Your Leadership Isn’t Working – 7 Hidden Problems Behind the Problem

Your leadership currently isn’t working – and you know it. Often the problem lies beneath the surface.

I’m a pastor. That’s my primary calling.

But for years, on the side, I’ve had the privilege of consulting with, coaching, and learning from leaders in churches, businesses, nonprofits, and other organizations. Plus, I’ve led in the business world, government, and nonprofit – at some pretty high levels.

I’ve sat across the table from some really gifted leaders, with different personalities, challenges and size of organizations. Different levels of experience.

But there are some common threads – most leaders are doing better than they think they are.

Sometimes one of the most helpful things I can do is remind a leader of that.

You’re not failing because everything is hard. Leadership is hard.

You’re not necessarily leading poorly because people are frustrated. Sometimes people are frustrated precisely because you are leading – or because of the problems in their own lives that have nothing to do with you.

And you shouldn’t expect yourself to have all the answers. No leader does.

At the same time, I’ve noticed something else.

When we aren’t leading as well as we could be, there is usually a reason underneath the reason.

The presenting problem may be communication, morale, turnover, conflict, lack of growth, or an overwhelmed leader. But those are often only symptoms. If we can identify what is underneath them, we have a much better chance of becoming healthier leaders.

Here are 7 reasons your leadership isn’t working as well as it could be:

1. You are doing the best you know how.

I don’t mean that as a slam. It may simply be reality. You only know what you know.

Sometimes the problem isn’t effort. You’re working incredibly hard.

The problem is that your leadership capacity hasn’t grown with your leadership responsibility.

I discovered this early in vocational ministry. I realized I needed more understanding of organizational leadership, so I went back to school and earned another master’s degree focused on leadership.

That may not be your answer. Maybe you need to read more. Find a mentor. Attend a conference. Listen to better voices. Hire a coach. Or ask someone who is leading where you want to lead someday if you can learn from them.

One of the most dangerous places for a leader is when our responsibility has exceeded our willingness to keep learning.

The organization may have outgrown the leader you were five years ago. That doesn’t mean you’re a bad leader. It means it’s time to grow again.

2. You are intimidated by what you cannot control.

This one shows up in all kinds of ways.

You’re intimidated by the economy. The culture. Technology. A changing workforce. Artificial intelligence.  A rapidly changing church. Or maybe even someone on your team who is more gifted than you are in an area.

Leadership becomes unhealthy when our response to uncertainty is greater control.

I understand the temptation. I’m naturally wired toward control myself. But I’ve learned that healthy leadership requires me to control less and influence more.

You cannot control every outcome. And when everything has to go through you, eventually you become the bottleneck. Your team waits. Decisions slow down. Creative people stop creating. Potential leaders stop leading. And ironically, the harder you try to hold everything together, the weaker the organization becomes.

One of the most freeing phrases a leader can learn to say is – I don’t know.

You don’t have to. Your job isn’t to know everything. It is to build a team capable of finding answers together.

3. You have sacrificed people for process or progress.

I’ve watched this happen too many times. The process becomes more important than the people the process was created to serve. Or growth becomes such a goal that people slowly become pieces on an organizational chessboard.

Move this person here. Replace that person there. Push harder. Produce more. Get the numbers. Hit the goal.

And somewhere along the way we forget something basic – Leadership is about people.

Certainly systems matter. Structure matters. Accountability matters. Results matter.

But people aren’t interruptions to leadership. They are the reason for leadership.

Ask yourself –

• Are the people around me becoming stronger because I lead them?
• Is their confidence growing?
• Are they growing in responsibility?
• Can people develop their own ideas?
• Do they feel valued as people or primarily useful because of what they produce?

Leadership isn’t measured only by what you accomplish. Some of the best evidence of your leadership is what happens in the people around you.

4. The organization changed. The culture changed. You didn’t.

Good leadership principles are remarkably consistent.

Integrity still matters. Vision matters. Communication matters. Treating people well matters. Developing leaders matters.

Those things aren’t going away.

But the way we practice leadership has to continually adapt.

• What worked ten years ago may not work the same way today.
• Five employees creates a different culture than when you have fifty.
• What worked when the church was 300 people may not work when it is 3,000.
• One generation responds differently than another.

Sometimes experienced leaders get in trouble because experience becomes an excuse not to change.

I’ve always done it this way.

And that may be exactly the problem. Your experience should make you wiser. It should never make you unteachable.

Some leadership principles are timeless. Leadership practices rarely are.

5. You refuse to ask for help.

I probably should have put this one first but I see it constantly.

Leaders feel an unreasonable pressure to appear certain.

Strong. Confident. In control. We think asking for help will make people question our leadership.

Usually the opposite is true. There isn’t a leader alive who has all the answers. Not one.

And the higher you lead, the more important it becomes to have people who can tell you what you don’t know, show you what you can’t see, and challenge what you already believe.

I’ve tried throughout my leadership to surround myself with people who are better than I am in areas where I’m weak.

That isn’t a threat to leadership. That is leadership.

If you always have to be the smartest person in the room, you’ll eventually build a room that is too small.

Ask for help. Come up with better questions. And then be quiet long enough to hear the answers.

6. You are carrying pressures other people cannot see.

This is one of the more difficult realities of leadership.

People judge the decisions they can see. They don’t always know the information behind them.

Everyone doesn’t sit in every meeting. They don’t hear every conversation.

Consequently, they may be asking –

• Why won’t the leader move faster?
• What are we waiting for to make the decision?
• Why are they being so cautious?

And sometimes you can’t tell them everything you know. There are personnel issues you can’t discuss. Financial realities you shouldn’t broadcast. Private conversations you have to protect. Concerns you are still processing.

Sometimes what appears to be indecision is actually restraint.

And restraint can be good leadership. I try to let teams I lead know as much as I reasonably can about pressures they may not see.

The unknown invites people to create their own explanations, and their explanations are seldom better than reality.

But there are some things a leader simply has to carry.

Which is why every leader needs safe people outside the organization.

Someone with whom you don’t have to be the leader, who doesn’t need anything from you, and can help you process the weight you are carrying.

(BTW, that’s why I’ve always had a personal advisory board – not trustees – not elders – not a governing body. Individuals I trust, with more experience than me – who can be a PERSONAL advisory voice in my life. )

Leadership can be lonely. It doesn’t have to be isolated.

7. Something personal is affecting you professionally.

You can’t completely compartmentalize your life. I’ve watched leaders try. It doesn’t work.

• Your marriage impacts your leadership.
• Physical health impacts your leadership.
• Emotional health impacts your leadership.
• Your spiritual condition impacts your leadership.
• Financial stress follows you into the office.
• Grief follows you into meetings.
• Exhaustion changes the way you respond to people.
• Problems at home can shorten your patience at work.

We lead out of who we are.

Sometimes the best leadership decision you can make has nothing directly to do with the organization.

Go to counseling. Take the vacation. See the doctor. Repair the relationship. Get some sleep. Spend some time with God without preparing a sermon, a lesson, or a leadership talk.

Deal with what is happening inside you before it begins doing damage around you. That isn’t weakness. It’s stewardship.

One final thought.

If you aren’t leading as well as you want to lead right now, don’t immediately assume you need to work harder.

You might already be working too hard. Look underneath the problem.

• Maybe you need to learn.
• Perhaps you need to release control.
• Maybe you need to invest more in people.
• Perhaps you need to change.
• Maybe you need to ask for help.
• And just maybe you need someone safe with whom you can process what you’re carrying.

You may need to address something in your own life before asking everyone else around you to improve theirs.

Leadership improvement doesn’t always begin with a new strategy. Sometimes it begins with enough humility and self-awareness to ask – What if part of the problem is me?

That can be a difficult question. But in my experience, the healthiest leaders are willing to ask it.

And they are usually the leaders who keep getting better.