Home Outreach Leaders Articles for Outreach & Missions 5 Reasons You Should Stop Taking Leadership SO Personally

5 Reasons You Should Stop Taking Leadership SO Personally

Do you see the flip?

You don’t do your best to earn God’s favor. You do your best because you have God’s favor.

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 overpersonalizing 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 just 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 the impact of your dysfunctions.

A bad moment can become a bad season because your reaction to what happened 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 day would come home with me. Always.

When your success goes to your head and your failure goes to your heart, you always carry them 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.

So stop ruining their lives. And yours.

Got Another Reason?

What have you learned about taking things too personally in leadership?