When it comes to leaders, why is it many of them seem to believe they must feel more powerful than their subordinates? To make sure that they continue to be “over” you? Many leaders I have experienced are just downright mean, especially once they think you are not obeying their vague orders and are causing problems for them.
Their ego felt threatened.
This is what I was told when you question authority that doesn’t have emotional intelligence. What I’ve noticed that this happens in every leadership level. The inability to take some degree of responsibility of a situation. And it’s a plague on leadership, much less just good general relational practices.
Our relationship and our desires are gone awry. Even in our well meaning platitudes to go to church and do whatever it takes to make sure we are praised for our good behavior. In turn, we praise the pastor so they will also feel good about themselves. And then, repeat the cycle.
But underneath the surface, egos rage. Egos demand. Egos push, all in the name of forward movement. I’ve recently been wanting to push back on forward movement altogether. It’s been a problem for me. I started asking for God to move and then he did, but it resulted in a manic episode and me receiving a bipolar 1 diagnosis.
Anyone can be a leader in their domain. But how do you lead from a position of “hiding your flaws”? Don’t let your flaws be seen? Is that so that your fear won’t be seen?
The challenge is the ability to emotional be aware and to not process your emotions in the wrong spaces. You need to be direct, but not mean. This is an art, but what I’ve learned is the path to this art is through emotional maturity.
Anger or rage is not the solution. We must do better. If you hear the following and feel emotional around it, either because you’ve been on the receiving in from a leader or because you are a leader, consider your heart:
- Are you ultimately focused on your own gain and therefore taking advantage of others or are you being fair?
- Are you learning to appreciate differences while focusing on clear and attainable outcomes?
- Are you seeking outcomes that you haven’t released to God for his ultimate authority?
I want to blame the culture to some degree for putting success at almost any cost as a cultural status symbol. It’s positioned as a fight, a hustle to gain status and approval of your peers. Maybe it can be both a hustle and you can be a “good” person with significant status. But I haven’t experienced much of both.
So why is it that leaders who are aware of their clients needs and can essentially hide their emotional immaturity from them, but cannot attune to their own internal emotional needs?
I think we should look at Nehemiah as a good example of what good emotional leadership looks like.
A visionary leader with emotional maturity – Nehemiah
Nehemiah was Israel’s visionary leader in the face of external and internal opposition. Yet he maintained his call to follow God in rebuilding a wall to keep the people safe and the temple safe. The temple being rebuilt was his ultimate priority, the place where God’s presence would dwell.
Nehemiah is a small book in the OT but we can learn a lot about leadership from it, particularly Nehemiah’s approach.
Nehemiah’s story was the last chronological book in the OT, which essentially completed the OT story and started the intertestamental period where Jesus would claim the throne and bring the story to its ultimate conclusion, which is the realization of the kingdom of God here and now, through the life and death of Jesus.
Nehemiah was to build the wall after Israel had tried and tried to accomplish this.
Characteristics we can see of Nehemiah. He had:
- a desire for Israel’s welfare
- trust and reliance on God
- coworking leadership (shared leadership and responsibility)
- hatred of inequality (care for others best interest)
- love for God’s family
His mission was to build a wall.
His vision was ultimately to fear God, not man. It could also be said his vision was a full and thriving Israelite nation. It just so happened that the by-product of a heart focused on fearing God was to lead the Israelites in this endeavor. This is how vision and mission work.
So, if you are a leader, consider how you are delegating and if you are able to work through and appreciate, to value different perspectives and opinions while also giving others the authority and space to do the work.
Does your ego feel threatened? Remember that every disagreement or argument is two sided. No one is ever completely innocent. Even someone who is the victim can choose to hear another person out without rage or anger.
I would encourage anyone struggling with leading to revisit the vision. Not the what of vision, i.e. what are you trying to do, not the why, but the who. Who are you aligning your deepest hearts desires and motivations with? What is the relationship that is guiding your vision?
And then if you aren’t exactly sure, maybe begin your journey of emotional coaching. You can’t be a great leader in mind alone. You must be a great leader in spirit (emotions and spiritual realm), mind (knowledge), and body (physical). Note that spirit is the first priority as we are spiritual beings first. To the dust we will return. Make the most of it. If God has called you to lead, in any domain, you have an opportunity to glorify God by stripping your ego out of the equation and learning to embrace your humanity and those around you.