Several things strike me about this absurd situation.

First, Mr. Obama ran for the office of President of the United States, not President of Christianity, not President of Heaven. Given the biblical injunction that none of us are to judge the heart and soul of others, it strikes me as personally irrelevant and biblically beyond my call of duty to ascertain whether he is or is not a Christian. If he claims to be a Christian and actually is, that’s wonderful; but, in the end, he answers to God, not us. If he claims to be a Christian and is not, that’s too bad; but, in the end, he answers to God, not us.

The aggressive judgmentalism surrounding this matter is suffocating. Call me naïve, but I am convinced that God can defend Himself and His territory; He doesn’t need me to cast doubt on the integrity and stated commitments of others in order for Him to retain control of the universe. My job is to pray for the president, regardless of what his faith is, and as Paul reminds us in Romans 13, to obey the leaders the Lord allows in public office.

Second, once again Christians are being portrayed – with some justification – as people who are against things. I think the world is now sufficiently appraised of what we stand against. Perhaps it’s time to put up a positive front and show them what we are for by demonstrating the love of Christ in all that we think, say, and do.

Third, we’d better figure out how to handle concerns about the potential of people who believe differently than us becoming president. (No, that’s not a sly way of insinuating Mr. Obama is not a Christian.) Once the mid-term elections are behind us and the 2012 presidential race begins in earnest (i.e., November 10), Mitt Romney will likely be the early frontrunner for the Republican nomination. If you don’t already know, you will hear plenty about how Mr. Romney is a devout Mormon. While our surveys suggest that even in this post-everything culture Mr. Romney is unlikely to make it to the White House (largely because of his choice of faith), he will be a formidable presence and his faith will emerge as a bigger issue than it was in his 2008 bid. It is ironic that the Republican Party – i.e., that which is most closely associated with evangelicals and other conservative, Bible-believing people – is the one that must ponder what to do about a legitimate candidate who is associated with a faith group that most evangelicals and many conservative Christians consider to be a cult.

How will Christians respond to Mr. Romney’s candidacy? I think the answer to that question may wind up being more important than who gets elected president in 2012.

I don’t know about you, but all of the wasted energy and public anguish that we Christians devote to pursuing marginal concerns is awfully tiresome. When do we get to the part where we focus on cleaning up our own house and demonstrating genuine humility? At what stage do we impress the world with the abundance of our love, generosity, and tenderness? When do we abandon the witch hunts and the lust for power in favor of justice, service, and compassion?

I guess I don’t really care if Mr. Obama (or Mr. Romney) is Christian, Muslim, Jew, atheist, Hindu, Mormon, or Scientologist. I simply want a true leader who honestly reveals what he/she believes, offers a full-blown vision for the future, makes good on his/her promises, and serves the people in harmony with the values that have made this country great. All things being equal, I’d probably prefer a genuine Christian to someone who is not a devoted follower of Christ. But, then again, all things are never equal and past experience has shown that being a committed Christian is not necessarily a recipe for successful political performance.

Shockingly little has been made of this decline. I think the widespread ambivalence about that decrease is, in itself, stunning. Perhaps the widespread disinterest reflects the confluence of several factors: people’s growing disinterest in organized religion, the frog in the kettle syndrome (the decline has been consistently small each year, but over the course of time has added up to a substantial loss), the frequent denial of bad news by church leaders, the comparatively larger short-term gains and losses of other institutions capturing the imagination of the media, etc.

I’d encourage you to pause and think about the significance of losing people’s confidence. A leader can only sustain forward movement if he/she has the confidence of the people being led into battle. Now, if a church is simply providing a safe comfort station for hurting people, that’s one thing. But if a church is intent upon facilitating a moral and spiritual revolution, recognizing that doing so is a declaration of war on current cultural preferences and values, the loss of confidence is a devastating setback. And – strategically – such confidence cannot be restored by simply waiting for the tide to turn; church leaders must intentionally win back people’s confidence through visionary leadership, holy character, and guiding people in transformational ministry efforts.

Barna Group research has shown that during the past decade, not surprisingly, the Roman Catholic Church has suffered the greatest loss of public confidence. But the Protestant Church has struggled, too. The two generations of adults (Busters and Mosaics) now assuming a substantial share of positions of leadership in the Church think and live very differently than their predecessors – and have divergent expectations related to faith, institutions and leaders. No church is immune to the morphing needs and expectations that challenge all organized groups.

Today’s a good day to realistically assess how much trust and confidence your community has in your leadership and in that of your ministry. Ask yourself questions about people’s understanding of, passion for and engagement with the vision; the efficacy of the strategy you rely upon to pursue the vision; people’s ownership of the proposed process for transforming the world; the efficiency with which your ministry engages the world; the effectiveness and openness of your communications about the cause and your progress; and the utility of the measures you rely upon to evaluate transformation.

Numerous companies cut back on staff as the economy tanked. But the new pattern is that many companies are finding their cost-cutting measures, driven by staff reductions, have been so effective – i.e., profitable – that they are now planning further rounds of personnel reductions. Still other organizations, convinced they can cut back no further, now believe a lean work force is a productive work force and thus do not plan to rehire laid off employees or fill vacant positions. These scenarios spell financial hardship for a large number of unemployed or underemployed workers.

How will churches handle this? Hopefully, by doing what they can to support their people who are struggling financially and by expanding their lay ministry efforts. As churches experience a continuation of diminished revenue during a period of increased congregational needs, the pressure to replace departed staff with volunteer labor will grow.

Without meaning to be insensitive to the difficulties experienced by those who are casualties of the reduction in fulltime and part-time ministry jobs, the diminished number of and reliance upon professional clergy is in the long-term best interests of the body of Christ. In the midst of this transition it is important for the body of believers to honor and assist those who have lost paid ministry positions. But for the overall health of the Church, recognizing laypeople’s gifts and the value of using those abilities in service to others can only strengthen the Church. The transition to a more streamlined, lay-led church body is a painful shift but one that will bear long-term fruit for the Church if properly understood, orchestrated, and supported.

An article in the Wall Street Journal published earlier this month pointed out that there are now thousands of businesses who employ chaplains to facilitate on-premises faith activity. While some of those chaplains serve primarily as on-site counselors, a large share lead groups of employees in times of worship, Bible study, prayer, and service activities. One of the reasons that businesses foster the blending of faith and work is that it produces a better work environment, higher productivity, and a deeper sense of team engagement. These outcomes, of course, enhance the bottom line, causing many business leaders to conclude that a faithful workforce can be a more profitable workforce. Organizations such as Tyson Foods have led the way in this regard, employing about 120 chaplains to minister with Tyson’s 117,000+ employees across the nation.

One of the controversies, of course, is whether or not a group of believers meeting together during their lunch hour to worship, pray, study and share their lives constitutes a “church.” Some say it is simply an addendum to participation in a more conventional form of “church life,” others argue that such meetings are the church in practice, and many people avoid the conversation altogether, not sure what the Bible says about what it means to be the Church.

The fact that such activity in the marketplace even raises controversy speaks to the shallowness of our understanding of concepts such as the kingdom of God and the body of Christ. We often seem to let traditions define our activities and standards, without exploring the genesis of those traditions and seeking to disentangle tradition from biblical mandate.

I am encouraged by the existence and growth of marketplace ministries of all sorts, ranging from the kind of corporate churches led by chaplains to the presence of ministries happening on sports fields around the nation. Some critics contend that these groups cannot be considered genuine churches because of various factors: no formal membership is required, there is no set time for their meetings, they lack an identifiable pastor, they do not engage in the standard series of conventional church activities, etc. But it seems that the New Testament provides a less complex standard for us to meet than we have set for ourselves. I guess your reaction to organic forms of church depends on where you draw your criteria from: scripture or tradition.

Other critics of marketplace ministries (as well as other non-traditional, more organic forms of church) opine that the leadership and teaching provided in such churches is inadequate. While our research certainly shows instances where house churches, marketplace ministries, and other organic church forms lack solid biblical teaching or effective leadership, the research also shows that such cases are not the norm. A different way of looking at the matter is to recognize that thousands of conventional churches also suffer from poor teaching or mediocre leadership. Organic churches do not own that market!

Would you agree that God is less hung up on the form of our meetings and means of engagement with Him than we are? The scriptures give us tremendous latitude in methods but little if any in the message. The current agitation among many conventional church leaders about the existence of non-traditional forms of spiritual community suggests that is not a popular perspective, whether it is biblical or not.

One of the conclusions I came to after doing some very informal research was that at that time a truly multiracial congregation was most likely to emerge in churches that drew substantially from military bases and retired military men and women. One of the many things that the military teaches its recruits is that when you’re engaged in battle, the color or ethnicity of the person battling alongside of you really doesn’t matter. That same mentality affected how military personnel participated in a community of faith.
You might expect that churches have become more multiracial in the past 20 years, but there has been surprisingly little change in the ethnic and racial composure of Protestant congregations during the past two decades. Our research in recent years continues to show that pastors’ descriptions of the make-up of their congregation indicate that America has few truly multiracial churches.

That came to mind recently when I read a new report from the Census Bureau regarding the racial and ethnic background of America’s children. The report noted that minorities currently represent nearly half of the children being born in the U.S. and that this year could be a “tipping point” during which the number of babies born to minorities outnumbers those born to whites. Link that fact with the notion that the combination of all “minorities” are expected to become the majority of our nation’s population within the next 40 years and you have a major challenge for the segregated Protestant churches of the U.S. For instance, in 2008 the Census Bureau reports that about 52% of all babies born in the U.S. were white, 25% were Hispanic, 15% were black, 4% were Asian, and roughly 4% were identified by their parents as multiracial.

The challenge is not just about getting people of different backgrounds to worship together. The ongoing segregation of the body of Christ also relates to how we minister to children; our understanding of family dynamics and how to assist families; the development of internal cultures within a congregation; our planning for a different racial and ethnic balance in all aspects of ministry; and even how churches assist congregants in thinking about matters of public policy such as immigration law, educational policy, and health care spending. (Consider, for example, that there are now more Hispanic women of prime childbearing age, and they tend to have more children, than is true among women of other races – and average of 3 children per Hispanic mother, compared to less than 2 per Caucasian mother and about 2 per black and Asian mother).

Demographers have been predicting this shift in the nation’s racial and ethnic balance for a couple of decades, so it may not be “news” but it certainly is a significant trend. Are we, as the Church, prepared to embrace this unfolding reality and to get in front of the curve in our thinking, planning and ministry?

Over the past couple of weeks I have been asked by several people what I do to attempt to stay aware of what’s happening in the world. My confession is that I am not as broad a thinker or nearly as curious as some of my colleagues. You can get buried alive in information, so I have felt compelled to focus most of my attention on aspects of life that seem to make a difference in the shaping of our individual and societal reality. Consequently, I focus on a few specific areas of interest: leadership strategy and application; the health and development of children and families; worldview content, expression and development; media penetration, messaging and presentation; life transformation; cultural trends; and faith movements.

As restricted a window as that may be, keeping up with that is easier said than done. But I have developed a routine over the years that has become comfortable for me, based on spending the first couple of hours of each day scouring a select group of sources through the Internet. Those sources are not always trustworthy and are certainly not ideologically compatible, but they provide me with a sense of what’s happening and alert me to trends and conditions to keep an eye on. I have a blend of “conservative,” “middle of the road,” and “liberal” sources that I follow, to stay attuned to the different perspectives people bring to the table.

Specifically, I pour through the online content of 6 newspapers, 4 blog sites, 7 magazines, 6 marketing research organizations, RSS feeds from 18 websites. In all, that’s exposure to about 41 sources of input. Among them, 35 provide daily coverage, 5 do so weekly, and 1 is a monthly. (These do not include a series of publications I also read faithfully related to personal interests, primarily sports and music.) The pool of sources changes occasionally, but generally remains intact over time.

One of my numerous weaknesses is that I have a very poor memory. To combat my forgetfulness, I capture a lot of the material in a personal database that I have been keeping for many years. Last year’s summary of the more important findings ran almost 800 pages (single-spaced, formatted into a single continuous paragraph per report, a format I prefer for storage). It is a searchable database that comes in handy on numerous occasions throughout the year when I need information for writing, speaking, praying, teaching, researching, and reflecting. Many of the ideas I’ve had over the years for national research studies and books have been sparked by data from this large and growing body of information.

What is your strategy for keeping up with current realities? Do you have any particularly good tools for organizing and storing and sharing the information that intrigues you?

By the way, the amount of time this process consumes each day is one of several reasons why I do not participate in Facebook, MySpace or Twitter. (Or, as my friends and colleagues know, turning on my cell phone…) Perhaps I’m incurably old school.

Because I am a professional researcher, I wanted to get everything just right; it’s a matter of professional pride. So I read the cover letter carefully. I read the simple questionnaire form a couple of times to be sure that I understood what they wanted, to see if professionally I could learn anything from their questionnaire construction, and also to address my surprise at just how short the form has become. (The Bureau now supplements the decadal census with massive monthly surveys, allowing them to reduce the census questionnaire to just a handful of questions – much shorter than the versions used in previous cycles.)

I filled in the information about myself and my wife without problems. Smooth sailing. Quick and simple. But then I got to person #3 in our household, our oldest daughter. She is adopted from Guatemala. Under question 4 – a question about origins – marking her down as Hispanic was a no-brainer. But the related query, question 5, stumped me. It’s about racial identity. The options provided were white, black, American Indian, Asian Indian, Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Native Hawaiian, Guamanian, Other Pacific Islander, and Other Asian. Nothing that fits anyone from Guatemala. Or Mexico, the nation that has provided the U.S. with the largest number of non-native residents. In fact, there was no category that would describe American citizens of Hispanic, Latino or Spanish origins who came from any country located in Central or South America.

It made no sense that there’d be categories provided for groups that represent less than one-half of one percent of the population, but no category for those who represent 16% of the population. And yes, I understand that the Bureau will combine the two variables of origin and race to create a Hispanic origin category, but without instructions, how will the more than 50 million Hispanic residents of the U.S. complete that second question? Will many of them check one of the boxes provided, assuming they apparently belong to one of those groups since infinitesimally small racial groups had their own category to mark? Surely the uber-funded Census Bureau, with the nation’s professional and scholarly talent pool available to draw upon, and a 10-year window in which to create their six question survey, would not have developed a confusing, incomplete question. Especially with trillions of dollars at risk. Clearly, 30 years of experience and advanced degrees in survey research notwithstanding, I was missing something.

And the problem was compounded by my realization that I’d face the same dilemma for person #4 of our household, our next-oldest daughter, who was also adopted from Guatemala.
Stymied, I called the Census Bureau. First, I got the recorded messages which walked me through the process. However, the pre-recorded explanation did not address my concern, so I indicated a need to speak to a representative. Once a live Bureau staffer came on the line I explained my dilemma. She offered to read me the same statement that I had just heard from the automated voice. After I respectfully declined the offer, she indicated that she was not allowed to tell me how to answer the question. I explained my frustration with that, knowing that real money was on the line here – how my tax dollars (and trillions of others) would be allocated according to the percentages emanating from the Census statistics. She was well-trained, though, and refused to help me beyond telling me she was not allowed to assist me in figuring out how to answer their question.

So I hung up feeling as if my concern had not been heard or cared about – which, of course, is nothing new when dealing with the federal bureaucracy. And for my two daughters from Guatemala, I half-heartedly checked the “Other” box and wrote in “Hispanic/Mayan.”
What a bizarre situation. Robert Groves, who heads the Bureau, is a very competent, experienced, and respected researcher. I doubt that he would let a gaffe of this magnitude go unrepaired, if he had the ability to make revisions. Perhaps the questionnaire contains this unfortunate question because the most dreaded event in the life of a researcher occurred: questionnaire design by committee. Departmental committees. House committees. Senate committees.

In the end, the bad news is that there will inevitably be a lot of inaccurate information collected and reported from our government’s $15 billion tax-funded research project, resulting in inappropriate financial allocations of our other tax dollars. But the good news is that I did not have to wrestle with this issue over person #5 in our household, our youngest daughter, who was adopted from Russia. I’m pretty sure she is “white.” And the best news of all may be that I am not the Director of the Census Bureau, forced to have political committees approve the art of survey research and having to deal with complaints from people like me.

My take on it may be a bit different than that of my colleagues. I haven’t subscriber to a “hard copy” newspaper in more than 20 years, but I do review the headlines (and read the appealing stories) of 7 newspapers every morning via RSS feeds. If those publications were to vanish, it’d certainly be a loss for me, though perhaps not insurmountable – emphasis on “perhaps” for a reason I’ll explain.

What concerns me the most, though, is that our society seems to be headed toward greater reliance on the Internet for news from sources that are disconnected to any kind of vetting entity. I trust the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, USA Today and other newspapers because I know they have a process of fact checking. They still get many things wrong, and the ideological bias each builds into their stories is undeniable, but at least I know it’s there and what slant to look for. If those publications die and instead I have to rely upon an endless series of untethered, unaccountable individuals and small organizations to provide current news, the chance of getting reliable reporting is greatly diminished.

In a world where almost everyone is a publisher and accuracy takes a back seat to immediacy, number of eyeballs attracted, independence, and personal expression, it will be hard to know what to believe. This has been driven home to me lately by the avalanche of misinformation about me – the only source of information whose veracity I can affirm without question – that I have come across in just the past few weeks. Here are a few examples.

“According to George Barna and his group of pollsters: 86% of Americans claim to be born again…”

Whoa, I would never even report that 86% of people in churches on Sunday are born again!

“Barna predicts that within 20 years, this House Churching group – one that he refers to as “Revolutionaries” – will comprise nearly 70% of U.S. Christians, leaving only 30-35 percent (primarily, aging Christians) in traditional church settings.”

Yikes! I have never provided any prediction about the percentage of people who will be in house churches at any given time in the future. Further, “revolutionaries” refers to a person’s commitment to their faith, not the type of faith community to which they belong. I think I know the data this reporter was drawing from, but he radically sliced and diced it in inappropriate ways and put words in my mouth that I would never say – and that nobody I know of can reasonally support.

“I just heard a George Barna stat about this recently less than 2% of the churches will hear their pastor preach a message on the Holy Spirit this year. Its alarming.”

It sure is alarming – although I’m not sure if it’s more alarming that this bogus statistic is attributed to me, or that this idea might have some basis in reality.

“According to a study done by the Barna Group, when a Chinese House Church pastor or leader is arrested or killed, the house church may disband, but out of it will form 5 other House Churches.”

It’s not bad enough that so much bogus research is attributed to me in the U.S. – now we have the digitali claiming that I have conducted research in China! I have visited China once in my life (last year) and I conducted no surveys while there.

George Barna taught for years at C. Peter Wagner’s Wagner Leadership Institute, and his writing appears in “Evangelism and Church Growth: Reference Library” published by Regal books, with contributions from the following notable authors: Elmer L. Towns, George Barna, C. Peter Wagner, Ted Haggard, Ed Silvoso, Jack W. Hayford, and Larry Stockstill. There’s no doubt in my mind that Barna is involved in a re-marketing effort which seeks to put a friendlier gloss on neo-evangelicalism, because its historically anti-gay virulence turns off many millennials.

I taught at the Wagner Institute for years? Man, I’d better request some back pay! In actuality, I taught a course there once, about 15 years ago, and I think it last two or three days; it may only have seemed like years to those who had to take my class. (Note: I was never invited back.) And the notion that I am involved in a “re-marketing effort to put a friendlier gloss on neo-evangelicalism” – well, let’s just say nobody has ever accused me of putting a friendly face on anything! It is quite an acrobatic leap, however, to go from noting that one of my books was included on a CD-ROM more than a decade ago to assuming that by writing about research on evangelism 15 years ago I must now be engaged in the re-marketing of “neo-evangelicalsim,” whatever that is.

George Barna, founder of The Barna Group, a research firm that specializes in studying the religious beliefs and behavior of Americans, calls Alpha an “anointed program in God’s appointed time.” According to Barna, Alpha is for anyone who thinks there may be more to life than meets the eye. People attend from all backgrounds, religions and viewpoints, investigating questions about the existence of God, the purpose of life, the afterlife and the claims of Jesus. Some want to get beyond religion and find a relationship with God that changes their lives, others come for the close, long-lasting friendships that are built during the Alpha courses, he said. Barna said the Alpha Course is being presented in 130 countries, with 6,000 courses in the U.S. and 25, 000 worldwide.

Well, I was very pleased to read this about myself because prior to the release of that article I knew very little about the Alpha program. I was surprised to have endorsed a program about which I knew next-to-nothing; to boldly cite statistics about that same unknown program; and to add a marketing pitch to boot. I guess I am simply more clever than I realized.

We also suspect that Focus may be feeling the pull of George Barna’s polling research denigrating “religious right” activism…

I did research that denigrates “religious right activism”? That’s news to me. I recall doing research that encourages Christians to get more serious about their faith, but beyond that, this is another of those “you stumped me” claims.

Our Lord Jesus preached until He was left with only the twelve, and He had no qualms about that. He is Sovereign, even if the devil and George Barna would try to use statistics to prove to us otherwise.

Now hold on a minute. Granted, I have had some pretty bad business partners in a few companies I started outside of The Barna Group. And sure, there were days when I thought one or more of my business partners were Satan. But in all fairness, I have never partnered with the devil to use statistics questioning the sovereignty of God – if for no other reason than the recognition that the last person you want to tick off is the One who is sovereign.

These are just a few of the errant claims about my work that others have made on the Internet in the past two weeks. I shudder every time I try to imagine how many bogus research claims and ignorant analyses of my work have been made on the Web. If people butcher my work this way, what would an information universe without news groups tethered to a semblance of truth be like?

Bad information presented in the media is nothing new. That’s as old as media itself. But as the last unregulated frontier of influence, the Internet is both a blessing and a curse. I am praying that somehow we will figure out ways of identifying the good from the bad that appears on the Internet – and that we do so sooner rather than later. I fear that I won’t miss the smudgy print of newspapers, but I will miss news groups that have a tradition of making a good faith effort to report facts accurately and with some degree of integrity.

Is that your experience? Mine has been that some people are grappling with change-related stress, but many are not. At the risk of over-simplifying things, it appears that people in their forties and older are the group most likely to struggle with the scope and speed of change. However, our studies indicate that younger people barely notice such change. Why? Because change has been a constant in their life; a world driven by change is the only environment they have ever known. They are more likely to be stressed by an environment reflecting a lack of change, which would feel like either death or deterioration to them.

How much of the tension we typically experience in leading an organization is due to the pressure caused by the different sensitivities toward change of the people involved? The anxiety level is probably especially high when we try to satisfy everyone at once – the “one size fits all” approach to ministry – and when the entity is directed by a leader who believes that if people are not happy then he/she is not leading well.

Some of the best leaders I’ve observed are those who remember that the challenges introduced by change are just another opportunity to empower people to apply their gifts toward pursuing a shared vision. Fulfilled vision changes everything anyway; leaders are all about creating positive change. Helping people to put change into proper perspective, and make sense of the new reality created by change is a difficult but continual task of leaders. What have you learned about how to best help people handle change?

With the 2010 mid-term election approaching, I have watched in dismay at the nature of the political conversation that has emerged in several key states, the national media, and the blogosphere.

While I am not a fan of some of the public servants who are being excoriated in the media, I am nevertheless saddened by the superficiality and coarseness of the conversation related to their performance in office and their re-election prospects. Perhaps the most disturbing monologues are those that savage various public officials for outcomes over which they have no control. Among those who seem to be skewered most unfairly are Arnold Swarzeneggar, Ben Bernanke, and even Barack Obama. Yes, I am aware that all three of these gentlemen, and many other officials like them, asked for and willingly accepted the jobs in which they are serving. And I certainly realize that when you campaign for and then are given the mantle of leadership, criticism is part of the package.

But don’t we, as American citizens, have a responsibility to be well-informed before we hurl our criticisms as these people? Don’t we have an obligation to accept some share – and frankly, sometimes a major share – of the responsibility for the unfortunate results that plague the jurisdiction in question? Isn’t it part of the bargain that before we insult or criticize a public official we should do some fact checking and be measured in the tone of our critique? Add another layer of responsibility – that of being a Christ follower – and we have to consider if our task is to criticize or the assist those who seek to do good, regardless of your party affiliation or ideological leanings.

We have become an attack dog society, happy to take unfair shots at those who are striving to serve us. To my knowledge, few elected or appointed officials – even those whom I do not care for, ideologically or in character – have ever claimed to be perfect or capable of solving all of our problems without some missteps. Together, we create absurd expectations and then declare those who fail to meet them to be incompetent, an enemy, or an incompetent enemy.

We live in a complex age. It is also an age when communications opportunities abound. Perhaps one of the lessons we ought to teach our children – and, of course, personally master – relates to self-restraint. There are times when a public response or critique is appropriate and other times when it is not; it’s important to know the difference and to behave accordingly. Ours is not only an over-stimulated society but also an over-communicated society. Just because we possess an idea or feeling, and the tools with which to share it, doesn’t mean it should be broadcast to the world. Self-restraint will help us filter those comments that make us feel good from those that produce good.

And, of course, the challenge for leaders is to know whom to respond to, when to do so, and with what content and tenor. Leadership is not about having the last or the loudest word. Just as there are times for people to raise their voice in protest, so there are times when it makes sense for leaders to not respond to specific charges. In the course of speaking with many leaders over the years, and most recently in the interviews for the Master Leaders book, I learned that leaders are sometimes better off absorbing the body blows of criticism and continuing to move forward than halting their progress in order to strike back. The media love to cover a good blow-for-blow confrontation, but great leaders do not get distracted by the public’s morbid curiosity about such battles.

Knowing when to resist the temptation to respond or retaliate depends upon the self-control of the leader as well as his/her capacity to read the situation and discern whether a response would add value to the lives of the people being led. Effective leaders also realize that should a response be desirable there are different ways of responding that might defuse an explosive situation. Understanding the different types of responses available (e.g., through a spokesperson, using a different medium, by providing facts and figures that expose the absurdity of the criticism, etc.) is a significant part of the leader’s cache of tools.

All leaders must be able to take the heat. No matter who you are and what you lead, if there are people involved then there will be criticism. Some of it will be unjustified, based on inaccuracies, emotion, competition, or irrelevancies. Having enough confidence in your motivations and choices to handle such criticism wisely – i.e., knowing when and how to engage your critics – is one mark of a good leader.