Leadership fatigue: what is it?
Teach effectively. Mentor your staff. Resolve disagreements. Get more people to show up. Create community with the ones who already do.
If you feel like you missed the class for, well, everything, you’re not alone. The truth is, no one is prepared to lead well in all aspects of church leadership. But being asked to do all things at once, and falling short, makes us feel inadequate. And when you feel the combined pressure of underpreparedness and inadequacy, you hope to lean on something, somewhere, for guidance.
Often, it’s not there. So on top of feeling underprepared and inadequate, we begin to feel weary from being unable to offload what’s weighing us down.
And that is leadership fatigue.
But leadership isn’t the problem!
It sounds counterintuitive to prescribe leadership as a medicine for leadership fatigue. That’s like fighting a headache with loud music, or a runny nose with a cold plunge, right? Not exactly. Leadership isn’t the root of leadership fatigue. The gap between your current leadership and your best leadership is. In fact, investing in your leadership is the surest way out of leadership fatigue! Here’s how:
“I feel underprepared.” So many pastors feel well-equipped to talk theology, interpret the Bible or stir a congregation. Where we see them get tripped up is in the other things—the ones seminary doesn’t teach. Our President & CEO remembers needing to solve an issue about clothing choices, and thinking, when would I have ever learned how to handle this? Obviously, it gets more serious, and complicated, than that. Cory remembers feeling untrained to deliver the toughest truth his church ever needed to hear. At the end of the day, it’s not “what” you aren’t prepared to do. It’s that, no matter how hard we try, and now matter how long we learn, we’ll never have the right response to every situation. But continuing to learn leadership, and how to apply leadership in different contexts, helps eliminate that empty I don’t know what to do feeling that so often leads to leadership fatigue.
“I feel inadequate.” Here’s why we know leadership isn’t to blame for feelings of inadequacy. Ask yourself—for your church, brought together on-purpose to bear a message of hope to the world, what wouldn’t you do? Of course we don’t resent the things we’re asked to do, or the ones who ask us to do it. Feelings of inadequacy come when our unpreparedness goes unaddressed. But, investing in leadership empowers ourselves with adequacy.
“It’s compounding into weariness.” Yes, feeling not-ready and not-good-enough again and again leaves you feeling weighed down. But if leadership training can help us enter new challenges with stronger footing, won’t it naturally alleviate the compounding effects of these symptoms? Plus, and GLS attendees know this well, moments of leadership learning are a total re-fuel. Investing in leadership, and especially hosting the Summit, can be a shot in the arm for you, your team, your church and your community.
4 Steps to Overcoming Leadership Fatigue
Okay, so leadership isn’t the culprit. Rather, the feelings that creep in when leadership isn’t nurtured result in a fatigue that’s tough to pull out of. Here are four things you can do, as a pastor, to make sure leadership is front-and-center and the tiring feeling of missing the mark stays at bay. In essence, here’s some tips to keep moving forward.
Start with You.
When the leader wins, everybody wins. Some pastors feel selfish when they start to think too long about personal development. But a pastor’s ability to lead is where the pebble hits the water—it has so much ripple potential! Better pastors make better churches, and better churches make better communities.
Change the Culture.
The difference between pulling people along, and feeling like you need to slow people down, is remarkable. Ask any pastor which they’d prefer! We want to be surrounded by visionary leaders. People that get stuff done. That dynamic—the one where it feels like everyone is running in the same direction—doesn’t come out of nowhere. It happens when leadership isn’t the thing that people in charge do, but it’s a quality that’s sought after, nurtured and celebrated in everyone.
Partner Up.
Whatever you do, you don’t need to do it alone. Part of developing your personal leadership is leaning on other leaders. Lean on the ones who are with you so your challenges can be heard, affirmed, and worked through together. And lean on the ones who are ahead of you so you can take inspiration, cast your own vision and take the next practical step forward—with guidance!
Do Something.
Whatever it is, from starting conversations about hosting the Summit to starting a conversation with the pastor down the street, likely the most important step you can take to addressing leadership fatigue is deciding to take the step.
When you’re feeling inadequate, when you’re feeling untrained, when you’re feeling burnt out—sometimes, you don’t feel like a leader at all. And, because you feel like you should be handling this on your own, you feel immobilized. This only perpetuates the fatigue you feel. Whether you start with yourself, start by reaching out to someone else, or start by building culture-blocks for the ones that surround you, doing something to raise the lid of your leadership capacity will always pay out in the end.
Ready to do something? We’ll help get you started—
- Attend the Global Leadership Summit. Equip yourself with the vision, practical guidance, and courage you need to tackle the leadership challenges you’re facing. An entire community of leaders (even the ones on stage!) can resonate, sometimes exactly, with your experience. The camaraderie you feel is instant.
- Host the Global Leadership Summit. So many times, pastors attend conferences and have difficulty translating their conversations and experiences into actionable steps to grow their church. When the leadership experience is made accessible to everyone and delivered in your own context, you’ll share the same footing as you address what’s next, together. Not to mention, when you get in the room with other pastors, other community leaders and even unexpected leaders within your own organization, what you’ll find is not only the “they get me!” experience, but also the opportunity to partner up to spark change right where you are.
- Get in touch with a leader you feel is one stage beyond where you are. Or meet with a like-minded group of leaders facing similar challenges. Or both!
- Never stop learning. Pick one leadership book a month, or video! Give yourself the time and space to take inspiration from your leadership heroes. We recently launched two digital training solutions, Leader365 and Team365. Leader365 gives you access to multiple years of Summit for your personal journey, and Team365 helps you move forward together with Summit talks, monthly training modules and access for up to 25 team members.
Leadership is a key that unlocks new growth, both personally, organizationally, and across the globe. Everyone can use it, and no one’s ever done with it. In fact, leadership happens even louder when leaders recognize they can be better. So do not be afraid to feel un-ready! Recognize it, and bring it with you, to the Global Leadership Summit. Guaranteed, you’ll find hundreds just like you.
To learn more about hosting the Global Leadership Summit, get in touch!