I am in a meeting with a leadership coach, Kevin Ford, and he's just said something painful: “Leadership is disappointing people at a rate they can tolerate.”
How fun does that sound?
But it's true. Leadership always means leading change. But what Ford was getting at is that people can only tolerate a certain level of change before they start to freak out. So, figuring out how much they can handle and neither pushing them too much or too little.
In other words, it is no fun. People will always be unhappy. Or, as Ford said, disappointed. They will always be uncomfortable, because leaders will always be stirring things up, just when they're starting to get comfortable again. I guess the only comfort in this is knowing that this is what leadership is all about. If people are saying they're disappointed, it means that we're doing our jobs well. So, that's nice to know ....
But it's really helpful for me, since I tend to want to be a peace-maker. I don't like to disappoint people. And if I'm going to lead people in establishing God's kingdom (and not their own), they're going to be disappointed. And that has to be OK, because it means that I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing.
The question: How do I know that people are being disappointed by the right things or the wrong things?
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