3 Harsh Truths You Need To Accept

Leadership is never easy, but if you learn to accept and lean into these 3 harsh truths, you will learn to embrace and succeed in your leadership role.

As a leader you will have difficult conversations. One of my mentors early in my ministry career told me that:

Leadership in ministry is often times one difficult conversation after another

Hearing and heeding that advice has served me well these many years.

If God places you in leadership, it will require you to have difficult conversations with people. Those conversations come in many forms. Difficult leadership conversations means having to offer less than glowing performance reviews, having to say NO to someone you know will not receive it well, letting someone go from your organization, asking uncomfortable questions, disagreeing or pushing back on your own supervisor or saying and standing up for something unpopular even though you know it’s going to cost you. Don’t recoil or shy away from those conversations. They need to happen and they are mark of leadership.

As a leader, you need to be willing to disappoint people around you. Decisions you make may not always be popular. Your decisions may not be fully understood. But that’s ok, those that you lead will never have all the information you have. No matter how much you may attempt to explain and align people to the decision, their view is limited and restricted. Your role as a leader isn’t to always have all the right answers and to make the right decisions - your role is assess all the information that is available to you and then to SIMPLY ACT.

As a leader, you will lack confidence. You may think, “I’m a leader, I must have all the answers…I must lead with confidence that I know exactly what to do”. But the truth is that deep down you may feel as if you’re an impostor. Those you lead are looking to you for all the answers and yet you may feel as if all you have are your own set of questions. That’s OK! Good leaders don’t have to be certain and think that they have all the answers. What great leaders need to do though is to lead with clarity and courage. Courage to move forward and act boldly and clarity to help those you lead to know why and where you are taking them.

Photo by Bud Helisson on Unsplash