The below is Lesson 6 from our Leadership Lessons series.
LESSON SIX: Brokenness and failure are necessary
KEY QUESTION: How did a month’s sabbatical away from my leadership role save my emotional world?
Let’s start with something personal.
My Leadership Journey
It was February 2016. Seven years prior, I arrived at Woodstock City Church to be part of a revitalization effort. Now we were preparing to move into our first permanent church facility.
The work leading up to this move began two years prior. We launched a capital campaign, worked the political angles in our local city, engaged an architect, and started construction. That’s incredibly simplified, but you get the point.
Now, with just over 5,000 people attending our portable church, we were on the verge of experiencing the church building light at the end of our long portable church tunnel.
Our last pre-building church service was at Christmas of 2015. After the services, the staff and core volunteers stayed around to load a few trucks full of equipment bound for our new facility.
We took six weeks off to get the building ready. Installing audio, video, and lighting takes time. But on February 14, 2016, we opened our permanent church doors for the first time, welcoming some 10,000+ people that first weekend.
I remember nearly everything about that Sunday. I remember how the hallways looked. I remember the seats. I remember the stage set and lighting design. I remember the sermon series I did. I remember the fake key we gave away to all attendees (a “Welcome Home” prop). And I remember the opening song. It was so memorable.
It would be hard to argue against our success. And my success. In just over seven years, we watched a church of a few hundred people and $400 in the bank grow to become the largest church in our county (and one of the largest in the country). Sure, there were a few setbacks and stumbles along the way, but we made it. I made it.
And then I broke.
We opened our building in February, and by May, I was a shell of my former self. Mostly, I was experiencing burnout. But my burnout wasn’t your typical overwork variety. That certainly played a part. You can’t grow a church from 300 to 10,000 in seven years without working incredibly hard. Working hard was a contributing factor, but not the primary problem.
My issue was more emotional. But I didn’t realize that at the time.
By May, I was in trouble and needed help. I was eating my way to temporary relief and pondering a future outside of ministry. I found myself utterly incapable of enjoying life or ministry. In that pain, I decided to take a month off. A sabbatical, if you will. That wasn’t normative in our church, but it was either take a month away or permanently go away.
I spent that month sitting in silence, reading, and working with a leadership coach. But, the most significant time during my month away was spent in California at Henry Cloud and John Townsend’s “Ultimate Leadership Workshop.” That name is not an accurate descriptor of the experience. The “workshop,” as they call it, is five days of therapy. As a large group of about 40 leaders, we began each day in group sessions learning from Cloud or Townsend. We’d gather with our small group following these sessions for three hours of collective therapy. After group therapy, we had lunch, then off to another large group session followed by small group therapy. This pattern repeated for five days. Five days of “How did the session make you feel?” and “Who would like to share something?”.
They call it an “Ultimate Leadership Workshop” because “Five Days of Therapy Hell” isn’t as marketable.
I tell you this without exaggeration: Those five days saved my leadership life.
Leadership is Emotionally Exhausting
Leadership requires everything from a person. Leadership demands high IQ and EQ. Leadership often demands more hours on the job. And, as the leader, you’re never entirely off. Ultimately, the leader is responsible, so when problems arise, guess who answers the call?
Physical and mental exhaustion is problematic, but emotional exhaustion might be the most significant and detrimental.
Healthy leaders must be emotionally well. Most leaders are not.
Spotting the Emotionally Healthy Leader
An emotionally healthy leader isn’t hard to spot. They are the ones leading with a limp.
They aren’t pretending to have it all together. They aren’t bluffing answers to questions they don’t know. And they aren’t concealing their uncertainties. Emotionally healthy leaders are comfortable with the possibility of failure and brokenness because they have failed and experienced being broken.
They lead with a visible limp.
All leaders experience some element of failure and brokenness. Emotionally healthy leaders aren’t attempting to hide it.
Getting Healthy
If you lead anything, the people following you need the healthiest version of you. Leadership is too taxing to be done well when emotionally sick.
I’d suggest you spend a week at an upcoming “Ultimate Leadership Workshop/Five Days of Therapy Hell.”
Until then, start doing these seven things immediately:
1. Find a Counselor
Every leader needs three people in their life: A counselor, and consultant, and a coach. Consultants and coaches help us see the realities of today and dream about tomorrow. Counselors help us move past our past.
If your past affects your present, it’s not really your past.
And I can say with relative certainty that if you’ve not unpacked your past with someone trained to empty the baggage, your past isn’t really in your past.
2. Grieve ALL Your Losses
We naturally think of grief when a loved one passes away. Death is a loss, and all losses need to be grieved to rest in peace. By all losses, though, I mean ALL losses.
Every loss you experience is a death, and every death is buried. Grieved losses can rest in peace. Ungrieved losses are still buried, but they are buried alive, allowing them to haunt our present and future. We can’t move on. We can’t move past.
That means you’ve got some work to do. You probably need to grab a shovel and dig up some losses from your past. All losses need to be grieved – like the loss of a relationship, job, house, opportunity, or dream. If you lost it, something died, and that death led to a burial.
If you don’t grieve a loss now, it will create grief for you later.
3. Stop Pretending to be Secure
I wrote a lot about this previously, so I won’t repeat it. For this post, just remember that you can’t pretend away your insecurity.
4. Boast Only About Your Brokenness
Pride comes before every fall. I’ve found it challenging to be prideful when talking openly about my brokenness. When we acknowledge our failures to ourselves and others, we open ourselves to humility.
5. Try New Things
Why? Because you’re bound to fail eventually, and that failure will teach a lesson worth a thousand successes.
In my first seven years leading Woodstock City Church, I experienced some failures. But, because I was against failure, I neglected to learn from them. I also kept my team from learning from them.
After my month away, I decided to
-
- Try new things, even if failure was possible. And
- Be open about failure so everyone can learn from my experience.
Failure is still tough for me. I am competitive and enjoy winning. While failure is not synonymous with losing, it can feel that way. Separating failure from failing has opened me emotionally to try more new things, knowing that I’m not a failure when I fail.
6. Cultivate Quality Friendships Outside of Work
Life isn’t meant to be lived alone. You are created relationally for relationships. I’ve yet to meet a healthy leader who is also relationally lonely. Make friendships a priority, and then prioritize them on your calendar.
I did not have deep friendships outside of my wife for a long time. And if I’m honest, because of my emotional hangups, I built a wall between my wife and my brokenness. Coming back from my California week, I determined to end that loneliness by being completely open with my wife and engaging relationally with other men. Both have proven a lifesaver.
If you need to cultivate friendships, I encourage you to open your contact list and select ten candidates. Call each of them and set a breakfast, lunch, or coffee date. Don’t tell them you’re evaluating them, but evaluate them over a meal. Odds are you’ll find a few from your list who can and will become great friends if you invest the time.
7 Discover (or Rediscover) a Hobby
At my lowest point, I realized I had nothing outside my work life to bring me joy or peace. And my work life was destroying my peace.
Without relief, temptations were plenty. In search of relief, I chose fatty foods, but I could just have easily found alcohol or drugs or other women. I never understood addiction and these types of bad decisions until I was at a place desperately seeking momentary relief regardless of the pending consequences.
Hobbies aren’t the answer, but they are part of the solution.
What brings you joy? If you can’t answer that question, consider what previously brought you joy. What did you love as a child? In the past few years, I’ve rediscovered my love of art, healthy competition (I now work out a lot), and creating (I had a blast building the Lego Harry Potter castle).
Healthy hobbies keep us more healthy.
Conclusion
Brokenness and failure are not an end. They are ends to greater meaning. When we embrace brokenness and failure, we learn to live and lead with more grace. In a way, experiencing and embracing brokenness and failure is how we become leaders worth following.
How Can I help?
Partnering with ministry and marketplace leaders from innovation through implementation is why I created Transformation Solutions. I’m dedicating my time to helping leaders like you discover potential problems, design strategic solutions, and deliver the preferable future.
Go right now to mytransformationsolutions.com and sign up for a free, 15-minute conversation to decide if working together works for you.
