Often times the critical battles in leadership are fought in our heads. We win or lose in our minds; how we view things, our perspective on what is happening, or seems to be happening, in our leadership world.
As it says in the NKJ, “For as he thinks in his heart, so is he.” What we are often and constantly thinking about can unintentionally become our reality. It’s not what happens to us but our interpretation of what happens to us that harms us.
Carey Nieuwhof share with us 5 ways to survive the mental
game of leadership.
One of the problems I struggled with for years in leadership was
taking every leadership triumph or set back so personally.
I
let the dynamics of leadership go to my head and heart too often. My spirits
soared when things were good in ministry. They sunk when they weren’t. I took
too much of the weight home. Well, not just home. It followed me everywhere I
went.
Over
time, I’ve learned that there’s a world of difference between taking leadership seriously and
taking it personally.
Leaders
should always take leadership seriously. It demands our
best, and we should give it. Every day.
But
to take it too personally creates a roller coaster that ripples out all
over the place.
When
you take leadership seriously, everyone wins.
When
you take it personally, almost everyone loses.
Here
are 5 reasons you should stop taking leadership so personally.
1.
YOU’RE MESSING UP YOUR HEAD AND YOUR HEART
If
you take things too personally, you create an emotional roller coasting no one
wants to ride.
As Tim Keller has pointed out, if you let
success go to your head, failure will go to your heart. And that’s exactly what
happens when you over-personalize your leadership.
Your head is never quite right when things are going well because you take
credit for things that perhaps rightly belong to God or to the contribution of
others. Or you begin to believe it’s all you.
Conversely,
when you fail, you become completely deflated, convinced God can do nothing
with you or through you. You fall into despair.
The
reality is that you’re not nearly as good as your best day or nearly as
bad as your worst.
Healthy
leaders know how to separate what they do from who they are, which leads us to
the second reason you should stop taking your leadership so personally.
2. YOU’RE CONFUSING WHO YOU
ARE WITH WHAT YOU DO
Far
too many leaders confuse who they are with what they do.
Big
mistake.
We
all know we’re not supposed to confuse our identity with our work, but almost
all of us do it.
You
are not what
you do.
Hear
this:
You’re
loved.
You’re
forgiven.
You’re
cherished.
None
of this has anything to do with what you’ve doneand
everything to do with what Christ has done for you. That’s the Gospel.
The
error in confusing who you are with what you do arises from the fact that you
think you’re loved, forgiven and celebrated because you did your
best.
Those
who understand Christianity know that the opposite is actually true:
You
do your best BECAUSE you’re loved, forgiven and cherished.
Do
you see the flip?
You
don’t do your best to earn God’s favour. You
do your best because you have God’s favour.
Spend
a day thinking and praying about that. Seriously, do a personal retreat on that
one thought.
It
will profoundly change how you lead.
3. YOU’RE OVEREMPHASIZING HOW
IMPORTANT YOU ARE
At
the heart of over-personalizing leadership is this problem: you’ve unwittingly
made it all about you.
Of
all the scripture verses that stop me in my tracks, this verse from Galatians 6
is one of the best:
If you
think you are too important to help someone, you are only fooling yourself. You
are not that important.Galatians 6:3 NLT
You’re
just not that important.
As
C.S. Lewis said, humility is not thinking less of yourself. It’s simply
thinking of yourself less often.
When
you and I are gone, the world will keep spinning. The Kingdom of God will
keep advancing.
Somehow
it’s not about me. It never was. It never will be.
I
just get to play a part.
4. YOU’RE LETTING YOUR
PERSONAL FEELINGS DICTATE THE FUTURE OF YOUR ORGANIZATION
As
goes the leader, so goes the team.
If
your personal fortune goes up and down with your church or organization,
eventually it doesn’t only impact you; it impacts your organization.
How?
Because
when you go
down, so, eventually, does your church.
When
you suffer, your organization then experiences the impact of your
dysfunctions.
A
bad moment can become a bad season, because your reaction to what happens
triggers the next happening.
Let’s
say last month was a bad month in your organization for a variety of reasons.
If you personalize those failures, last month’s results will make this month
a bad month for you. And if you have a bad month this month, it’s somewhat
likely that next month will be a bad month for your organization because you
simply haven’t effectively led your team out of the slump (because you’re still
in it).
What
could have been a blip on the radar (one bad month) can easily become a slide
down into a bad quarter or even a bad year.
And
who needs that?
5. YOU’RE RUINING THE REST OF YOUR
LIFE
I
know that leadership brings a weight that only leaders understand. And to be
candid, I still have a hard time not thinking about what I do. I love what I
get to do. And I think about it a lot.
But
it was far worse when I took my ups and downs in leadership personally.
Why?
Because bad days would come home with me. Always.
When
your success goes to your head and your failure goes to your heart, you always
carry your struggles home.
The people who love you will pay a price for this.
You
will be arrogant or sullen…confused as to why you’re not the hero at home you
are at work, or, on your bad days, resentful that your family and friends don’t
want to join your miserable pity party.
The
people in your life who truly love you don’t love you because of what you
did at work. They just love you.