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The same “I can do it” spirit that drives the heart of a leader can become a restrictive force on the effectiveness and range of a leader when it becomes “I can do it myself” or “I must do it myself”.

Simply put, you can’t do it all yourself. And the sooner you figure that out, the sooner you can take seriously the art of delegation. Delegation, when properly done, will exponentially expand your leadership capacity by drawing others in to the process.

But it’s important to define what is meant by delegation. It would be incorrect to think of it in terms of how to get others to do the stuff that you don’t want to do, or as a desperate measure that is only resorted to when you simply can’t cram any more activity in your day. Viewed from these flawed perspectives, delegation becomes more of a hassle than a blessing.

Another dysfunctional idea about delegation is that you should somehow feel guilty that you’re not doing everything yourself. You should be the one at the meeting. You should be the one at the event. You should do it yourself to make sure it gets done right. You, you, you.

Step back, take a breath, and redefine delegation in your head. Delegation is not passing the buck; it’s allowing others to succeed. Help when needed, give clear expectations, retain accountability, but let others succeed. When you do, your leadership capacity will go through the roof.

real life application

Define all significant activities that you are currently doing and identify those that you can and should effectively delegate. Then write a concrete plan that defines to whom, when, and how you will delegate these activities.

Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva’s paper After-Birth Abortion: Why Should The Baby Live is a shockingly honest testimonial to a social engineering philosophy that has been percolating in the minds of postmodern scientists, philosophers and ethicists for decades now. If anything, Giubilini and Minerva are now challenging Dr. Peter Singer’s monopoly as the most visible academic arguing for the acceptance of infanticide, but appearances aside, the ideas expressed in After-Birth Abortion are the same ideas prevalent in universities throughout the world on a day-to-day basis.

Some of the key thoughts presented include:

Unborn and newborns do not have the same moral status as persons.

Death can be in the best interest of a child.

Children can be an unbearable burden on the family and on society as a whole, when the state economically provides for their care.

Merely being human does not give someone the right to life.

There should be no threshold for after-birth abortion.

Whether or not a child is allowed to live depends on economic, social, or psychological circumstances.

There is more – much more – but this is the gist of what is being argued in After-Birth Abortion: it’s time for culture to fully embrace the next step of man’s evolution by killing the weak, the infirm, the unwanted, the unproductive, and the unloved. Who among us has never borne these labels? This is man’s viciousness at its worst.

You and I might be shocked at Giubilini and Minerva’s arguments. Most university students wouldn’t give them a second thought. This is where the end-game of popularized eugenics begins – concepts once believed to be unthinkable are now knocking at the door of being acceptable practice, held back only by the remnant of Judeo-Christian ethics upon which the core value of each human being rests.

A child deserves to live because a child is created in the image of God. Strip that ethic away, and the world of Giubilini and Minerva is the world of After-Birth Abortion.

You would think that the world was close to coming to an end when Indiana state representative Bob Morris became the only legislator in the Indiana House to withhold his support for a resolution honoring the Girl Scouts of America. I saw the now-famous Morris letter days before Rachel Maddow, the Huffington Post, and CNN and it struck me as nothing more than a legislator who performed his due diligence in Googling the term Girl Scouts Planned Parenthood. (If you haven’t tried it, I suggest that you do.) What I didn’t expect was the giant sound of hyperventilation resonating from coast-to-coast. First it blew up on Twitter, then it blew up on cable, then it just blew up.

Overnight, Morris became the target of ridicule, misinformation and worse. Most assume it was because he impugned the reputation of the organization known for those famous cookies we’ve all enjoyed at one time or the other. But from a different view, I’m not so sure all of this noise is so much about the Girl Scouts as it is about – once again — Planned Parenthood.

It certainly isn’t about giving Morris a fair shake. In fact, in my limited Twitter stream I kept seeing news reporters making comments like “is this guy kidding”? Maybe the better question is: “why is this guy so concerned”? This lack of asking the right question has led every single report that I’ve read to overtly ignore the fact that former Girl Scouts of America CEO Kathy Cloninger stated on NBC’s Today Show that yes, the Girls Scouts partner with Planned Parenthood. That’s not urban legend, that’s YouTube.

Call me silly, but when a CEO says her organization partners with Planned Parenthood, I take it that her organization partners with Planned Parenthood.

So what does this all mean?

First, there are a boatload of reporters not doing the work required of serious journalists. Welcome to the real world.

Second, defenders of Planned Parenthood resent the implication that involvement with Planned Parenthood somehow makes the Girl Scouts or any other organization controversial.

Third, and perhaps most importantly to the life community, the outcome of all if this uproar is that Girls Scout councils will be much less inclined to partner, cooperate, or in any other way cozy up to Planned Parenthood after expending so much energy to deny any association. Parents will be watching, pro-life groups will be reporting, and future denials will be baseless if, indeed, we see more evidence surface such as a Girls Scout CEO acknowledging a partnership.

For Planned Parenthood – well, it just seems that the Girl Scouts is one more dance partner that doesn’t want to be seen holding hands in public.

Somewhere along the way, we are all tempted to think more of our abilities than we should. Then comes the crash and burn, the moment in time when it becomes all too clear that we are in way over our heads.

The truth is, we are always in over our heads in the abortion struggle. Why? Because at its core it is a spiritual battle, and you can’t wage this type of fight with spreadsheets, speeches and MBAs. Biblical preparation for spiritual battle is fundamental to successful leadership in the life movement.

Fortunately for us, the Bible gives us clear instructions for preparing for spiritual battle in Ephesians 6:10-18. We are to put on the full armor of God, every day and without fail, including the shield of faith to extinguish the flaming arrows that will eventually come from directions you will least expect.

Beware of cultivating an attitude that presumes that since you are standing for a moral position, your spiritual base is covered. Such a presumption will set you up for a fall while bypassing the enormous power of God in your life and leadership.

The playing field never seems to be level when it comes to abortion, whether it is in the area of funding or policy. But when it comes to the field of prayer, never forget that the abortion industry is utterly powerless.

real life application

Make it a priority in your daily routine to go through the process in your mind of putting on the full spiritual armor of God as outlined in Ephesians 6:10-18. It will quickly become the most powerful part of your day and will separate your leadership from others around you.

If you’re trying to make sense of the rapidly increasing tempo of the national 2012 election cycle, particularly in the progressive camp, here is an easy method for establishing context that I refer to as the three D’s of progressive politics: division, distraction, and discouragement.

Division is a tool of choice for progressives worldwide. It basically boils down to this: create enough dissension in any culture and eventually a sizeable percentage of the population will drift away from any form of consensus that unifies. The result is turmoil that destroys from within, creating a platform for the orchestrators of the division to call for peace and unity. That’s the insidious irony of it all.

Distraction is the use of hot button issues to keep like-minded opposition from unifying for a common purpose (let’s say, defeating the progressive agenda at the polls) by creating a never-ending stream of rabbit trails.

Discouragement is an underlying goal of the whole strategy: throw enough aggressive changes at the people and sooner or later, a lot of those same folks will throw up their hands and give up hope.

Conventional politics has always been about identifying a base, qualifying that base to vote, i.e registration, and turning that base out on Election Day. Progressive politics will indeed incorporate these same strategies, but the three D’s of division, distraction and discouragement inject a much deeper, much more sinister element than most of us would care to admit.

Can it work in America? To quite a degree it already has. But progressive politics, as indicated by the name, never rests. It’s always pushing the envelope, always breaking the establishment, always grabbing more power. How much power remains to be seen, but we’ll know that answer soon enough.