I love this leadership concept: “Be content, not satisfied.”
I can’t remember when I first heard it. It sounds like something John Maxwell would say. It’s certainly not a new idea. For many leaders, learning to balance dissatisfaction and contentment opens us to innovations while keeping us grateful and emotionally healthier (not completely healthy, but healthier).
This of it this way:
Contentment is personal, where satisfaction is professional.
CONTENTMENT: An internal posture of peace. Living content means I’m responsible for the effort, but God is accountable for results. When I live content, I am comfortable with my God-given leadership wiring and abilities.
SATISFACTION: A professional position that drives innovation and change. As a leader, we feel dissatisfied because we know the mission is incomplete. There are ways we can improve organizationally. Perhaps some ministries need to end to make room for others to begin. Some teams need restructuring. Or perhaps our entire model needs an overhaul.
When we confuse contentment and satisfaction, we damage our emotions and limit the mission.
Over my years of marketplace and ministry leadership, I’ve fought to remain content, but not satisfied. Specifically, I’ve tried to stay content in ministry because we are partners with God and his church. I’m content because I recognize God is responsible for the results.
On the other side, I’m dissatisfied because the mission of God’s church is too important to take lightly. I want to remain somewhat dissatisfied because this posture keeps me hungry to make the ministry better. It’s what helps me improve myself. It’s why I went back to school to get a doctorate. I was content, but I wasn’t satisfied.
Here are two questions leaders should continually ask of themselves and their teams:
QUESTION # 1: Am I content?
As a leader, the first question you need to ask yourself is, “Am I content?”
Discontent leaders are often disasters. Discontentment typically leads to poor leadership behaviors and a lack of valuing people over products. Discontent leaders tend to be selfish leaders. Discontentment is a powerful emotion that can bring even the best leaders to an emotional breaking point.
“Am I content?” forces us to evaluate our inner life. Effective leadership is impossible when our personal life is in shambles.
It’s worth pondering this question for a while, and perhaps with a counselor. You are made unique for a unique purpose. You are the only person like you; therefore, you can offer something incredibly special to your family, team, organization, and community. But only if you’re internally content.
QUESTION # 2: With what am I dissatisfied?
What’s not working any longer? What’s missing in our strategy? What’s confusing to our church community?
As most of us near the other side of the pandemic, life isn’t going back to normal a la 2019. To some extent, life may feel relatively normal, but everything has changed. Life and community are permanently different. The pandemic accelerated all of the trends that we were experiencing prior. The pandemic probably created a few, too.
As you evaluate everything in and around your mission, I guarantee there is some level of dissatisfaction. No pastor has mastered the “hybrid church” (unifying digital and physical channels in a cohesive strategy). Nobody has the perfect discipleship pathway. No church is perfectly positioned to both reach the lost and grow the found.
Feeling dissatisfied is good. There’s work to be done, and as a leader, you’re needed.
Early in my leadership life, I spent too much time feeling both discontent and dissatisfied. I didn’t understand the difference, and it was destroying me personally and professionally. Over time, though, I was able to delineate between each feeling. This separation of terms has been personally helpful and professionally significant.
Here’s my advice: Wrestle with these two questions. Take some time to ponder them both. You’ll be a better leader, and I suspect your organization will be better off, as well.
How can I help?
If you aren’t satisfied, I’d love to help. Coaching ministry and marketplace leaders through change, transition, and transformation is why I created Transformation Solutions. Go right now to mytransformationsolutions.com and sign up for a free, 30-minute conversation to decide if working together works for you.
