5 Things About Leadership My 25-Year-Old Self Never Would Have Believed

Oh to know then what you know now.

It never works that way, though, does it?

A few months ago, I celebrated a birthday. It was a good one. I spent much of the day being grateful, but it also made me realize how much I’ve learned over the years, both about leadership and life.

So much of what I now understand and see as true, I didn’t when I was 25. And had I known then what I know now, I could have saved myself quite a bit of frustration and heartache.

As Sherlock Holmes once said, it is easy to be wise after the event.

So, in the hopes of helping other leaders be wise beforehand, here are five truths I didn’t know then that I most definitely know now.

It is easy to be wise after the event. — Sherlock Holmes Click To Tweet

1. You Simply Won’t Reach Everyone

Although I was still in law at age 25, within a few years, I would head into seminary and then ministry…and I just assumed that our church would be able to impact everybody.

You may have had a similar thought if you’re in business. Who’s your customer? Everybody. After all, your idea is going to change the world.

Guess what? That’s not true for an organization as ubiquitous as Facebook. Even in America, only 68% of the population is on Facebook. Instagram? Just 35%. (And that number is shrinking year after year as people grow more disillusioned with social media).

So if platforms as big as Instagram only have 35% adoption, why would you think you would be any different?

As a young leader, I was miffed when people said no or walked away, and I thought if I changed my approach, they’d see the light and change their minds.

Nope. But it’s worse than that.

Not only is the exercise futile, leaders that try to be all things to all people often end up being nothing to no one and lose their effectiveness in the process.

Leaders that try to be all things to all people often end up being nothing to no one and lose their effectiveness in the process. Click To Tweet

Here’s what I now know: Some people will love what you offer. Others never will.

And that’s okay. As Seth Godin argues, counterintuitively but persuasively, you can be highly successful with a minimum viable audience.

For example…this blog isn’t for everybody. Nor is my leadership podcast.

I’ve narrowed down the target audience for my content to, even at its broadest, include motivated and teachable people with leadership potential.

That rules out a relatively big chunk of the population. Not everyone is motivated. Some motivated people aren’t teachable. And while you could argue most people have leadership potential, it’s a small number that ever decides to activate it.

But both the blog and the podcast reach millions each year.

I now see that narrow has more potential than broad. Once you see that, you can stop doing backflips trying to keep people a lot earlier.

If platforms as big as Instagram only have 35% adoption, why would you think you would be any different? Click To Tweet

2. The Negative Voices Won’t Go Away…But They Will Get Left Behind

In the same way I thought I could reach everybody, I also thought if I led better, the critics would go away.

I’ve learned that the critics never go away. They change, and you can reduce the criticism that comes your way by leading from a thoughtful, more emotionally intelligent place, but criticism is inevitable.

Want to avoid criticism? Simple. Stop leading. If you continue to lead, you’ll always have critics.

Want to avoid criticism? Simple. Stop leading. Click To Tweet

The critics may not go away, but I’ve realized they get left behind.

Critics don’t move. They stay in the same place. You’ll attract some new ones on the journey as you move into a new space, but the old ones will eventually give up on you and become an easier target.

What’s fascinating after a few decades of leadership is to see what critics accomplish with their own lives. I don’t want to be critical of the critics, but you will soon realize that often the answer is very little. Which makes me glad we kept moving.

Naturally, if you look back and see that most of your critics have accomplished amazing things with their lives, you may have missed something along the way.

But for the most part, critics rarely accomplish much. You move on. They don’t.

You can’t build the future on people who only know what they’re against.

You can’t build the future on people who only know what they’re against. Click To Tweet

3. Never Arriving Becomes Kind of Fun

As a young leader, I always wondered when I’d arrive…when I’d finally ‘make it.’

And, of course, you never arrive. I knew that intellectually, but there was a part of me that never believed it.

Now, never arriving isn’t a defeat…it’s kind of fun.

In my fifties, it means there’s so much more to learn, to discover, to figure out, to understand, and to explore. Which I hope will be the way I am when I’m eighty.

Never arriving means there’s so much you’ve learned that’s behind you, so much you’re experiencing around you, and so much to explore ahead of you. How is that a bad thing?

Never arriving means there's so much you've learned that's behind you, so much you're experiencing around you, and so much to explore ahead of you. Click To Tweet

4. Awesome Often Lies on the Other Side of Awful

I’ve been through a few really tough seasons in leadership.

Times when our church stopped growing for a season, where the voices of critics became so loud I felt like they were the only voices I heard.

I went through a period of intense burnout that just about took me out (I write about it here).

And there have been other really hard times in the journey.

When I was in those troughs, all I could feel was the awful. What I didn’t realize is that awesome often follows awful.

It’s not a promise in the temporal sense, but often on the other side of a really intense season of discouragement, we’d hit a breakthrough.

That’s been true in my marriage, in my leadership, and so many areas of my life.

So now, when I hit a season that feels awful, I remind myself that awesome often follows awful. Even if I can’t feel that at the moment, it helps me not quit.

If you’re in the middle of awful, quitting guarantees you won’t keep going long enough to get to awesome. At least that’s been my experience.

If you're in the middle of awful, quitting guarantees you won't keep going long enough to get to awesome. Click To Tweet

5. You’re a Mess, and You’re Loved

Guess what? You’re a mess.

So am I. I’m a strange combination of some really good tendencies and some big flaws. As I shared in this post, I’m an Enneagram 8. A healthy 8 can save the world. An unhealthy 8 might obliterate it. (I wrote more about healthy v. unhealthy leadership and the Enneagram here.)

Looking back on my younger years, I think I believe that in my worst moment, I wasn’t loved. Acting in an unlovable way and being unloved are two different things.

I’ve realized over time that I’m always loved, even when I’m a mess.

Acting in an unlovable way and being unloved are two different things.  You're a mess, and you're loved. Click To Tweet

Which helps me get out of my mess more quickly and want to avoid it more desperately. It also got me out of thinking that I had to perform to earn love.

You don’t do good things in your life and leadership to win love, you do good things because you are loved.

The more you understand that, the bigger the difference it makes.

I’m a mess, and I’m loved. So are you.

Which is exactly the reason I don’t want to stay that way.

You don't do good things in your life and leadership in order to win love, you do good things because you are loved.  Click To Tweet