The Art of Self-Leadership
8 September, 2009 -
Taken from Courageous Leadership by Bill Hybels
Imagine a compass with a silver case, a round white face, a slender black needle, and four letters placed at ninety-degree intervals - N,S,E and W. Almost every time the word leadership is mentioned, in what direction do leaders instinctively think? South.
Say the word leadership and most leaders’ minds migrate to the people who are under their care. When they go to leadership conferences they assume they have only one goal: to improve their ability to lead the people God has entrusted to them.
South. It’s a leader’s first instinct.
What many people don’t realize is that to lead well, a leader actually needs to be able to lead in all directions - north, south, east and west.
For example, effective leaders have to lead north, which means leading those who are over them. Through relationship and influence, good leaders lead the people who supervise them. Must of what I do at Willow Creek, through relationship, prayer, and casting vision, is to try to gently influence those who have authority over me - the board of directors and the elders.
Effective leaders must also learn how to lead east and west, in peer-group settings. If we don’t learn how to lead laterally and create win-win situations with colleagues, an entire church culture can deteriorate.
So a leader must learn how to lead down, up, and laterally. But perhaps the most overlooked leadership challenge is the one in the middle.
Who is your toughest leadership challenge?
You.
Consider 1 Samuel 30. David, the future king of Israel, is a young leader just learning to lead his troops into battle. Though David’s a novice, God is pouring out his favor on him so most of the battles are going his way. Then on one seemingly normal day that pattern changes. After returning home from fighting on one front, David and his men discover that enemy soldiers have come around their flanks and attacked and destroyed their campsite, dragging off the women and children and burning all their belongings.
This would define a bad day for any leader, but it’s not over yet. David’s soldiers are tired, angry, and worried sick about their families. They’re miffed at God. Finally a faction of them spreads word that they have had it with David’s leadership. They figure that the entire tragedy is David’s fault, and they decide to stone him to death.
Suddenly David is facing a severe leadership crisis. Immediately he has to decide where to direct his leadership energy. Who needs it most? His soldiers? The officers? The faction of rebels? His answer is “none of the above”.
In this critical moment of David realises a fundamental truth: he needs to lead himself before he can lead anybody else. Unless he is squared away internally he has nothing much to offer his team. So he found a place of solitude, and there “David strengthened himself in the Lord his God” (1 Samuel 30:6). Only then does he attempt to fire up his team to rescue their families and what’s left of their belongings.
David understood the importance of self-leadership. Although this issue is rarely discussed, make no mistake: it is an essential part of leadership. How can any of us lead others effectively if our spirits are sagging or our courage is wavering?
Not long ago I read an article that seriously messed with my mind. Acclaimed leadership expert Dee Hock challenged leaders to calculate how much time and energy they invest in each of these directions: leading people under their care (S), leading people over them (N), leading people laterally (E-W), and leading themselves. Since he’s been thinking and writing about leadership for over twenty years and is a laureate in the Business Hall of Fame, I was eager to gain from his wisdom. His recommendation? “It is management of self that should occupy 50 percent of our time and the best of our ability. And when we do that, the ethical, moral, and spiritual elements of management are inescapable.” I was stunned. Did he really mean this? That we should devote 50 percent of our time to self-leadership, and divide the remaining fifty percent between leading up, leading down, and leading laterally? His suggested percentages bothered me so much I couldn’t finish the article. I tucked it away in my desk drawer to give his ideas a few hours to simmer in my mind.
While they simmered, I read an article by Daniel Goleman, the author of the best-selling book, “Emotional Intelligence”. Since the release of that book, Goleman has spent much of his time analyzing why a small percentage of leaders develop to their fullest potential while most leaders hit a plateau far beneath what one might expect from them.
His conclusion? The difference has to do with (you guessed it) self-leadership. He calls it “emotional self-control”. According to Goleman, this form of self-control is exhibited by leaders when they persevere in leadership despite overwhelming opposition or discouragement; when they refuse to give up during times of crisis; when they manage to hold ego at bay; when they stay focused on their mission rather than being distracted by other people’s agendas.
Goleman contends that exceptional leaders distinguish themselves because they “know their strengths, their limits, and their weaknesses”. As I read Goleman’s corroborating data, I thought, “maybe Dee Hock’s percentages aren’t all that absurd!”
Recall the first five chapters of Mark’s Gospel. Do you remember Jesus’ pattern of intense ministry activity quickly followed by time set aside for reflection, prayer, fasting and solitude? Jesus repeated that pattern throughout His ministry. In our terms, Jesus was practicing the art of self-leadership. He knew He needed to go to a quiet place and recalibrate. He knew He needed to remind himself who he was and how much the Father loved him. Even Jesus needed to invest regularly in keeping his calling clear, avoiding mission drift, and keeping distraction, discouragement, and temptation at bay.
This is self-leadership. And nobody - I mean, nobody - can do this work for us. Every leader has to do this work alone, and it isn’t easy. In fact, Dee Hock claims that because it’s such tough work most leaders avoid it. We would rather inspire or control the behavior of others than face rigorous work of self reflection and inner growth.
Some years ago, a top Christian leader disqualified himself from ministry. A published article described his demise: “[He] sank like a rock, beat up, burned out, angry and depressed, no good to himself and no good to the people he loved”. When this pastor finally wrote publicly about his experience, he said, “Eventually I couldn’t even sleep at night. Another wave of broken lives would come to shore at the church, and I found I didn’t have enough compassion for them any more. And inside I became angry, angry, angry. Many people still wonder whatever happened to me. They think I had a crisis of faith. The fact is I simply collapsed on the inside”.
Dee Hock would probably suggest that he failed the self-leadership test. Before his crash, he should have called a “timeout” to regroup, reflect, and recalibrate. He should have taken a sabbatical or sought Christian counselling. Daniel Goleman would say this guy lost emotional self-control. And he ended up paying a high price.
I’ll never forget the day three wise advisors came to me on behalf of the church.
They said, “Bill, there were two eras during the first twenty years of Willow Creek’s history when, by your own admission, you were not at your leadership best: once in the late seventies and again in the early nineties. The data shows that Willow Creek paid dearly for your leadership fumble. It cost all of us more than you’ll ever know”.
Then the word’s I’ll never forget: “The best gift you can give the people you lead here at Willow is a healthy, energized, fully surrendered, and focused self. And no one can make that happen in your life except you. It’s up to you to make the right choices so you can be at your best”. While they were talking, the Holy Spirit was saying, “They’re right, Bill. They’re right”.
