5 Ways to Build Resilience in Leaders
- Léonce B. Crump Jr. Renovation Church
- Updated Jul 14, 2023
Imagine you were born in 1900.
On your 14th birthday, World War I starts, and it ends on your 18th birthday. Some twenty-two million people perished in that war. Later in the year, a Spanish Flu epidemic hits the planet and continues until your 20th birthday. Fifty million people die from it in those two years. Yes, fifty million.
On your 29th birthday, the Great Depression begins. Unemployment hits 25%, and the World GDP drops 27%--that continues until you are 33. The country nearly collapses along with the world economy.
When you turn 39, World War II starts. You are not even middle-aged yet. You try to catch your breath, but on your 41st birthday, the United States is fully pulled into WWII. Between your 39th and 45th birthdays, 75 million people perish in the war.
Compared to that child of 1900, virtually every reader of this blog has experienced extraordinary stability over the last few decades. Still, it's time to face the truth that stability is not the norm but abnormal.
You and I should expect disruption and accept that the relative stability and predictability recent generations have known has been an unprecedented gift.
How do we shift our mindset and mentality toward accepting such a brutal truth? How do we become resilient in light of that truth and lead others to do the same?
There are five things we should consider if we want to build resilience--in the face of the normalcy of disruption--in ourselves and others.
It is time for leaders to think and dream again. It is time for them and their teams to create a preferred future. But the only way you and those you lead with will begin to shape the preferred future is by accepting the world as it is rather than pining for what you remember as "normal."
1. Learn to embrace constant disruption.
The inconvenient reality is that our society, churches, and nonprofits are not returning to the "old" sense of normal. The new normal will not be a new "fixed" way of doing things. Instead, we're discovering a world where unpredictability is the standard. In a world without disruption, leadership is not required. You manage what is. But hereafter's world marked by upheaval requires innovation, imagination, and resilience. These are today's marks of leadership.
2. Accept that your leadership is likely distrusted.
Culturally, much of what used to be accepted practice and understood norms for leadership and followership has largely vanished. In today's world:
- Direction is often seen as dominance.
- Clarity is often equated with control.
- Expectations are often viewed as burdens.
- Accountability has been called abuse.
Of course, domineering, controlling, abusive leaders do exist (and that's unacceptable). But the cultural conception of leadership itself is now often cast in those categories whether deserved or not. Future-oriented, resilient leaders must recognize the skepticism and altered expectations of those they lead and accept them as reality.
3. Face what hurts.
Even if you have suffered greatly, God is not done with you or finished with your ministry or organization. He has more for you, but the way to move forward is to come face-to-face with the Sovereign God and the depths of your pain and look for the threads that strengthen your resolve to lead.
Like it or not, extraordinary visions are often driven by significant pain. Consider the civil rights movement. Though a myriad of factors led to its sharp rise and very public impact, it is widely considered to have been catalyzed by the 1955 murder of Emmett Till and his mother's insistence that her son have an open-casket funeral in Chicago. The streets were quite literally lined with people, all waiting to gaze upon the disfigured face of this young boy. National news outlets covered the incident, the FBI was sent to Mississippi to investigate, and soon after, the civil rights movement was born at the convergence of many streams of pain and distress.
4. Focus on what you are fighting for.
Do you know what your team is fighting for? Maybe it is:
- Clean water where it's never existed.
- People who genuinely do life together.
- Finding every orphan a home.
- Marriages that make spouses holy and not just happy.
- Families that stick together through the madness of life.
- Workplaces where people love to work.
- Dads who love their kids well.
- Communities who journey through the messiness of life.
- Cleaner bathrooms that promote excellent health.
- Crowded streets in heaven made of gold.
What is it for you? What you are fighting for might be a problem you are trying to solve, an injustice you are trying to resolve, something you are trying to prove, or a slice of a better world you are trying to create.
It is time to resurface your big why, the powerful purpose that once fueled and inspired the pioneers, the builders, and the maintainers.
5. Embrace and engage in necessary, difficult conversations.
Most of you know it would be good to press into hard conversations about calling, match, passion commitment levels, or any number of other potential landmines. Still, we often struggle to develop the nerve to take action. To be a resilient leader, you must live with a sense of urgency around difficult conversations. Reasons to engage in the hard conversations:
- You want to model biblical mandates of speaking the truth in love (Eph. 4:15), forgiving (Matt. 6:14-15), not nursing a grudge (Lev. 19:18, Mark 11:25), not harboring anger (James 1:20), not letting the sun go down on your anger (Eph. 4:26), and living at peace with others whenever possible (Rom. 12:18). In short, when you need to confront, it is a Christian's call is to keep short accounts.
- Your mission is important enough not to allow a weakness to continue.
- The right people will leave when the wrong people are allowed to stay.
- You want to signal to the rest of your team that your work is consequential, and your team will be accountable for results, both faithfulness and fruitfulness.
- You want all other members to feel safe and protected from bad behavior such as low commitment, poor performance, mismatched talents, or other unhealthy issues.
Consider the hard but necessary conversations you need to have, and begin planning what they are, how you'll go about them, and when.
You and your team can meet the new realities of this post-pandemic (post?) world. Against challenging odds, you can press toward the new vision God has given you to build your church, fulfill your mission, grow your organization or business, bless your community, and participate in the redemptive work that God is still doing.
Of course, He never stopped working, despite the sometimes overwhelming challenges now largely in the rearview mirror. Though the mission hasn't changed, the ground has shifted dramatically!
Leaders who excel in this brave new world will embrace and lead from the abovementioned realities and see building resilience in themselves and those they lead as paramount to their organization's future.
Photo Credit: ©Getty Images/deimagine
