The one step that leads to leadership success is simply this, the next step.
Leadership is a journey, not a destination, position or even a person. Leadership is knowledge and experience and is filled with ups and downs and, when you are down, you focus on the next step. You focus on the next step because its all you can do, it’s all you are able to do.
“So take a new grip with your tired hands and strengthen your weak knees. Mark out a straight path for your feet so that those who are weak and lame will not fall but become strong.” Hebrews 12:12-13 NLT
Sometimes leadership comes down to one step because that’s all you are able to muster. Hope, courage and the help of others can give you the fuel and support you need to take that next step.
You don’t have to finish the race today, just take a step, the next step.
Sometimes we refuse the next step because we are done, at the end of our rope, exhausted. I have been there, we have all been there. The question for me has always been, “Craig, You can’t take the next step?” Or, “Craig, you won’t take the next step?”
Refusing to take the next step is really saying I quit, I give up. What my experience(s) have taught me is refusal to take the next step means, in part, there is no hope in the future and no encouragement from those around me to keep going.
At this point some leaders will say, “Craig, it’s not about having others around you to help or encourage you, sometimes you need to strengthen yourself in the Lord!” I certainly understand how you could feel that way. I have felt that way too and, in my experience, it tends to be more wrong than right especially for leaders who default to self-sustaining (or isolating) behaviors. As leaders, we need other people.
The fact that I seem to default to the verse that I should “strengthen myself in the lord” suggests my arrogance. Our default should be toward others helping us take the next step, not trying to lone ranger it through life. If you were to ask the paralyzed man in Mark Chapter 2 about his next step he, quite possibly, would have just pointed to the roof and said, “Without those guys, I wouldn’t have been able to take any step let alone my next one.”
Sometimes taking the next step means asking someone else for help.
Is that your next step?
Photo Credit: Photo by Jake Hills on Unsplash