3 Hard Things About Leadership No One Tells You
Many of us have seen people and thought, "I wish I was in their position." For me being in ministry, that has been various pastors. For you, it may be people in a completely different field.As a young leader, I've learned that the parts we see and think would be awesome (and they probably are pretty cool) come with a lot of hardships as well.Here's what I mean; I have come to learn that as leaders develop, gain more influence, and/or are given more opportunity, it often comes with the increase in things that aren't glamorous and frankly aren't fun. Below are three things that come with increased influence and leadership that we often forget and ones I've really had to learn as a young leader.
1) Some decisions will be really tough
Leaders by definition have to make decisions. Even if you have a system of great feedback and input from others, there are still many times when the decision ultimately rests with you. That can be hard. Especially if you have to make one that many people aren't going to like.It isn't necessarily a bad thing to desire more influence or more leadership, but that also means the number of difficult decisions to be made will increase as well, as well as the impact of those decisions. And in some situations, no decision will feel like it's a "good" one.
2) You have to have many difficult conversations
This is one of the things I just didn't think about as we started New City Church. As a leader, difficult conversations happen much more frequently than I wished they did. One way around that, of course, is to avoid unpleasant conversations, but that only leads to unhealthy organizations.The more we have going on, the more of these type of conversations may have to happen. Of the three, this one has been the hardest one for me to get "used to" where I lead.
3) You'll be misunderstood
It's simply not possible to explain to everyone why a certain decision was made the way it was. Even if it were, some people still wouldn't agree. Being a leader means you're willing to make what you believe to be the best decision, even when you know not everyone will understand why. Being a leader means we must be willing to be misunderstood.It's not fun, and it is really hard to know people may think or say things about you that aren't true because they misunderstand why you are doing what you may be doing. And while we won't always get it right, our decisions must be made to achieve the best outcome in a given situation, which isn't always in congruence with what everyone may want to have happen.