The Good Leader

Learning to hope during the storm.

Scott Schimmel | posted 12/04/2009

The terms urgent and crisis have become more meaningful to me in the past nine months than at any other point in my leadership. Before, staffing problems would arise and would require my immediate attention, but the global financial meltdown added a monstrous layer of complexity to my normal managerial stress that I have never before experienced.

I supervised a team of nine young, entrepreneurial ministry staff who were required to raise their full support to work for our organization. Eight of them faced potentially insurmountable hurdles to raising their budget by the fiscal year end, causing me to have to consider salary cuts and termination on a mass scale for the first time.

In hindsight, it's easy to see what happened. My deep insecurities and fear of failure were triggered, catapulting me into disequilibrium. Soon I had drafted my resume, and I mentally began packing my bags before the ship sank. I blamed my supervisors. I blamed my team. I blamed Wall Street, our donors—anyone I could—all so I could gain a sense of control. Just a few years before, when I had eagerly signed up for the chance to lead our team, it was to see our ministry dreams come true, not to play bad cop and micromanage fundraising efforts.

As any good leader does, though, I knew that all eyes were on me. I went through my mental checklist of what good leaders do:

• A good leader leads with vision and marks a path for how to get to the team's destination.

• A good leader grabs the wheel and navigates the ship through the storm.

• A good leader gets people working harder and smarter.

• A good leader points to the God who knows the future, and leads his team to hold tightly to the presence of God and to invite his power into the current situation.

What did I do? I shut down and disengaged. I became hopeless, which expressed itself in cynicism. I micromanaged and forced my people to report to me more. If I couldn't control our donors, at least I could control our efforts.

One of my direct reports gave me this feedback: "Scott, you've always tried to make sure we are realistic about where we are as a team. However, it was hard seeing you these past few months as you struggled. There were points where I could tell the stress and crisis were affecting you. My one critique is to balance a strong dose of reality with a strong dose of prophetic hope, not blind optimism." Not only did I feel hopeless and anxious, others felt it as well.

That leads me to a question: How can I lead my teams to engage with the urgency of the storms, yet maintain a practical theology of hope in God's sovereignty? How can we maintain a crystal-clear focus on our desired future?

What a delicate balance, but what a sweet spot from which to lead. From now on, I hope to be able to go inward and upward to discern the places I'm being triggered and tripped up, and to seek the Lord for his perspective. I can do so much more with an honest yet peaceful examination of my leadership problems, risks, and potential solutions. "The earth is the Lord's, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it" (Ps. 24:1).

Leaders can create space for their teams to honestly interact with God, bringing their cares and anxieties to him. Leaders can guide their teams to what is true: that the future is always bright as we abide in him, no matter the struggle. We can call our teams to diligence and engagement and wrestle with our challenges until God brings us to safety.

As Christian leaders, we know that no challenge need be met by our own strength or wisdom. We can lean upon his Spirit, the one who guides and speaks (John 16:13). We can point to him as we also point to the problems, and engage the murky future with certainty and hope.

Scott Schimmel is the business ministry specialist for InterVarsity in San Diego, and previously served as an area director leading entrepreneurial ministry teams. He has a degree in accounting from the University of San Diego, and lives with his wife, son, and daughter in Rancho Bernardo.

Copyright © 2009 Christian Leadership Alliance. Click for reprint information.