Face reality quickly

"Leadership can be at its most vulnerable as you create the space for an open and honest assessment of where thing are at"

Sir Terry Leahy, the CEO of Tesco said “If you don’t know where you are, your true situation, then you are lost from the outset. You cannot plot a course forward if you don’t know where you are starting from”. (From leadership by Alan Leighton pg 67)

Leadership can be at its most vulnerable at these times as you create the space for an open and honest assessment of where things are at. You might have to cope with the painful reality that under your leadership not everything has gone well. How you handle these discussions - will either promote honest feedback - or your obviously hurting demeanour, will control the free flow of opinions.
I find that I have to prepare myself for these occasions. One way is to remind myself that as I give opportunity for people to express their legitimate concerns, I am also giving them a platform to express their own personal frustration and disappointments. These may have little bearing on the state of the church. Handling this negativity and the many challenges of leading a mainly volunteer work force can easily make leaders bunker down, only listening to those who are close in, or say encouraging things.

Another way to prepare for these difficult conversations is to understand that a test of your leadership is not that you always make the right decisions, but more is on your ability to face the true reality and lead appropriately from that position. Abraham led his family down to Egypt during a famine and then lied about his marital status, allowing his wife to be taken by the ruler. Not a leadership call you would put on your CV. When the reality check was made, he had the leadership confidence to get them back on track.

Face reality, you have plateaued

"The reality is that many people and churches are stuck on a plateau"

A few years ago I spoke at a leader’s conference on the subject of “avoiding plateau”. One of my friends made the somewhat cynical comment that “you will not get many people attending your seminar, as leaders are often reluctant to admit that they are experiencing a plateau, either to themselves or to other leaders”.

The reality is that many people and churches are stuck on a plateau. What can be even scarier is that some are blissfully unaware of it. Facing up to the reality of where you are can be a very frustrating and even painful experience. But from this honest assessment you can build a foundation to make the right choices to affect change and subsequent breakthrough. Here are some indicators that you have reached a plateau and have let it negatively affect your life and leadership.

1.  You find yourself beginning to drift and you lack focus
2.  You change the goal posts so it looks like you are scoring
3.  You “super spiritualize” your assessment, saying it will happen in Gods time
4.  You blame things on the lack of resources and keep saying “if only”
5.  You keep saying “we live in the hardest place on the planet to build anything”
6.  No one admits the truth, or at least the whole truth regarding the situation

The fact is that some of these indicators are not excuses, but real, proper and justifiable reasons for things not moving as you would have hoped. If this is a correct assessment, then the plateau is a good place for you to be and can be a productive season of taking stock and repositioning yourself for the next phase. But if they are excuses then you need to face up to this potentially difficult reality.

Over Optimistic Loyalty & Foolish Bravery

"Their great words of loyalty were soon shown to be hollow as the disciples quickly fled the scene"

In the UK football managers come under immense pressure due to poor results. The club directors then get hassled by the media to make changes. In these pressure situations the directors can find themselves making massively over optimistic statements of loyalty to the manager, that in reality they can’t deliver. Very quickly their words come back to haunt them as they then go on to sack the manager. It’s interesting how times of uncertainty can cause us to make over strong, definitive statements.

This happened to the leaders that Jesus was training. As Jesus described a difficult future, explaining to them that when under pressure they would fall away. Peter declared, “Even if all fall away, I will not”. “Even if I have to die with you, I will never disown you.” And all the others said the same (Mk 14: 29 & 31). As we go on in the narrative one of the leaders has a moment of foolish bravery. Just as they were arresting Jesus he drew a sword and struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off his ear. Having rebuked the leader who used the sword, Jesus went on to heal the servant.

Their great words of loyalty were soon shown to be hollow as the disciples quickly fled the scene. Mark explains that “everyone deserted him and fled. He then went on to describe how “a young man, wearing nothing but a linen garment, was following Jesus. When they seized him, he fled naked, leaving his garment behind. (Mk 14: 50-51). This was a humiliating end to a terrible day. Would there be any way back for these leaders as they let Jesus down so badly?

Leaders lobbying for position and power

"There is something unseemly about leaders who try and influence things for their own good"

Having dealt decisively with Peter who arrogantly rebuked him (Matt 16:22), Jesus then had to cope with his team of leaders lobbying for the eminent position of “who was the greatest”. (Mark 9:33)

If you look up “leaders” in a thesaurus it shows words and phrases like best, cream of the crop, privileged and influential. It appears that all these factors were at play as the apostles began vying with each other for prominence in the new order. There is something unseemly about leaders who try and influence things for their own good, yet it even happened to those who Jesus specifically appointed to be key leaders.

Even though the apostles behaved in this way, it does not exonerate any of us for using major change to heighten our own prominence, especially at the expense of others. The Apostles were duly embarrassed and appropriately quiet as Jesus exposed their disagreeable argument about who was the greatest for what it was. In a future blog we will begin working through how Jesus dealt with the apostle’s different reactions. However in my next post I will outline another one of their responses: Protecting the Status Quo.