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5 Mistakes Young Leaders Don’t Need to Make

5 Mistakes Young Leaders Don’t Need to Make

And neither do seasoned leaders

So who doesn’t make mistakes as a leader?

We could talk about dumb mistakes, like the time I decided to use gas to start a bonfire in my backyard…as in a whole can of gas…as in me almost blowing up my family and neighborhood in the process. But chances are you’re too smart to do that. Instead, let’s talk about some other true stories that could possibly help you.

I’ve been a senior pastor for 18 years. We’ve seen some incredibly good things over those 18 years. Our church has grown immensely and we’ve got an unbelievable team of people who have rallied around a common mission, vision and strategy. But I’ve also made my fair share of mistakes in those almost two decades.

I’m sharing my top five mistakes with you in the hopes that you can avoid the same pitfalls I fell into. Along with each mistake, though, I’ll also share some strategies that can help you avoid them.

Mistake #5: Misjudging Trust

Trust is the fuel relationships run on. But getting trust wrong is easier than getting it right. My misjudgment of trust showed up in at least five different ways in different seasons.

Trusting everyone. By default, I’m a fairly trusting person. When you trust everyone, you really discriminate against people who are especially trustworthy. You also allow people not capable of handling the trust extended to them to misuse it and hurt others. Trusting everyone ultimately hurts everyone.

Not checking track records. Whenever trusting someone with responsibility, it’s important to assess how responsible that person has been with previous assignments and elsewhere in life. And while everyone gets a fresh start with the Gospel, trustworthiness in the past is the best indicator of trustworthiness in the future.

Trusting too late. Like almost every leader, I got burned a few times on trust. For a season, my default moved from trust to suspicion. I missed out on some great leaders in that season. I missed out on seeing leaders around me reach their potential.

Not trusting. I mention this only because I’ve seen this too many times. Get burned badly and some leaders just stop trusting. If you trust no one, you will eventually have no one. Get on your knees and get to a counselor immediately if that’s you.

Not realizing that alignment is a critical ingredient to organizational trust. Just because you can trust someone personally doesn’t mean you can trust him organizationally. Usually, mistrust emerges in an organization when someone is given leadership but then starts to run in a different direction than the organization is running. For example, a musician who loves Jesus and loves tuba music—no matter how skilled they are—is going to be a bad fit on our team.

When deciding whether someone should take on leadership at our church, I look for alignment around our strategy and our values as much as anything else. When you have that, you can go far. Creating a high trust culture moves things further faster.

Mistake # 4. Trying to Help Everybody

In many vocations, but particularly in ministry, you really want to help everyone. I know I did. Then I met “Betty” (not her real name). I was in ministry maybe six months when Betty arrived. Soon Betty brought Brian, her husband. Betty and Brian weren’t affluent by any means. They struggled to pay the bills and had some serious and sad personal issues in their lives. I wanted to help. And I didn’t want to give up. After a while, it felt like there was no end to the trouble, and no matter what we seemed to do, it never helped enough.

Four years after they came, Betty and Brian left—stormed out, actually, in quite a dramatic fashion. Her reason? The church hadn’t done enough for them. It floored me. I had made more visits to their home than anyone else’s. We had helped them through more crises than any other family I could think of. And, I’m quite sure they received more financial aid than anyone at the time.

It broke my heart when they left, and truthfully, it also bothered me. But the experience taught me something: You can’t help everyone. In fact, what I learned was there’s a world of difference between someone who says they want help and someone who actually wants help.

Here are five attitudes or qualities to look for that indicate whether a person truly wants help.

1. Gratitude, not entitlement

2. A desire to help others

3. Commitment to a mission bigger than themselves

4. Progress in their personal walk

5. Teachability  

If you want more on how to handle this, Henry Cloud has a fantastic book called Necessary Endings. I highly recommend you read it.