Four Steps to Leadership: Prudence

Today we continue the discussion we started last week on the four virtues of leadership with looking into the virtue of prudence. As stated last week, one cannot act prudently without first having humility. One can see this pretty clearly just through a definition of prudence. In the Catechism of the Catholic Church (#1806) prudence is defined as the virtue that disposes practical reason to discern our true good in every circumstance and to choose the right means of achieving it. It is self-evident that in order to truly determine one's own good and also the good of others around us that one must have first appropriately and accurately accessed one's own value within God's divine order.

Prudence is, or at least ought to be, that which guides all of our decisions to be directed at that which is our good. This is even more important for us as fathers. As fathers, not only are we discerning our own good, but we are also discerning the good of our children. As a virtue, mastery of prudence requires practice, so it is important for us to regularly utilize our ability to reason so then we can reason rightly.

The ability to utilize right reason requires us to take the time to slow down and think. We live in a world of convenience where all information is quite literally at our fingertips. Everything is always moving faster and faster and this modern corporate world that we live in expects us all to be moving just as fast. This is not a good thing. Before acting, it is essential that we take time to determine what is our good and what is the best way to attain it.

Let's take a look at a practical example, as the practice of prudence requires us to consider hypotheticals in order to determine if one thing is better than another. For example, let's look at the example of a child's education. It is evident that it is good that our children receive a quality education. However, prudence would ask us to consider a multitude of factors to determine the best way to give our children that education. Are you going to have your kids in public school, or are you going to choose an alternative route such as private school or even home school. In order to properly determine this, you have to do your due diligence and research each option. You have look at the school test scores; higher scores mean better funding if the schools are public. Test scores between private and public schools can also determine the quality of the teachers. In today's day and age you also have to look at what the schools are teaching. Are they teaching children according to that which is true, good, and beautiful, or are they trying to indoctrinate them with some politicized ideology all while trying to keep this from parents. Prudence would ask that you consider all these things in order to correctly determine the best option, which is why it is so important that we always slow down to think before taking action.

The practice of prudence properly disposes the soul to right reason, to be able know that which is truly good for us, and how to best obtain that which is good. Through this we are then able to move on to the next step of leadership which is the mastery of one's self, otherwise known as self-control, which we will discuss next week.