Chances are you lead something.
Your family. A team at work. A team of volunteers. A rec. volleyball team. A hobby group. A house church. Something.
Chances are at some point you will not lead as well as you should. I suggest to you that it might be in your least finest moments as a leader that you will discover you are actually not that bad a leader. This might be ironic, I don't know, ever since the Alanis song of the same name I have been cautious in labeling things so.
The reason this moment of failure may reveal a triumph is that it may reveal that you have done a good job performing one of the central tasks of leadership.
It may reveal you have actually built a team.
Here is how you know.
If, in the aftermath of your failure (and I am not talking supreme moral failure here, just general crummy leadership stuff, failure to confront, poor communication, neglect leading to lack of morale, that sort of stuff), the team around you picks up the pieces for you, you can feel like you have done a decent job simply because you have chosen and empowered the kind of people who don't stand around saying "ha ha look at how this poor schmo blasted this thing to smithereens" but instead they think for awhile, decide that had you had your wits about you and been in one of your finer moments would never have dropped the ball like you did and so all on their own they figure out what you would have liked to have done if you had been able to do it and then the DO IT THEMSELVES and don't hold you hostage over it.
Because I can't imagine that is clear, here are a couple examples from today.
PAC's ONE CAMPAIGN.
Even though I know better and like to think I would have caught this mistake, the truth is I did not include representatives from kids ministry and youth ministry in the dreaming of this idea (might have been able to excuse that one), nor in the strategic implementation of it throughout the year (that one I don't have any excuse for).
Didn't even really think of it.
Kind of humbling to just throw it out there like that but it is what it is and didn't occur to me to think alignment from cradle to grave - but I wish I had.
Anyway, I get an email today from the kids ministry leader formerly known as PROTO-Shea (and I imagine Lydia and Shea's teams in kids church were all part of this) detailing how kids church is going to change what they are doing for the rest of 2010 to make sure all PAC's kids get in on the ONE CAMPAIGN.
Then Peter sits down for a cup of coffee with me and fills me in on how the youth are reading through Luke and how he is intentionally tracking with the ONE CAMPAIGN, choosing to bail on his previous plans for the sake of unity.
I felt like I had dropped the ball. And truly I had. Two major ministries of PAC left with little direction vis a vis alignment.
But when you surround yourself with people who pick up dropped balls and run with them you can't feel bad for long.
Your one solid move of hiring the right people can end up covering up some not so impressive moves later on.
Also true, seeing them have to "catch up" from my lack of communication and the gracious way they did it will help me learn from my mistakes. Unfortunately, I learn more from mistakes I make that I don't want to repeat than from almost anything else.
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