The Dip of Leadership

John Maxwell says that “Leadership is Influence.”

If that’s the case, then I think I’m barely passing, and more often than not, I’m stumbling through wondering if folks listen to me because of position (oversight of an accounting department at work and volunteer as church treasurer) or because they actually think I might have something valuable to say.

In my mind, I still picture myself as that geeky youth with the straight bangs and oversized thick plastic glasses with an ugly overbite, wearing a red and white nylon vest with brown JC Penney corduroy slacks while riding my red banana boat seat bicycle on the street with my friends on their BMX bikes, or whizzing down the street on their skateboards.  I can hear the bully down the street call me chinaman, the insults as to my race, my size, the clothes I wear, my lack of street football skills echoing as my friends tell the bully to knock it off, before I charge him and push him off his bike.

Then there were those moments in school when I rarely raised my hand for fear that what I contributed was going to be off-topic, appear uneducated, and would detract rather than add to the discussion at hand, regardless of whether it was an English class, a history class or any other subject in which class participation was encouraged.  I feared that my contribution was going to be lacking…so why put myself in a position to be shot down by my teacher…or worse…by my classmates?

Going back to those weird moments in my youth make me think about how I have moved beyond such an awkward point in my life to where I am today as a husband and father, working professional overseeing a staff of 5, baseball coach, and church leader.

In so many spheres, it seems that my influence (that which I have, anyway) has more to do with position and title rather than with what I might deem to be important to add to a conversation.  My staff do what I say because I’m their boss.  My baseball players do what I say because I am their coach.  The church bookkeeper does what I say because I am the church treasurer.

But of course, that’s not entirely true.  I have to remind myself that I solicit feedback from the church bookkeeper on her opinion for how we are managing our funds or handling a specific financial procedure.  I solicit feedback from the senior members of my staff on changes in workflow and procedure or in evaluating the performance of the junior staff.  I solicit feedback from my assistant coach on how best to handle 15 young baseball players to keep their attention during an hour long practice or a two hour game.

In each sphere, though, I have hit moments where I wonder if what I am doing is making any difference.  I wonder if my voice really counts.  It is those moments when I experience a dip in my leadership, a dip in my confidence as a leader, and the realization that what I know is the accumulation of trial and error over the years.

It’s normal to be in that dip, because it keeps me honest.  It forces me to reflect on how I got here – on how God moved me from that geeky youth to this place in my life, and why He has taken me on this particular journey and how I fit into His grand plan.  I know that the journey will only end when He says that it’s time. Until then, these dips will occur over the course of this journey as He continues to scrape out the imperfections and takes me to places where I must confront issues I didn’t realize I had buried. If I am to grow as a leader, I must deal with myself first.

Ruth Haley Barton writes in “Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership”:

This is a leader’s invitation to freedom from the inner bondage of being subject to the deeply patterned responses that were helful to us at one time but could cripple us now in what we are being called to do. This is a call to liberation that we are often able to hear only when we have finally become desperate enough to consider a radical departure from life as we know it so that we can be made well. Only those whom God has freed at this level are prepared to lead others into the freedom that they seek. Only those who have been brave enough to ride their own monsters of anger and greed, jealousy and narcissism, fear and violence all the way down to the bottom will find a truer energy with which to lead. Only those who have faced their own dark side ca be trusted to lead others toward the Light.This is where true spiritual leadership begins. Everything that comes before is something else.

The answer to my own effectiveness in leadership, personally and professionally, begins in my past.  It is no easy task to face my own demons – but it is a necessity if I am to grow.

And if I am to move out of this dip in leadership.