Lead Like It Matters to God

In the bustling corridors of corporate America, where success is measured in quarterly reports and stock prices, one man discovered that true leadership requires a fundamentally different scorecard. Richard Stearns spent decades climbing the traditional ladder of business achievement, from marketing executive to CEO of prestigious companies like Parker Brothers Games and Lenox China. Yet his most profound leadership lessons came not from boardrooms or profit margins, but from a radical reorientation of what it means to lead with purpose.

Stearns' journey represents a compelling case study in values-driven leadership that challenges conventional wisdom about success and power. His story reveals how surrendering personal ambition to higher principles can paradoxically lead to greater impact and fulfillment. Through his experiences navigating both corporate boardrooms and global humanitarian crises as head of World Vision, readers will discover three transformative insights: how authentic leadership emerges from character rather than position, why faithful service ultimately matters more than worldly achievement, and how integrating faith with professional responsibility can create lasting positive change in organizations and communities.

Richard Stearns' early career followed a classic American success story, marked by rapid advancement and increasing responsibility in some of the nation's most recognizable companies. After earning his MBA from the prestigious Wharton School, he began his professional journey at Gillette, quickly transitioning to Parker Brothers Games where his marketing acumen helped launch products that became household names. By age thirty-three, he had achieved what many consider the pinnacle of corporate success: the CEO position at a major company.

His rise through the corporate ranks was characterized by an instinctive understanding of consumer psychology and brand building. At Parker Brothers, Stearns helped navigate the company through the video game revolution of the 1980s, recognizing that they were not merely in the board game business but in the broader entertainment industry. This strategic insight doubled the company's size and demonstrated his ability to see beyond conventional industry boundaries. His success at Lenox China later proved his adaptability across different sectors, as he transformed a struggling luxury goods company into a market leader.

However, Stearns' corporate achievements were accompanied by a growing sense that professional success alone could not provide ultimate meaning. The turning point came through an unexpected phone call from an executive recruiter representing World Vision, one of the world's largest humanitarian organizations. The opportunity represented everything his business training suggested he should avoid: a massive pay cut, an unfamiliar industry, and challenges that couldn't be solved through traditional corporate strategies. Yet something deeper than career calculation began to stir within him.

The transition from corporate executive to humanitarian leader required Stearns to confront fundamental questions about purpose and calling. His business background had prepared him to maximize shareholder value and navigate competitive markets, but World Vision's mission demanded skills in addressing global poverty, natural disasters, and human suffering on an unprecedented scale. This career pivot would test not only his leadership abilities but also his willingness to redefine success itself.

The decision ultimately represented more than a career change; it was a complete reorientation of values and priorities. Stearns had to reconcile his desire for professional achievement with a growing conviction that true leadership must serve purposes beyond personal advancement. This transformation would prove to be the foundation for a leadership philosophy that prioritizes character over credentials and faithfulness over conventional measures of success.

The concept of surrender runs counter to everything typically taught in leadership development programs, yet Stearns discovered it to be the essential foundation of authentic Christian leadership. His understanding of surrender was forged through personal crises that stripped away his illusions of control and forced him to depend entirely on divine guidance. When he was unexpectedly fired from his CEO position at Parker Brothers after just two years, the experience shattered his confidence in his ability to direct his own career trajectory.

This period of unemployment became a crucible for spiritual growth and self-examination. Rather than immediately launching into an aggressive job search, Stearns spent extended time in prayer and reflection, gradually recognizing that his identity had become dangerously intertwined with his professional title and achievements. The forced pause allowed him to rediscover a fundamental truth from his Catholic upbringing: that humans are created "to know, love, and serve God in this life." This simple catechism answer became the North Star for reorienting his entire approach to work and leadership.

The principle of sacrifice became equally central to Stearns' leadership philosophy, particularly when he faced the decision to leave his lucrative CEO position at Lenox for the uncertainty of leading World Vision. The financial implications were staggering—a seventy-five percent pay cut at a time when he had five children approaching college age. More challenging than the financial sacrifice was the psychological adjustment of moving from a familiar industry where he had established expertise to a field where he felt completely unprepared and inadequate.

Stearns learned that sacrifice in leadership often involves surrendering not just material benefits but also the comfort of competence and control. At World Vision, he was thrust into situations requiring knowledge of international development, disaster response, and complex geopolitical dynamics—areas where his business school training provided little guidance. This vulnerability forced him to depend more heavily on his team, to listen more carefully to diverse perspectives, and to make decisions based on values rather than pure analytical confidence.

The paradox of surrender and sacrifice in leadership is that they ultimately produce greater effectiveness and impact. By releasing his grip on predetermined outcomes and personal advancement, Stearns found himself able to make bolder decisions and take principled stands that would have been too risky for someone protecting their reputation or position. This counter-intuitive approach to leadership created space for both personal growth and organizational transformation that purely self-interested leadership could never achieve.

Character formation in leadership is rarely a linear process, and Stearns' journey illustrates how integrity, humility, and other core virtues are developed through both success and failure. His early career was marked by moments that tested his commitment to ethical behavior, including situations where expedient decisions might have advanced his career at the cost of his values. These early tests established patterns of thinking and behavior that would prove crucial when facing larger ethical challenges later in his career.

Humility emerged as perhaps the most challenging virtue for Stearns to develop, particularly during periods of rapid professional advancement. He candidly describes moments when success inflated his ego and created blind spots in his leadership. One particularly memorable lesson occurred on his first day as CEO of Lenox, when a plumbing mishap in his executive bathroom provided an unexpectedly humorous reminder of human limitations. Such experiences taught him that true leadership requires constant vigilance against the pride that often accompanies positions of power and influence.

Integrity proved to be both a guiding principle and a practical advantage in Stearns' leadership approach. He discovered that consistent truthfulness and ethical behavior, while sometimes costly in the short term, ultimately built trust and credibility that enhanced his effectiveness as a leader. At World Vision, he implemented policies that prioritized donor integrity over revenue growth, even when this stance required difficult conversations with staff who felt pressured to meet fundraising targets through questionable means.

The development of character-based leadership also required Stearns to cultivate what he calls "relational integrity"—the ability to interact with others in ways that reflect respect for their dignity and worth. This involved learning to see colleagues not merely as resources for achieving organizational goals but as individuals created in God's image, each with unique contributions to make. This perspective transformation affected everything from hiring decisions to performance reviews, creating organizational cultures that valued people as much as productivity.

Stearns emphasizes that character development in leadership is not about achieving perfection but about consistent commitment to growth and accountability. He shares examples of leadership failures and mistakes, demonstrating how character is often revealed more clearly in how leaders respond to failure than in their moments of triumph. The willingness to apologize, make restitution, and learn from errors became hallmarks of his leadership style and created environments where others felt safe to take risks and admit their own shortcomings.

The practical application of values-driven leadership became most evident in Stearns' transformation of organizational cultures throughout his career. At Lenox China, he inherited a company that had lost market share to competitors and was struggling with internal morale issues. Rather than focusing solely on financial metrics and operational efficiency, Stearns invested significant time in clarifying the company's mission and values, helping employees understand how their work contributed to meaningful outcomes in customers' lives.

His approach to organizational change involved what he describes as "defining reality" before casting vision for the future. At Lenox, this meant honestly confronting the brutal facts about their competitive position and customer preferences, even when these realities challenged long-held assumptions about product design and marketing strategy. By engaging employees in this process of honest assessment, Stearns created buy-in for difficult changes and established a foundation of trust that enabled the organization to navigate significant challenges.

The transition to World Vision required Stearns to adapt his leadership approach to a very different organizational culture while maintaining his core commitment to values-driven leadership. The humanitarian sector demanded sensitivity to issues of cultural diversity, international development, and religious differences that were largely absent from his corporate experience. His leadership team included individuals from dozens of countries and cultures, requiring communication styles and decision-making processes that honored this diversity while maintaining organizational coherence.

One of Stearns' most significant organizational challenges came when he decided to focus World Vision's resources on addressing the AIDS pandemic in Africa. This decision was controversial within the organization and among supporters, requiring him to exercise courage in pursuing what he believed was the right course of action despite significant internal and external resistance. His persistence in this effort ultimately transformed not only World Vision's programming but also broader evangelical attitudes toward AIDS and global health issues.

The success of Stearns' values-driven approach was measured not only in improved organizational performance but also in the development of other leaders throughout the organizations he led. He consistently prioritized mentoring and developing staff members, creating environments where people could grow in both professional competence and personal character. Many of his former colleagues went on to leadership positions in other organizations, carrying forward the principles and practices they had learned under his guidance.

The culmination of Stearns' leadership philosophy is captured in his embrace of Mother Teresa's famous observation that God calls us to be faithful rather than successful. This principle became the organizing theme of his later career and represents perhaps his most significant contribution to contemporary discussions of leadership and purpose. By challenging conventional definitions of success, Stearns offers an alternative framework that prioritizes character development and service to others over personal advancement and accumulation of wealth or status.

His twenty-year tenure at World Vision provided numerous opportunities to apply this principle in concrete situations. Leading a global humanitarian organization required making decisions that balanced competing priorities: donor expectations, staff morale, government regulations, and the complex needs of vulnerable populations in dozens of countries. Rather than defaulting to purely pragmatic calculations, Stearns consistently returned to questions of faithfulness and integrity as his primary decision-making criteria.

The practical implications of prioritizing faithfulness over success became evident in situations where Stearns chose principles over expediency, even when these choices carried significant costs. His decision to maintain strict ethical standards in donor communications, for example, sometimes resulted in smaller fundraising returns but built long-term trust and credibility that proved more valuable than short-term financial gains. These experiences validated his conviction that character-based leadership ultimately produces more sustainable results than purely outcome-focused approaches.

Stearns' leadership legacy extends beyond his specific organizational achievements to encompass his influence on how other leaders think about the relationship between faith and professional responsibility. Through his speaking, writing, and mentoring relationships, he has advocated for an integrated approach to leadership that refuses to compartmentalize spiritual values from workplace decisions. This integration requires ongoing effort to align personal behavior with stated beliefs, even when such alignment is costly or unpopular.

The ultimate measure of Stearns' leadership impact may be found not in the impressive statistics of organizations he led or the recognition he received, but in the lives of individuals whose trajectories were altered through encounters with his leadership. Former colleagues who advanced to positions of greater responsibility, sponsored children who received education and opportunities they would not have had otherwise, and donors who discovered deeper meaning through their involvement in humanitarian work all represent aspects of a leadership legacy that extends far beyond conventional measures of professional achievement.

Richard Stearns' leadership journey offers a profound challenge to contemporary assumptions about success and power, demonstrating that the most effective and meaningful leadership emerges from surrender to purposes larger than personal advancement. His experience shows that leaders who prioritize character over credentials and faithfulness over conventional success metrics create more sustainable organizations and leave more significant legacies than those driven primarily by ambition and self-interest.

The practical wisdom gleaned from Stearns' career suggests that today's leaders might benefit from regular examination of their fundamental motivations and values, asking whether their leadership serves primarily self-interested goals or contributes to the flourishing of others and their organizations. His example encourages leaders to embrace vulnerability and dependence on divine guidance rather than relying solely on their own competence and control, recognizing that true strength often emerges from acknowledged weakness and willingness to serve others' needs above their own desires for recognition and reward.