Leadership
- Mark Terrell
- May 11, 2020
- 3 min read
I have been thinking about leadership lately. Mostly, I am reflecting on my time as the Executive Director/leader of a non-profit. Before I talk about my reflections here are 2 definitions of a leader.
The typical or normal definition of a leader is:
The person who leads or commands a group, organization, or country
The definition of a leader I used when I worked for a non-profit is:
A leader is a non-anxious influencing presence in any given situation.
However, I do not want to go into detail about the definitions. The only thing I will say is that I liked the second one, “…non-anxious influencing presence…”, because it eliminates positional leadership. In other words, it flattens the hierarchy of leadership. Everyone has the responsibility to step up and take charge at different times. I could go on and on and share some stories to illustrate but I won’t. What I have really been reflecting on is the “state of being” of the leader.
I have been noticing different leadership styles. Everything from the super hands off to the super micro-managers. I know there is a lot in between too and it does not matter, to me, where you fall on that spectrum. What I have been thinking about is, why do people lead the way that they do? What is their state of being? I am wondering if people lead out of their own “survival” or out of an “identity of belonging?” Let me try and explain.
When I was the Executive Director it seemed that I lead out of survival. I remember that I had a nagging feeling in the back of my mind that one day I would get “caught.” In other words, I kept waiting for people to figure out that I really didn’t know what I was doing and was faking it all along. Which left me in a state of fear. All of which made me behave in ways that kept all that hidden. In other words, I would lie, manipulate, act smarter than I really was, not make decisions fast or be wishy washy about decisions, fearful of confrontation, enmeshed with staff and youth, have poor boundaries, and so much more unhealthy and disrespectful behaviors. All this would build over time and I would spin myself into being anxious and paranoid. In other words, I would cycle between feeling confident and being paranoid. This went on for years, the yoyo of emotions between misplaced self-assurance and unreasonably distrustful of everyone.
I cannot help but wonder how life would have been if I was a leader who understood that my identity was bound up in the fact that I “belonged” and was loved no matter what. Over the past several years I have been doing a lot of work centered around my “identity” or sense of self. In 2007 I remember waking up one day realizing that I was furiously loved by God. However, over the past few years I have been learning to rest or get rooted more in that fact and it has changed my life. I sense that I am less fearful of confrontation, I do not feel the need to lie or manipulate people, I have better boundaries, and I am able to let others be themselves or in the state of being that they are currently in at the time. Overall, I am not anxious, paranoid, or live in fear of being caught as a fraud. Which makes me think that I would lead totally differently today than I did in the past.
How do you lead, out of survival or your identity of belonging?
Definition I used: I was given it by my friend Tom Collins when he was the Executive Director of Camp Bighorn.
I do not know where the graphic came from. I believe I copied it off of a post on Linked-in.
Comments