Let me start with an odd question: What is your leadership superpower?
I know, you don’t think of yourself as a superhero, but let’s face it: You may have a “master of divinity,” and that clerical robe does kind of look like a cape.
Even if the idea of having a “superpower” feels uncomfortable, I’ll bet you would admit there is a finely honed skill you know you can count on when it really matters. It’s your gift, your strength, the capacity you can rely on when an emergency calls, a challenge wakes you up in the middle of the night, or a crisis is going on in the world. It’s the skill set you used so adeptly that some people asked you to step up and take the helm. This is the differentiating ability that makes people trust you and look to you when the chips are down.
For me—and I admit this with a bit of embarrassment—my go-to is talking. Speaking. Preaching, even. I have been speaking publicly since I was 18 years old. I preached my first sermon when I was 19 years old. On a really good day, I can preach the paint off of a barn. And writing a talk of any kind is almost fun to me.
I can get three points and a poem out of a newscast or an anxious dream that interrupts my sleep. And if there is brewing uncertainty or a cultural event, I can generate a six-week sermon series in no time. Looking back, I know that it was because I was a good preacher that some people asked me to be their pastor (not knowing that I wasn’t nearly as experienced at any of the many other skills needed when I stepped out of the pulpit).
So, what is your superpower? Is it running a well-oiled program? Organizing a high-capacity team? Can you whip up a spreadsheet that arranges meals for a family or a community-wide disaster relief plan without even stopping for coffee? Maybe when a crisis hits, you roll up your sleeves and start serving. You know how to show up, clean up and get a casserole in the freezer. Or maybe you can crunch the numbers and prepare a five-year budget for every contingency.
You know what your superpower is, don’t you? Go ahead and say what it is aloud. It may feel a bit self-absorbed to linger on it, but I want you to take a moment to genuinely thank God for the gift that you have been given. Honestly acknowledge it and genuinely celebrate it.
And then I’d gently urge you to consider that this leadership strength could be your biggest leadership problem.
Leading in Autopilot
In his bestselling book of the same name, Marshall Goldsmith teaches us that What Got You Here Won’t Get You There. In it, he nudges leaders to consider how the very skills and abilities that led to them being asked to lead—or got them promoted to an even bigger challenge, platform or position—are often the stumbling blocks for facing new challenges.
I learned this one myself when, after nine years of my church growing in a setting and denomination where almost everyone else was in decline, I came to a point where the metrics were going up, but the morale in the church was going down. I was enthusiastically trying to keep the momentum going by relying on my skill set, but my best leaders were checking out.
No matter how hard I tried to be inspiring, exhorting, encouraging and challenging when I spoke, nothing changed. It didn’t matter if I was prophetic or priestly, funny or emotional, the words just seemed to fall on fallow ground. And it seemed like the more I talked, the less motivated my congregations became.
I was trapped in leadership autopilot, but I didn’t know what else to do.
I then turned to a mentor and told him of my dilemma and the discouragement that it was causing. He shared with me words that his mentor had shared with him. It was a little motto that has its roots in the military, but it applies to almost every situation: “At the moment of crisis, you don’t rise to the occasion, you default to your training.”
And there it was. You default to your training.
This is the mistake I was making back then, and the same one so many of the good leaders that my coaching and consulting company works with today are making.
Whatever we are trained to do, we do as a default. Because we feel so competent when we do it, we get that little dopamine hit of accomplishment and affirmation. We were given more opportunities to put that gift into practice and more responsibilities that just made people respect us all the more. After a while, our brains just flicked the switch into leadership autopilot.
If you’re like me, you don’t even realize it’s happening (hence the word “default”). And if you are like me, you may not even recognize when it’s not working the way it once did. And even that can get you into trouble.
In Deep Survival, author Laurence Gonzales writes about a group of experienced river guides who died trying to run a set of rapids during a flood. The guides had years of experience with big rapids and rushing currents. For them, the bigger the rapids, the more fun to be had. But in this situation they somehow overlooked just how rapidly the river was rising. They didn’t account for the water pouring in from snowmelt that was pushing its velocity beyond anything resembling a safe-but-exhilarating level.
How did not one but an entire group of experienced river guides miss logs hurtling down the current like missiles, confusing this for another fun day of kayaking? Because what they always did when the water got big was to go for it. They did it by default, plus they assumed they would get the same result they always had.
Are their actions that much different than the confident Christian leader who just keeps ministering to others, preaching, programming and leading at full speed? They are running in default mode with the unconscious reflex to do what they have always done. And they just assume that they’ll get the results they’ve always gotten.
But what happens when what you do doesn’t work anymore? What can you do when you’re stuck and honestly don’t know what to do?
Getting Unstuck
As Edwin H. Friedman famously wrote in A Failure of Nerve, “When any relationship system is imaginatively gridlocked, it cannot get free simply through more thinking about the problem. Conceptually stuck systems cannot become unstuck simply by trying harder.”
When what you are doing is not working, trying harder to force it to work is futile. Instead, you need to stop, look, listen and then go. These four simple steps may sound like guidance you would give a child before crossing the street, but leaders too can benefit from this sound advice.
1. Stop.
If you are like me, you have the voice of a parent, an old coach, a respected teacher or a boss in your head saying, “Don’t just stand there, do something!” And that is exactly what we do. Something. Anything. As long as we are busy, we can turn off the mental dashboard light that is telling us something is’t right.
To be clear, I haven’t met many good leaders who were not hard workers. Indeed, if there is a shared superpower that nearly all of them have, it is the energy to outwork a problem. We are like expert canoers in a river paddling as hard as we can—but the river has run dry. This is a recipe for exhaustion and injury, discouragement and a torn rotator cuff.
And you don’t make any progress either.
So, the next time you feel the urge to be busy doing something, question that little voice that tells you to spring into action. When you hear it shouting at you, tell yourself that you are going to do something new. You are going to do something unexpected.
You are going to stop. Just stop.
You are going to stand there. Just stand.
At least for a bit. If you need it, keep a series of Bible verses handy on your phone for just this moment. While you are standing there, pull out your phone and look at it like you have just received an emergency text message that is interrupting you. Think of it as an intervention from the Holy Spirit.
Look at how often Jesus slows everything down.
Read how Jesus pulled away to a mountainside when the crowds were ready to make him king (John 6).
Watch him write in the sand when a bunch of frothing Pharisees with stones at the ready bring him a frightened half-naked woman (John 8).
Chuckle as he naps in a boat during a storm (Matt. 8).
Marvel as he sits by a well and talks to a woman with a bad reputation over a cup of water (John 4).
See him enjoying a party at a wedding (John 2).
Notice how many times he spends the evening having dinner with friends (Luke 5, 7, 9, 10, 11, 14, 19).
Consider how often he takes the disciples on a long walk.
Just stop for a moment. Maybe even say a prayer. Jesus, while I am standing here, is there something new I need to learn to do?
2. Look.
Adaptive leadership experts Ronald Heifetz and Marty Linsky teach leaders that whenever they are in the midst of a particularly disruptive challenge, they need to get “on the balcony.” While the “dance floor” is where all the action is, up on the balcony is where the leader gains perspective to see the challenges from enough distance to be able to make wiser interventions.
In Leadership on the Line, they write, “Achieving a balcony perspective means taking yourself out of the dance, in your mind, even if only for a moment. The only way you can gain both a clearer view of reality and some perspective on the bigger picture is by distancing yourself from the fray. Otherwise, you are likely to misperceive the situation and make the wrong diagnosis, leading you to misguided decisions about whether and how to intervene.”
Wise leaders not only take time to get some perspective, but they also use a balcony session to get the perspective of others. Take 15 minutes before intervening in a crisis to ask some trusted advisors, “What am I not seeing? What could I be missing? What do you see here?”
Doing this can also help you start looking for a different—and non-default—action to take. And to make this moment on the balcony even more effective, consider inviting a few people to join you who are not your “usual suspects,” and you’ll learn even faster.
3. Listen.
When rattled by a particularly challenging moment, most of us want the comforting voices of familiar friends or like-minded colleagues. We unconsciously create echo chambers singing our favorite songs. Over time those voices can just keep reinforcing what we already know.
However, when we listen to unfamiliar voices, things change. Studies show that when leaders listen to a wide diversity of perspectives, they make better decisions. Getting out of the default behavior (which may have been subtly reinforced by those who know us best) is often helped by getting into conversation with those who may have been excluded before.
The next time you are “on the balcony” and asking for insight from different people, ask yourself, What voice is missing here? Who might contribute a different point of view?
4. Go.
After you have stopped, looked from the balcony, and listened to diverse voices, then it is time to go. But this time as you take action, step out with a different foot forward: Try something new. And think of it not as a new bold step, but as a small, safe, cautious testing of the waters so that you can learn as you go.
In other words, experiment with a new action that will help you learn something new. An executive coach once taught me, “When what you are doing is not working, the one thing you cannot do is what you have always done.” So, try anything at all, and focus on the learning. Don’t ask, “Did it work?” Ask instead, “What did we learn?”
When our consultants work with a team, we encourage them to get a big whiteboard and make it a “Learnings Board.” Over the course of the year, every time someone tries a safe, modest experiment, they write what they learn on the board. We tell them to make a goal to have 50 new learnings by the end of the year (that is one a week with two weeks off because we need a vacation from learning sometimes).
And that last bit could be the most important of all: Good leaders don’t default to their training; they lead the learning. They don’t rest on their strength, even if it is a kind of superpower. Instead, they focus on how the challenge in front of them can teach them, change them, and form character and capacity within them.
Don’t Waste a Crisis.
Leadership is always about transformation. Wise leaders take advantage of the crises they face to learn, grow and inspire transformation in themselves and their people. Most often, this learning includes the kind of transformation that takes them beyond what their superpowers could ever produce.
In 2 Chronicles, King Jehoshaphat gets word that an immense army is massing against him. Instead of immediately drawing up a battle plan and giving a stirring speech, he does something completely unexpected. It is breathtaking for its bold vulnerability, and it’s inspiring for its astonishing honesty. He stands before his people and admits that he doesn’t know what to do. He prays, “We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you [God]” (20:12).
Wise leaders don’t waste a crisis—they use it to help their people become the very best versions of themselves. Which doesn’t often happen when we do what we have always done and rely on our own strength. Instead, when a leader disrupts their default behaviors by stopping, looking, listening and then going, they may be surprised at Who has been there working in and through them all along.