The Healthy Church Staff Podcast
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The Healthy Church Staff Podcast
Your Leadership Mindtraps - The Mental Obstacles Killing Your Impact
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You're staring at your laptop, it's 9 o'clock in the evening, again, discernments done, the budget's balanced, the crisis is managed, but you still feel like you're running in quick and every day just seems like it was harder than yesterday. And you're busier than ever before, but somehow you feel like you're just being less effective. Here's what nobody's telling you. Your biggest leadership problem isn't the workload, it's the mental traps that you can't see. Does that sound familiar? We're gonna talk about it today here on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. My name's Todd Rhodes, one of the co-founders over chemistry staffing.com. And one of the most dangerous ministry obstacles that are gonna come your way in ministry are the ones that happen in your own head. Maybe I'm just speaking out of personal experience here, but maybe this isn't your problem. But I tend to be, and I think a lot of pastors do as well, I tend to be maybe a tad bit of a perfectionist. You believe everything, man, this is me to a T. I believe everything has to be flawless because you can move forward. Sometimes my standards are so high that it just is not good. I redo work that I know was perfectly fine. Seth Godin says, at some point for the perfectionist, you just have to ship it. He's talking about stop redoing your work that's absolutely good enough. It's great, actually. You just need to ship it. I can delay conversations waiting for perfect information that I know is never gonna come, but I still am looking for it before I can make those decisions because I want everything just to be perfect. Meanwhile, good enough would have moved the mission forward months ago. But perfectionism isn't not the only mind trap that we get into. You can also be a perfectionist and the double dose, you could be a people pleaser, and you might be in what I call people-pleasing prison. You say yes to everything because you can't disappoint anyone, right? Your calendar is so full of other people's priorities, and you avoid hard conversations because somebody might get upset. You're a people pleaser, you're managing everybody else's emotions instead of leading, and the result is nobody respects your leadership, they don't respect your time because you don't either. So then there's the control trap. Maybe you're a perfectionist, maybe you're a people pleaser, maybe you just have this compulsion for control. You delegate tasks, but not authority. You ask for input and then you do it your own way anyway. You micromanage because it's faster if I just do it. Does that sound familiar? It does with me anyway. I'm preaching to the choir today. Your team feels like they're working for you and not with you, and you're just you're drowning in all of those details that somebody else should own. But it feels like a trap. And here's what happens when you stay in that trap: you work harder and you accomplish less. That's exactly what I told you at the beginning of the podcast today. If you're looking at your laptop at nine o'clock and you feel like, man, I'm just getting nowhere. I'm working harder than ever before, and I'm just accomplishing less. Or my team stops has stopped bringing me ideas, and there's just no innovation. It's just died because I'm the bottleneck. Everything has to come through me. I'm the bottleneck, and I swore I never would be, but here we are. And worst of all, you start believing that this is just how leadership feels. Now, listen, these patterns developed for good reasons, right? You care about excellence, you care about people, you care about outcomes, but caring and controlling are not the same thing. So we need to break these mind traps. We need to break them. And if you're the perfectionist, you can recover. And I've tried to do this more and more. Ask what's the cost of waiting for perfect? Because perfect will never come. I know perfect's never gonna come. But man, I still want to wait for it. Set a decision deadline, stick to it, ship it, celebrate 8% solutions that 80% solutions that will move things forward today rather than waiting for a 90% solution that might come two months from now. Remember, done is often better than perfect. Maybe you're that people-pleasing person. Put yourself in people-pleasing rehab. Okay, your job isn't to make everybody happy, your job is to lead them somewhere better. So practice saying out loud. You might have to start and convince yourself in your head before you can say it out loud, but practice saying, hey, that's not a priority right now. Disappoint people strategically, not accidentally. Okay, and maybe you're in that third camp. Maybe you've just got control issues and you've become the bottleneck. You need to go to control detox, alright? Give somebody a project, and then walk away. Just walk away for a week. Let them fail small so that they can succeed big in the future. Ask, what would happen if I weren't here? And if everything falls apart, that's what you think would happen if you're not here, if you think everything is just gonna fall apart, you haven't built a team. So here's the bottom line for today's one thing I hope that you'll take away from this. Your mind traps are not character flaws. They're leadership habits that used to serve you really well, but have now come to bite you in the butt, right? And they're sabotaging your leadership. So this week, just pick one decision, according to which camp you're in. Maybe you're in one camp, maybe you're not, maybe I just missed it totally with you today. You're none of those things. Maybe you're all three of them. Pick one decision that you've been perfecting to death and make that decision by Friday. Don't gather more data, don't get more options, just decide and move forward. Your team needs your leadership more than they need your perfection. Okay, the goal isn't perfect leadership, it's effective leadership. And sometimes that means getting out of your own head and just getting into action steps. And hopefully this helped you today. If it did, I hope you'll share it with another maybe team member, maybe somebody that a colleague from another church that you think might be dealing with being stuck in their own mental prison. It happens to just about everybody in mission and in ministry. All right, that's it for today. Hey, before I let you go, quick question. Have you ever hit that point in ministry where you just feel too seasoned to make a big change, but too restless just to coach? It's that uncomfortable in-between. Yeah, that's a real thing. If you're experiencing that or you have in the past, that's a real thing. And we're gonna talk about that tomorrow. I hope you'll join me right here in the Healthy Church Standby. All right, that's it for today. Have a great thing.
