadership.  

• The Houston Astros cheated to win.  

• Big Pharma fueled the opioid crisis.  

• The #MeToo Movement shed light on how powerful men in Hollywood were abusing women.  

• Boeing was slammed by the Justice Department for fraud related to two deadly plane crashes.  

• Elon Musk’s Twitter files signaled left-wing bias in the platform’s approach to censorship.  

• Harvard’s former president was unable to callout antisemitism.  

• The Cass Review showed that the Western approach to “gender affirming care” for transgender youth is based on unsatisfactory evidence and also incredibly politicized.  

• At this writing, former President Donald Trump was convicted on thirty-four felony charges.  

• Then there is the church . . . .Driscoll. Zacharias. Hybels. The most recent headline was how Orange Founder Reggie Joiner and CEO Kristen Ivy resigned after an “inappropriate relationship.” 

Sin Isn’t Getting Worse. It’s Getting Filmed. 

What’s going on? Moral failure in leadership seems endemic. Are we an especially immoral generation? . . . Perhaps. However, we also live at an unprecedented moment where anyone can publicize others’ sins to the world through their smartphone, and people cannot look away. It’s a phenomenon called “failure porn.” We have a dark obsession with watching others’ evils.  

After the tragic killings of Ahmaud Arberry, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd, actor Will Smith said, “Racism isn’t getting worse. It’s getting filmed.” Is that the issue here? Sin isn’t getting worse. It’s getting filmed. Whether our generation is worse or not, the publicity that leadership failure gets is impacting public perception. Statistics show that institutional trust is cratering, especially among young people.  

Expressive Individualism, an Immanent Frame, and the Age of Authenticity   

So far, I’ve been making the argument that there is a lack of trust in institutions and their leaders for two reasons. First, there is an abundance of moral failure in institutional leadership. Second, those failures have been magnified by the speed of information, social media, and a societal addiction to failure. However, I believe there is another driving factor. Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor uses the phrase “expressive individualism” to describe how the locus of authority has shifted in our society from external to internal. In place of God’s designs, society now gives supreme honor to the individual’s feelings. It’s not just that institutions have become so bad that they’ve lost our trust, it’s also that we have become so self-centered that we aren’t willing to surrender our trust. 

Virtually every society before us lived within what Taylor would call an “enchanted” frame. People believed in transcendent powers beyond us. Think of the medieval world. It was simply assumed that there were gods outside us. They created the material and are active in the present. For Christians, this meant we look to God for truth, direction, and morality. If we can discover his will, we can discover the key to flourishing.  

Over the last 250 years, there has been a shift from an enchanted frame to what Taylor calls an “immanent frame.” Modern people now believe that there is nothing outside of the material world we live in. No God. No transcendent. Just us. When we remove the probability of a god from our social imagination, then truth, direction, and morality become personal. They are self-determined rather than divinely-discovered. It’s “follow your heart” instead of “follow Jesus.” It’s “be true to yourself” instead of “be true to God’s Word.”  

Taylor sums it up when he suggests that we’ve shifted from an “Age of Authority” to an “Age of Authenticity.” Every culture to come before us looked to external sources of authority to help navigate life. We used to look to faith, family, tradition, and even government for guidance. This is not so anymore. We live in a culture that is at best suspicious, if not downright dismissive, of external authority. Internal authenticity has become the most important thing for determining what’s best.  

In an environment like this, the morality of institutions and their leaders is almost moot. Whether you are a good person or not, leadership is seen as inherently bad. Exercising authority is rebuked today as authoritarian. Upholding accountability is condemned today as abuse. All the traditional institutions that we have depended on to maintain order and socialize our children have been weakened. For example, the traditional role of an institution of higher education was to expose students to ideas that challenge their deepest beliefs so they might learn to think critically and be strengthened in the truth. Today though, if a professor introduces challenging material that doesn’t affirm students’ personal beliefs or make them feel emotionally safe, they could be severely disciplined.  

Another example is church. Many church leaders are scared to preach the whole counsel of God, speak into culturally pressing matters, or offer appropriate church discipline. Even when this is done in a healthy way, congregants rarely listen. Instead, they leave for the church down the street. Staff rarely self-reflect. They can resign and claim toxic leadership on their way out. This is why many church leaders have no desire to build a strong public witness. Instead, they self-censor, get steamrolled by bullies, and pass-the-buck on hard decisions. 

How to Lead in the Absence of Institutional Trust 

Trust is vital for effective leadership. Sadly, church leaders should assume that people don’t trust them. The maxim is true: “Trust isn’t given, it’s earned.”  What can we do to earn trust in our cultural moment? Here are two practical steps. 

In a time of public leadership failures, maintain longstanding character. Plato’s student, Aristotle, had a different perspective than his teacher. In his book On Rhetoric, Aristotle argued that persuasion is made of three parts: pathos, appealing to people’s emotions; logos, appealing to people’s intellect; ethos, appealing to people’s trust. Aristotle contended that this third dimension was most important. He believed that people of character are more persuasive. 

Are you daily building trust through character? Or do you exaggerate? Are you cynical? Do you blame rather than take ownership? Are you slow to listen and quick to speak and become angry? When the going gets tough, do you get fearful? Are you aggressive when challenged? Do you lack mercy when wronged? Can you say you’re sorry when you are the wrongdoer? Organizational psychologist Margaret Diddams once told me that organizational trust has three ingredients. 

• Integrity – Do your actions match your values? 

• Consistency – Can people predict how you will respond? 

• Benevolence – Are you a person of care and compassion? 

I believe this is what Paul is getting at when he calls church leaders to the standard of irreproachability. What is your longstanding reputation in the community? One of the problems today is that few leaders stick around long enough to build a reputation. In my opinion, that is part of the problem. Generational longevity must be something emerging church leaders commit to. 

In a time of online addiction and expressive individualism, build a church that is unapologetically local. You lead a local church. Give the lion’s share of your attention to the people there. Preach to their felt needs. Minister to their brokenness. Pour resources into your city’s poor. Embed yourself in community life. Coach a little league team. Join the PTA. Donate to a homegrown nonprofit. Engage more deeply in local politics than national. Support local businesses. Love thy neighbor.  

I’ve said this before. In a social media age where we can get real-time news about all the problems around the world, we know everything about what we can do almost nothing about. This Thursday I got on the New York Times home page. In sixty seconds, I can tell you about Israeli airstrikes in Palestine, the price of electric cars in the US, and Alec Baldwin’s new reality TV show . . . but can I tell you my neighbor’s name? We give so much of our attention to things we have little investment in. Instead, we should be giving most of our energy to the neighbors and communities that we can change.   

I have long coached our staff that we don’t write sermons for social media and we don’t write songs for Spotify. We write for Northeast Christian Church. We have been called by God to Louisville. When we lead our local churches to see our local communities as our primary mission field, it gives Christians who are breathing the toxic fumes of expressive individualism a breath of fresh air. We are summoned outside of self to love something bigger than self . . . our God and neighbor.  

Back to 1 Timothy 3 and church leadership. This is one of the beautiful distinctives of the Restoration Movement. We have no denominational governance at a national level. Instead, we call above reproach local leaders, based on character first and competency second, to oversee our churches. Few things engender trust like knowing the old saint down the street who changed your diapers, then taught your Sunday school class, then came to your graduation party, then gave you your first job, then led your first mission trip, then showed up at your hospital bed, is at the helm of your church. 

Tyler McKenzie serves as lead pastor at Northeast Christian Church in Louisville, Kentucky.