“I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.”[1] This biblical verse captures the extraordinary optimism of Norman Vincent Peale. Belief, expectation, and faith—his pillars of the Christian religion—are internals that can move mountains and thus get results. This biblically-based recipe for positive thinking can be applied to leadership, which, after all, is results-oriented. Its desired objective is of course the realization of a vision. Simply put, if religion can be used to do better in a job as Peale insists,[2] this holds for the task of leading other people, which consists of formulating and selling a vision.
The essay is at "Biblical Positive-Thinking." A fuller version is a chapter of Christianized Ethical Leadership.
1. Phil. 4:13. Cited from Norman Vincent Peale, The Power of Positive Thinking (New York: Touchstone, 2015), p. 3.
2. Norman Peale, Power of Positive Thinking, p. 48
