2. You will have to withstand seasons of being misunderstood.
Effective leaders are prepared to be misunderstood.
There will be seasons in leadership in which you will be misunderstood.
Your motives, strategy and skill will be questioned.
It happened to Moses. It happened to Jesus. It happened to Paul. It will happen to you if you’re leading.
There are two extremes that happen when leaders are misunderstood.
Some leaders think everyone else is wrong and they’re absolutely right.
Some leaders believe the critics must be right and question themselves … to the point of quitting the change or quitting entirely.
We’ve all seen leaders who are convinced they’re right and everyone else is wrong. Not fun.
So how do you ensure you’re not that person without becoming the person who caves or becomes paralyzed in the face of opposition?
Simple. Test your motives. Ask yourself:
Is this change really going to help people? Or am I doing it for a selfish or questionable reason?
If the change isn’t faithful, helpful or going to help people in the long run, abandon it.
If it is faithful and it’s going to help people in the long run, stick with it.
Leadership is a little like parenting. You do things your kids dislike because it’s good for them.
And in leadership, you lead people through seasons they don’t want to go through because in the end, it’s good for them.
And if it’s good for them, most of them will thank you in the end. Your job is to get them to the point where they benefit from the change.
Which is why you need to learn to endure being misunderstood when the misunderstanding arises from a legitimate change that, in the end, moves the mission and the community to a better place.
If you struggle with opposition to change, I outline a detailed five-part strategy on how to navigate change in the face of opposition in my book Leading Change Without Losing It.
3. You can lead and still be likeable.
So, you might think, you’re basically saying I have to be a jerk or a cold, calloused human being to lead?
Not at all.
Just because you’re leading people to a place they would not naturally go doesn’t mean you have to abandon grace, humility, kindness, forgiveness or mercy.
In fact, the more you embrace characteristics like mercy, kindness, forgiveness, grace and humilty, the more effective you will be at leading change.
The trick is that there might not be an immediate pay back.
There’s a tendency in all of us that longs for the dynamic of ‘offer and acceptance.’
I offer you forgiveness, you accept.
I offer you mercy, you say thank you.
I show kindness, you reciprocate.
There will be entire seasons of your leadership in which you will offer all of the above and more, and people will not reciprocate.
You have to learn to be OK with that. Even when you’re not OK with it.
When people don’t respond in kind, you must still be gracious, still be humble, still be kind, still be forgiving, even if it hurts. And it will hurt.
