1. So, what’s the thing that scares you most as a leader?

2. What’s the thing that worries you in the morning or wakes you with a start?

3. What makes you so acutely anxious that it is contagious to those around you or that it keeps you from being able to take the next courageous step in your leadership?

4. For most leaders the biggest challenge isn’t the meeting or plan that went bad in the middle of the day, but what we do with it in our minds in the middle of the night, right?

5. What makes you wonder if you have what it takes to go on?

If you are reading this in a place where you can pause for a moment, I hope you will do so. 

You have undoubtedly read articles and blogposts and tweets that lament the changes we’ve encountered during this pandemic. In many of those descriptions you’ve also read that these challenges bring with them opportunities to make positive and lasting changes. You’ve made technical advances, particularly in media and online presence. You may be trying to make significant shifts in your ministry and are being met with resistance. Why is it that good ideas and new directions can’t get traction?

Honestly, it can sound pretty sad and to start the awkward “do you want to be my friend conversation?” is so humbling. And yet we need it. Our friends are our anvil as we are forged in leadership.

The problem with most leadership programs, this and other studies have concluded, is that they are focused more on concepts than context, principles than practices, more on reading experts than reflecting on themselves, and, mostly, more on learning about leading than actually doing the work of bringing organizational change.