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As the founder of a non-profit (Faith-Filled Founders, 501(c)(3)) dedicated to helping women and female founders integrate faith with their business lives, I believe that faith-driven leadership is a powerful force for positive change. Leading with integrity and compassion not only enhances your business but also sets a meaningful example for others. Here’s how you can cultivate faith-driven leadership in your entrepreneurial journey.
Why Faith-Driven Leadership Matters
You are one whole person, not someone during your work day and someone else during your off hours. Integrating who you are leads to a more fulfilling life, less exhaustion and simplifies everything.
Leading a life of faith doesn't mean you have to force everyone to believe what you believe and it also doesn't mean you have to hide your faith behind a weekend or off-hours practice. Leading a life of faith means you lead with prayer.
Your entire orientation is toward a higher power, Christianity in my case, perhaps Jewish or Muslim in yours. Regardless developing a life of prayer allows everything else to flow. In fact if you don't get the prayer right, your bound to mess up on everything hinging upon it. Flowing out of prayer is integrity, empathy, accountability and ethical decision-making.
Integrity Builds Trust and Credibility
Leading with faith ensures that your actions align with your values, fostering trust among your employees, clients, and partners. No one needs to know you live a life of prayer to see your integrity in action. I pray for every one of my clients. It's important to me. It's not important that they know it.
Consistency: A faith-driven approach promotes consistent ethical behavior, enhancing your or your business's reputation especially when things get difficult, or when cutting corners seems tempting. Treating a client with kindness when they show up horribly late demonstrates your consistent compassion to their situation.
Empathy Enhances Team Morale and Loyalty
Showing compassion and understanding builds a supportive and motivated team and loyal clients. People will remember how you treated them in their most vulnerable moments. That show of compassion may reverberate in their world, encouraging them to be compassionate when they'd rather be otherwise.
Your actions will inspire. Faith-driven leaders inspire others by exemplifying commitment and purpose. This goes back to prayer. You stay committed and purpose oriented through your prayer life. You can't give what you don't have. You show others compassion because you know deeply what it is to be broken and loved beyond measure. You have received mercy so it is your duty to show it to others.
Accountability
The number one reason people choose coaching is accountability. They know in two to four weeks they'll have to face their coach and share their updates. The accountability of a faith driven leader is prayer. In the morning I have a morning prayer check-in where I might start out with direction and commitment. Throughout the day or in my evening or night prayer I again have a prayer check-in, my accountability step. Where did I fail to live up to my calling? What will I do about it? I ask for mercy and forgiveness. I receive. From what I receive I am able to give to others.
Promoting Ethical Decision-Making
Faith provides a strong moral compass, guiding you through complex decisions. That doesn't mean you'll have every answer to every question but you will have direction. I love to write and ponder using a variety of inspiration. When I write I credit quotes and ideas from where they originate. I would love for you to think I am so incredibly clever but I am not. This article's first draft was aided by the use of AI. AI provided the ground level inspiration, which brings me to transparency.
Transparency: Ethical leadership practices encourage transparency and accountability. When I mess up, I apologize. You'd think that's an easy thing to do but read any social media comments and you'll see plenty of people who get it wrong and refuse to apologize or take back any previous comments they made. I read one social media commenting argument that spanned 22 weeks! Twenty two weeks worth of checking back in on old comments and arguing how they weren't wrong, from a certain perspective.
How to Lead with Integrity and Compassion
Define Your Leadership Values
Identify Your Core Beliefs by reflecting on your faith and identify the core values that guide you. There are several core strengths you possess and certain faith practices you have that resonate with you. I pray for my clients. In my worldview, it is only fair that I pray for their wellbeing and welfare. My clients probably don't care nor will they ever know that I pray for them. I don't do it for them. I do it because I value fairness, leadership and spriituality.
In my meetings I try to give equal time to participants because my leadership values fairness.
What's your Leadership Mission Statement? Perhaps you want to create a mission statement that encapsulates your values and communicates them clearly to yourself or your team.
Lead by Example
Model the Behavior you Expect to See: Demonstrate the behaviors and attitudes you wish to see in others or in your team. Demonstrate them over and over again. If ending meetings on time is important for you, you'll have to cut yourself off and also find the courage to cut people off so time commitments can be honored. My husband runs an author critique group that reads and comments on author's works but with so many people participating, he frequently has to cut off people's feedback so they group can end on time. While no one appreciated it in the moment, when 9pm arrived and they met the following week to learn the other group didn't 'finish' until 1030, his group was appreciative of his time-keeping. Consistent actions build credibility and trust.
However this means you'll have to hold yourself accountable to the same standards you expect from others. Now only will you have to do this, you'll want to do this by default when you're living a life of faith. When you check-in in your prayer time, you'll have something to offer in a way you have grown.
Foster a Compassionate Work Environment
Be Empathy in Action: Empathy doesn' t mean you have to weep or emote. Empathy has nothing to do with emotion and everything to do with relating to someone else's plight. You can show empathy by actively listening to someone else's concerns. That's it. Actively listening IS showing empathy. That means you aren't planning your response or waiting to talk. You are actively listening.
If you want to take it further, provide support when needed. Remember others are watching you model the behaviors they will soon try to emulate.
Make Ethical Decisions
Consider the ethical implications of your choices. Look at your decision from different angles. If needed use scripture or a prayer partner to guide your decision-making process. Above all ensure that all your dealings are conducted with transparency and fairness.
When I was ramping up my spiritual life, I was attending meetings that took away from family time. In discussion with my husband and because I kept a full schedule of work and study, we chose that I wouldn't sacrifice family time for prayer time. Prayer is good but not at the expense of your primary vocation. In those moments I chose to establish a prayer practice in harmony with my family's schedule so that they could still see their mom and wife.
Cultivate a Supportive Culture
A supportive culture means giving yourself grace. You will mess up. You'll make mistakes. You can't support others if you aren't willing to support yourself. So often we ladies are happy to give others grace but expect so much more out of ourselves. What if you were to be kind to yourself as a way to be kind to others? Lead by example.
Further Resources
Join Our Fall Scripture Study
Are you ready to embrace faith-driven leadership and make a positive impact in your business? Join our fall prayer study, designed specifically for women professionals and female entrepreneurs. Together, we’ll explore how to Lead with Prayer.
Sign up today with a donation of any amount, and embark on a journey of faith and professional growth with us. Join our fall scripture study here.
Here are a few resources and additional reading material on faith based practices
Leading with integrity and compassion not only transforms your business but also sets a powerful example for others to follow. Lead with faith and watch how God works wonders in your life.
About Me
I'm Lizette Warner, an experience healthcare executive and CTO with years of marketing, and sales expertise. I became a business coach when female founders started seeking my input to help them grow and pivot. My clients get strategic clarity for growth and a partner fully invested in their success.
I helped found Faith-Filled Founders when I discovered female founders were floundering and struggling to stay afloat mentally, physically and spiritually. Founding anything is a full time calling that can benefit from a full and healthy faith life.
As I worked and prayed with professional women they noted how challenging they found integrating their faith with their executive life was and feeling out of place in church groups that catered to moms but not to the unique talents and needs of professional women.
Faith-filled founders is the home of a weekly scripture study where professional women and women founders can come together and be supported in living their faith in their professional calling. In the fall of 2024, we will kick-off a Lead with Prayer weekly study group that will transition to a weekly scripture study group Starting 2025, specific to the needs of professional women and female founders.
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