Tod Bolsinger - Why Is Leadership So Hard?

Show Notes

Tod Bolsinger - Why Is Leadership So Hard? by Browncroft Community Church

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Peter Englert: Welcome to the Why God Why? Podcast. My name is Peter Englert. I am here with our illustrious cohost, Aaron Mercer? How are you?

Aaron Mercer: I'm doing great. Whenever I get an introduction like that, it always makes my day.

Peter Englert: Yeah. And our remarkable producer, Nathan Yoder. So yeah, we'll just keep passing them on. I'm really looking forward to today's episode. We're interviewing Tod Bolsinger. He is a professor, a consultant, a pastor. You'll find out more about him. But the question that we landed on for this episode is: Why is leadership so hard? And Aaron, the reason why I love where we landed is I feel like my generation and younger are hesitant to lead, but they want to make change. And just life is really hard, and I think we have this idea that life should be more simple and more easy. And then we're reluctant to be leaders because of that.

Peter Englert: And this all kind of has been inspired by his book. He'll talk about it more, Tempered Resilience, which if you're watching on video, I'm holding in my hand right now. So yeah, that's why I'm excited about this episode.

Aaron Mercer: That's great. I'm really looking forward to this also. Tod, thank you so much for taking time with us. I appreciate it. And I'm excited to hear all ... I mean, obviously, the subject matter is huge. Leadership is not easy. And so yeah, I think it's going to be a great conversation. But I know you all have talked some more before, but Tod, you and I haven't really talked very much at all yet. And I'm glad I get to meet you, but I wonder if maybe you could introduce yourself a little bit more for me and for everybody else who's listening, who's in my same shoes.

Tod Bolsinger: Well, I'm glad to. I'm glad to. So yes, I'm Tod Bolsinger. I am the executive director for the Church Leadership Institute at Fuller Theological Seminary, also an associate professor of leadership formation. And I have a company called AE Sloan Leadership that does consulting and coaching with churches and nonprofits around the country. So I basically wake up every day helping faith leaders thrive as change leaders. That's really what I do. I get to, after having 27 years in the church where I was a pastor, and six and a half years in senior administration at a seminary, I get to just now focus all my time on those leaders who are in the middle of trying to lead change and how I can support them.

Aaron Mercer: You work with nonprofits and churches primarily. Is that kind of your wheelhouse?

Tod Bolsinger: Primarily. Yeah, nonprofits, churches, denominations, that kind of thing.

Peter Englert: So Tod, as we had started, your other book, Canoeing the Mountains is about navigating change, and then you're talking about Tempered Resilience in leadership. I'd just be curious. When you look back at your life, what season did you feel like you learned the most about resilience and responding to change, and just hey, life's hard? But how do I live and respond to it in a healthy way?

Tod Bolsinger: Well, there's kind of two parts to that. One is I think I've had different seasons of my life that were hard. I mean, just there were different personal parts about it. And I think you learn from those things by going through them. I have to say in the last few years, I started spending much more of my time asking myself the question. So how am I supposed to learn through this? What does it mean to actually learn? And how do you actually develop resilience? I often say that my father used to always quote Harry Truman. If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. So anything that was really difficult to do, it's difficult. Weren't you looking for work when you found the job? They call it work for a reason. Things are hard. That's the way life is.

Tod Bolsinger: I began in the last few years, especially as I was in the middle of trying to lead a change process in our seminary, of asking the question. So what it is that I need to be formed in to be able to thrive as I am going through this hard thing, not just survive, but thrive? And that really became the center of my own experience and my experience that I was having in working with leaders across the country because I was talking about leading change, and I was traveling around the country. I was doing 100,000 miles a year, talking to different folks. And what I kept finding was people would come up to me after I finished. Usually the person who invited me to come speak would be really kind and would take me to lunch. And then they would say something like, "That was helpful. Thank you very much. We'd love to get the slides. We don't think we have anybody who can do that."

Tod Bolsinger: At first, I was like, "Oh, I've got to do a better job at training. That's what I do." And they [inaudible], "No, no, no. We don't know if we have anybody who has the stomach for that." And that led me in this journey of: How do you form people to have resilience? And it matched my own experience. I think for years I just thought you're resilient because you suck it up, buttercup. You just double down, get hard, get tough. We actually found that it's not about getting tough. It's about getting tempered. It's about developing kind of a capacity to be both strong and flexible, and that you needed to actually learn specifically and be formed in the middle of it.

Tod Bolsinger: So it's a long way of answering your question, which is like many people, I've had different life setbacks. I think it's only been in the last few years that I've learned, oh, these life setbacks, especially these leadership challenges, are actually the opportunity for me to be formed in a way that's going to deepen me and help me to be able to lead better in the future.

Peter Englert: I hope I'm getting this right because when you're in interviews, what you study and go through, but I believe that you pastored in the Presbyterian Church in San Clemente. Is that correct? That was your first.

Tod Bolsinger: Yeah, 17 years. San Clemente Presbyterian.

Peter Englert: Yeah. So in knowing that, what would you have told Tod at 17 year, the first year in at leading that Church of San Clemente, what would you have wanted to say to yourself about resilience that you know now, that you wish you knew then?

Tod Bolsinger: Well, I think I would've said to Tod then what I often say to pastors today. The people who sign up for leading change, and the people who sign up to lead change in the church really often think, "Okay, to do this well, I'm going to need to be tough. I'm going to need to be strong. I'm going to need to be clear." That's true. But what I would've said to myself is what I'd say to them, which is, "You also need to be flexible and attuned, as well as strong." There's an emotional intelligence capacity. There's a wisdom and discernment. You need the capacity to both be discerning and decisive, to be both flexible and committed. And those things often don't go together in the same person naturally, so you're going to probably have to go through a formation process to get that.

Aaron Mercer: So I'm curious, kind of to follow up on Peter's question. What early on in your ... You were starting out, what was one of the first things you had to be resilient from that kind of set the trajectory for going towards where you are now? Can you give some examples from early on in your young career?

Tod Bolsinger: Well, so I have to say one of the parts about my younger, my early part of my career is that I was in a perfect environment for shaping me, I mean, I really was. I was really blessed. I say this all the time. I was 23 years old. I worked in youth ministry. I got hired on at Hollywood Presbyterian Church, which was one of the iconic churches in our country in our denomination at the time. And they sent me to seminary and they paid for it, literally. I was completely well protected and well nurtured in a really beautiful way.

Tod Bolsinger: I remember them saying to me, "You're going to run out of those youth talks you do by Christmas." And I thought, "Oh, my gosh." I ran out of them by Thanksgiving. Thank God they sent me to seminary, so I can learn how to teach the Bible. I say that because what it did was, I didn't realize it until later, but I was in a really good environment to help me grow as a leader. And what I didn't understand is that I was developing technical skills that were helpful. So when I make a mistake like a bad sermon, or I didn't treat somebody well, or I wasn't a very good pastor, I had people around me to help me.

Tod Bolsinger: The hard part was when I became a senior pastor and it was no longer about my doing it wrong, it was my taking people through the kind of changes that we needed to go through, and they even said they wanted to go through, and they were resistant to those changes and were mad at me. So the hardest changes were when I needed to actually change what was working. In Canoeing the Mountains, one of the things we talked about is after a period of 10 years of growth in the church, in a way that everybody would want, just like all those metrics going in the right direction, my leaders were saying stuff like, "We're getting burned out and we don't want to do this anymore." And I couldn't figure out. Why could the metrics be going up and the morale be going down?

Tod Bolsinger: So what I did is I would double down and try harder, and it would get worse because part of what I had to learn was I had to lead differently because I was leading people with the assumption that as the leader, they needed to follow me, and I needed to be the one who took the charge, instead of as the leader, I need to be the one who's equipping them to be able to move forward. And so I had to learn a whole new way of leading. I had to learn to lead completely differently because it was no longer working.

Peter Englert: You just paint this really beautiful picture of not just leadership, but life being hard, but being beautiful, being decisive, but being just sensitive. And you paint all of this, and I'm thinking right now, right now we're in the season. We're talking a lot about the great resignation. It's hard for people. There's people even saying no to promotions. I sense that. Maybe you sense something different, I want some pushback. But I sense this hesitance to even, I don't want to lead. I'll be a follower, but I don't want to lead. Do you think that as kind of your job as leadership, do you think that's actually helpful that not everybody wants to become a leader? Or are you kind of concerned that this hesitancy to leadership, this hesitancy to do the hard work is going to harm us? How are you processing through everything that's going on with the great resignation and all of that?

Tod Bolsinger: Well, I process it in two different ways. So one thing is remember, I think of leadership as a skillset. It's a function. It's not a title. Or there's something about being the authorized leader, the person who's got the title, the heavy furniture, the corner office. That's one thing. There's a lot of folks who are saying, "I'm not sure that's worth it right now." Okay, leadership is actually where you take responsibility to bring people together, so that we might grow and face challenges we have to face. That we have to do no matter what.

Tod Bolsinger: That's a capacity for life. Right? So when I talk about leadership, I talk about helping people grow in the capacity to bring people together so that together they can be transformed and face the challenges in front of them. And that's why the hard part of it is in the word transform. Most of us want to come together, and most of us are willing to tackle a challenge, something that we really want to change. So whether that's like I want to get a stop sign at the four way intersection in my neighborhood because so kids can play in the street better. I want it to be a safer neighborhood. Or whether or not we want to have a better recycling plan to take care of the Earth, or we want to change our congregation to be more welcoming, or whatever it would be, most people are signing up and are interested in seeing change. And they're interested in coming together.

Tod Bolsinger: It's the transformation part that is really hard. And when you say in order for us to come together and face this challenge, we're going to have to be changed, that's when people resist. And the hardest part to pay attention to is Ronald Heifetz and Marty Linsky say, who are kind of the experts in this kind of stuff, people don't resist change, they're resisting loss. And what you're really doing at that moment is you're having to say to people, "That thing you're going to have to be transformed, your experience that is probably having to give something up that you're trying to hold onto." You might not even be able to identify it. What I've got to do is help take you through the losses, so that together, having gone through those losses, having gone through the transformation, we can take on whatever challenge is in front of us.

Peter Englert: Well, it's like what Heifetz said too, that leadership is disappointing people at a rate that they can handle. Right?

Tod Bolsinger: Yeah.

Aaron Mercer: So you're working with ... You've done this through your own career, prior to being a consultant, but now you're consulting, you're working with churches, nonprofits. I mean, how do you get people to that point of number one, even being willing to want to be resilient in the midst of trials? Maybe we can go maybe beyond that also is: What would be a next step for them? But how do you even get people to be willing to kind of enter that conversation in the first place?

Tod Bolsinger: Well, one of the hardest parts for getting people to recognize is that leadership resilience particularly, but leaders in general are only formed in the middle of leading. We wish we could get it all done ahead of time. Right? We wish we could take a class, read a book, go through a seminar, go through a curriculum, have a set of skills. Now I'll be ready, and I won't have to go through that challenge. The problem is you don't learn leadership from books and classes and workshops, says the guy who writes books, teaches classes, and leads workshops. Right?

Tod Bolsinger: You actually, those give you the tools, but you don't learn it until you're in. So this is why resilience becomes really important. What you have to say to people when they're in the middle of it is, "This actually is a place where you're going to be shaped." I mean, the hardest part about leadership is you become a leader right after you were good at something that was not leading. Right? So you're a really good speaker. You're a good preacher. They make you the pastor. But preaching is not the problem. Very few people ever have trouble with I've got to put time together to develop a sermon. We love that part.

Tod Bolsinger: It's the people that's the problem. So because we're good at preaching, we make people pastors, as if those two things go together really naturally, and they don't. That's one of the things I was learning. I was a pretty good preacher, a pretty good Bible teacher. I could get a crowd and hold a crowd, and things would be great. The hard part was when we needed to change to be able to reach people we weren't reaching, to become a kind of community that was open to people we hadn't been open to. Well, now that's a problem. So the hard part is to get people to recognize once you're in the place of leadership, and almost everybody who ends up in leadership didn't think they were signing up for this. It's a little bit like marriage. Right? You think when you're getting married, you know what you're doing. And then you get into it and you realize, oh, we had no idea what we were saying when we took those vows.

Tod Bolsinger: So when you step into leadership, then you realize, oh, this is actually what the challenge is. The challenge is right here. It's in this resistance. It's in what the transformation's going to be needed in me. It's going to require me to go through a kind of change and take people through. That's really the challenge.

Peter Englert: So let's say this, you have a 24 year old. They're at their first job. They position wise, they're at the bottom of the org chart. But they say, "You know what, I don't really look at myself as a leader, but I know I need resilience," not resistance. What are you saying to that 24 year old? What do you wish pastors would say to that 24 year old about having a vision of leadership in their life? And again, you kind of said, "I don't care what title you have." But you're just saying to them, "Hey, this is what success looks like whether you work for a Christian, or a non Christian organization." What would you want to say to them?

Tod Bolsinger: Well, the first thing I would say is, "Tell me what you notice and what you'd like to be different. Tell me where you notice. What do you notice in your company, in your community, in your family? And what would you like to be different? Where's the gap?" That gap, that's the leadership place. Leaders fill into that gap. And so as soon as you have a hunger for something more, you then have a question to ask, which is: So what am I supposed to do about it? And I can't do everything about it. The goal, you can't believe that you're going to change everything. Some of these gaps are enormous. But what's my contribution? How do I be responsible in the middle of that gap? And how do I take on and live into that?

Tod Bolsinger: And when you start living into the way in which I want to close that gap between the values this company says it has and what we actually do, or the friendliness our church says we have and the way we actually show up. Whenever I step into that gap, and I invite others to go with me, I'm a leader. That's the active leadership. It's literally, I think it's seeing a pain point in the world and saying, "I'd like to contribute, add my light to the sum of light. And I'd like to invite others to bring their light too." And whatever we have to learn as we go through, whatever we have to develop and go to do to be able to close that gap, that's the capacity for leadership.

Peter Englert: What's one change you made as a Hollywood youth pastor at Hollywood [inaudible] that you would say, "I wish I would've done that better with the gap"?

Tod Bolsinger: Well, the single biggest thing I did, so when I was a younger leader at Hollywood Presbyterian, I was the college director, and I started in the young adult group, and we started an urban ministry. It was really great. My problem was that I didn't ... What took me until I was in my mid 30s to figure out is that I tended to fill that gap by over functioning. I made it about me. It's like I said, "Hey, let's go start a team, and I'm going to be the star player and the coach. And if you just all stay with me, we're going to be okay." And for a little while, I was just good enough to pull it off, until finally, I couldn't at all. Right?

Tod Bolsinger: So what I would've gone back and say, which is what I say to younger leaders all the time is, "Your capacity as a leader is not just in your functioning as a preacher, teacher, expert, program person, counselor, in the business words, sales person." Leadership is when you make other people better, when you invite other people, and when you're developing other people. I was deeply committed to having leadership teams. It just took me about 15 years to figure out that, as I said one time, it took me 15 years to figure out that wherever I went, I was creating Tod Bolsinger ministries at someplace.

Tod Bolsinger: And the hard part about it was I had enough people in my life who told me that's what a leader does. And I actually think today, even today, we're taping this right in the middle of the Russia, Ukraine horrible experience. What we're realizing is leadership in the world today is the capacity to bring people together to stop something terrible from happening. And even our country is discovering that at the moment. And so I think what I would've told a younger Tod is, your capacity to make a team better and have other people thrive is more important than your ability to be the star player.

Aaron Mercer: Yeah. That's really ... Wow. So I'm curious, in the last ... You mentioned what's happening right now as we're taping this. But we also all know the last couple years have been an interesting couple years. I think the leadership lessons that you're referring to right now are things that could be at any time, and not easy any time, but certainly something we need to hear any time. But I'm curious. What have you found in the last couple years that special ways that people have been struggling with trying to become better leaders?

Aaron Mercer: There's a lot of needs that have been out there in the middle of the pandemic, and then the middle of political tension, racial tension. There's lots of stuff going on in our country just alone, nevermind the rest of the world. What are people who are out in the field ... You're talking about how people are learning to be leaders in the field, basically. You can't just learn it in a classroom. The people get these field commissions. What are they struggling with in the last couple years? And how are they dealing with it?

Tod Bolsinger: Well, the single biggest thing we've been struggling with, I would say at least from the outside of the pandemic, is to recognize that we are in an unprecedented time of how rapidly things change. So the speed of change and the number of challenges that we all have at one time is unprecedented. So just the place I spend most of my time is in churches. Right? So I work with church leaders and pastors. Well, I say to pastors, "Look, you've been trying to lead a congregation through a health crisis, an economic crisis, a crisis of social injustice, that's led to political crisis, that's led to church crisis." Somebody said, "We're in 1918, 1929, and 1968 all at the same time." And on top of it, we've got things like the internet speeding it up.

Tod Bolsinger: So nobody has ever been here before. You can argue that there've been worse crises in the world than we're facing today. The black plague killed many more people. The flu of 1918 killed many more people than we've had today. You can say it was worse, but I think it's unprecedented that anybody alive today could say, "Oh, I know exactly what to do." And so the hardest part for most of us is how to learn when there are no ... How to lead when there are no best practices, which means we have to lead through learning and experimenting and making mistakes and bringing people together to be able to learn in that process.

Tod Bolsinger: And I think for many leaders, that's not what they thought they were signing up for. They thought they were signing up to have a perfect playbook and to do the right things, and call people together, and we'll be successful. Instead, you're actually having to go into a place where you have no idea what to do, and it's coming at you. So in the 1990s, the leadership mantra was based around Wayne Gretzky, the famous hockey player. Skate to where the puck is going. Well, now we live in a world where there are four pucks going in four different directions all the time. Where are you going to skate? And the game has changed so dramatically that you have to lead in that context. That's the challenge I think of the last few years.

Peter Englert: I love that you brought that up because I think one of my biggest takeaways from reading The Tempered Resilience was the difference between a failure of nerve and a failure of heart. And I just thought it was so concrete and tangible. Can you talk about those two differences when it comes to leading, and how maybe for our listeners and ourselves, how do you self reflect to kind of say, "Hey, which one am I leaning towards"?

Tod Bolsinger: Yeah. Yeah, thanks. Well, the failure of nerve comes from Edwin Friedman, he was a Jewish rabbi who was also a marriage and family therapist. He used family systems theory and applied it to organizations. He consulted with churches and the government. He worked at church, family, government, he saw dysfunction at every level. And what he talked about was that what often happened is when a leader began to try to lead change, comes to the group of people, says, "Here's a gap. We've got to fill that gap. We need to lead change," inevitably what will happen is they'll get resistance from the people who don't want to change.

Tod Bolsinger: Just remember, you're asking people to go into uncharted territory. Wherever you're going, it's unfamiliar. You're asking them to go into a place they haven't been before. And remember that familiar and family are the same root word. So when people get in unfamiliar territory, they feel un-familied. Right? They don't just feel disoriented. They feel abandoned and they want to run home to mama. They want to go back to what's familiar no matter what, so they stop change all the time. It's literally like the Israelites on the other side of the Red Sea. They've already been saved by God, who opened the Red Sea, and drowned the pharaohs' chariots on the other side of the Red Sea six weeks after the greatest miracle any humans had ever seen, they said.

Tod Bolsinger: You know, slavery, they killed our children, but we did have leeks and onions, and we're hungry. And they wanted to go back. Friedman says that at that moment, every leader faces the temptation toward a failure of nerve, which is where you will collude with the anxiety of your group to stop the change, to stop the transformation. What it takes in that moment is the clarity of mission and the ability to disappoint your people, and the ability to keep going with them. And that's what it takes to overcome a failure of nerve.

Tod Bolsinger: For me though, my temptation I realized was a different one. It didn't show up in the Book of Exodus. It shows up in numbers when the Israelites grumble again. It's the second time. God gives them manna. They go through the desert, they're grumbling again. And this time they're grumbling not because they're hungry, but because they're bored of the miracle God's doing every morning. They're just tired of the manna. Now we want leeks and onions and fleshpots because we just don't like it here. And internally, I find myself identifying with Moses, who got mad. I mean, he got so angry at that moment. He said to God, "If you're going to leave me with these people, you can kill me now."

Tod Bolsinger: Well, I don't know many pastors who've come home from a Sunday morning service and prayed that prayer, but I do know a lot of them that thought, "Hey, I could do something else. I could sell real estate. I could sell life insurance. I think I could do trail maintenance in the national park, and I wouldn't have to talk to a person." And it's that moment, that's what I call the failure of heart, where you become cynical and angry, and so disappointed in your people that you find yourself cutting off from them and you're no longer able to lead them.

Tod Bolsinger: And the two temptations here, failure of nerve is where you collude, and the transformation doesn't happen because you say, "Okay, we'll go back. We'll negotiate a better deal with pharaoh," and failure of heart is where you say, "Forget these people. I'm going to go without them because they're just so terrible." And leadership requires you to overcome both of those. And so as soon as I talk about this with people, almost everybody can quickly get to, "Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm a failure of heart, or I'm a failure ... " Failure of nerve tends to be those of use who want to please people, and failure of heart tends to be those of us who tend to get cynical and angry at people. And you can tell which one I fall into.

Peter Englert: Well, even though you fall into one, do you ever find that there are times that you went through a failure of nerve?

Tod Bolsinger: Well, I found that there were times I certainly was tempted to, yeah. I want people to like me, I mean, there's no doubt about it. What was interesting is that wasn't ... See, this is part of the issue early on. I was less prone to it than other people. So when I'd cast a vision that people didn't like, I'd say, "This is the vision. We're doing this," and mostly I'd be okay. I didn't realize that it was only later when I was kind of growing in cynicism, growing in disappointment, feeling angry, disconnecting, that something else was happening for me. And so I mean, I'm an Enneagram eight if that matters at all to you.

Tod Bolsinger: What it means is I would say I don't have to kick down every door, just the ones that are closed. And my personality is to challenge. It's to be a trailblazer. It's to challenge things. So it's pretty easy for me to be the person who's like, "Look, I'm fine. You're all the problem." Well, that's not leading. That's not leading. And so I realized if I really wanted to be able to be part of what God wants to do in transforming of people to accomplish God's mission in the world, then I needed God to continue to work in me and help me overcome that failure of heart.

Peter Englert: Well, we talked to Aaron about his Enneagram number at an episode. I'll let you listen to that, but as an Enneagram two, I'm so glad you brought that up because mine's definitely a failure of nerve. I'll get to a place where I'll say, "Hey, this is the right direction for us to head," and then all of a sudden, you have four or five voices that are saying something strong, and even just through reading your books, and even through reading the Bible, it's kind of like at some point, I'm going to be okay with disappointing you. And also, what I've even found, we talk about that. So you quoted Wayne Gretzky with just go where the puck goes. I like to quote the Michael Scott one, you miss 100% of the shots that you don't take.

Peter Englert: And there is this fear of failure. It's easy in meetings to say that, but I also realized I want to fail the right way. So if I'm going to fail, and you have problem with failure of nerve, I feel like what I've said to myself is this. I'm going to fail, and at least let the people that I'm leading that I know, that when it's the right direction, hey, I'm going to take accountability for this, as opposed to when you fail, but the vision that you have ended up being so watered down that you didn't really change anything. And that's kind of why I appreciate Enneagram eight, so just thanks for mentioning that. I don't know if you have anything to respond to that, but that's kind of where I really with the failure of nerve is, hey, we all know the direction we have to go. I get it that you're backing up. But if we water this down, we're going to fail in ways that we never thought we would.

Tod Bolsinger: Well, so let me just respond to it this way, which is I think one of the big re-frames that needs to happen to both folks who struggle with the failure of nerve and the failure of heart is not to be afraid of the word failure. It's to understand that what we need to do is learn from our failures. We will fail. It's got to be safe to fail. Matter of fact, I always say to people, "If you're learning, you're actually not really failing." What's really a failure is when you fail to learn. That's why you repeat it over and over again, and that's why you start blaming other people. That's the problem. And so for many of us, the giant challenge is to lead the learning. It's so actually become more humble and more curious, more open to the fact that it's only through learning that we move forward.

Tod Bolsinger: And so even when I'm working, our consulting group, it works with ... I mean, we're working between my institute and my [inaudible], we're working 60 churches right now. And we teach them a process for experimenting with adaptive change. And what we tell them is don't ask the question in the experiment. Did it work? Get rid of that question. Instead, every single time you try a new experiment, a new thing you want to try, ask, "So what did we learn?" And then do the experiment again. What did we learn now? And do it again, and do it again. Don't set it up as: Did it work? That's a zero sum game. Set it up as, we're going to do this, we're going to learn from it, and we're going to do it again. And we're going to experiment our way forward, learning as we go.

Tod Bolsinger: And so even in our personal lives, recognize, okay, I have a tendency toward a failure of nerve. So what did I learn? I learned I need people around me. I learned that I need other brave people. I need to have Enneagram, other Enneagram numbers, that's what I learned. Good.

Aaron Mercer: That's good. Yeah. That was on a good team. I'm interested, especially there's probably a number of people listening to this podcast who might be on the earlier end of their career. I'm curious. I have kind of a two part question here. And one part, what's something you look for as someone who's a more seasoned leader, for someone who you want to put into a position where they can handle a field commission in leadership, they can do that? And nobody, as you said, everyone's going to fail in some way, but someone who can be set up for success. And on the flip side, I'd be interested in knowing: What would you say to someone who might not feel like they could be a leader, but feels like they're called to lead somewhere? They're called to ...

Aaron Mercer: You mentioned stepping into a cause and trying to stand in the gap and bring others along with them. And even if someone doesn't want to say that's leadership, it is leadership. So what would be a way you could encourage that person to actually take the step? So I guess from both lenses of what do you look for to try to help someone move into a position like that, and also, someone who may not have someone who's looking out for them. What should they be thinking about for themselves to take that step?

Tod Bolsinger: What I look for in leaders if I'm hiring, or working with, or being with senior leaders, is I want senior leaders who still remain learners. I want them to understand, we don't need you to be an expert. You've got lots of expertise. We'll use all that. That's table stakes. We're going to need all your skills. What we need you to do is develop your skills and keep getting stronger. And the way you're going to do that is by being able to be more attuned and able to manage competing values.

Tod Bolsinger: I used to serve ... The church I served for 17 years was next to the Marine base in Camp Pendleton. And one of the things we used to always say, they tell commanding officers it is the mission first and the Marines always. It's the mission first and the Marines always. What does that mean? You serve those two things. You serve our mission, whatever we've got to accomplish, and you take care of your people. Right? You've got to do both of those. If you separate those in any way, you're going to end up having one of those failures. So you have to have the capacity to hold that, which means making hard decisions and learning as you go. You're going to make mistakes. But that's the key I want to see in senior leaders, that kind of humility and that openness, and that investment in other people.

Tod Bolsinger: For the younger leader, this is interesting, I think about this. I often have younger leaders who say to me stuff like, "Where do I get a mentor? How do I grow? Where do I find ... Who should I work for? What's the boss?" And my answer to that is, "Don't worry so much about finding the perfect boss, or having the perfect mentor. Focus on being a mentee. Focus on your own learning." Notice it's the same thing as you'd say to the senior leader. Focus on your own learning. There's a study a friend of mine did. I refer to it in Tempered Resilience, where a friend of mine got a fair amount of money from a foundation to do a study on why youth mentoring programs tend to work and adult mentoring programs tend not to work, even in really high priced, expensive Fortune 500 companies where they've got money to put into training development, mentoring programs haven't worked very well.

Tod Bolsinger: And the biggest reason is in a youth mentoring program, the mentor holds the relationship. Just think about that. The Big Brother, Big Sister, Boys and Girls Club, youth ministry, the adults have to hold the relationship, reach out, initiate, take care of that. But adults, in order to grow, the mentee has to hold the relationship. So the most important thing is that you show up, taking advantage of these people who've got wisdom, or perspective, or support, by showing up honestly, authentically, vulnerably, eager to learn. You show up malleable, you show up soft. I always say the worst thing to do is pay for a coach and try to impress the coach. You're wasting your money because even if the coach is impressed, you're not getting any better with your vulnerability.

Tod Bolsinger: So in both cases, there's a humility that's needed, a humility in the senior leader to keep growing and care for the other people, put them first. And there's a humility in the younger leader to recognize the most important thing I can bring is my need to keep growing.

Peter Englert: So let me ask you this, I think this question: Why is leadership so hard? Never before ... I was talking to my brother about this. Let me start here. My brother said, "Do you think dad, when he worked, cared about emails?" Because when my dad got home, it was 5:00 and we had dinner. We watched Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy. There we go, we were done. But my brother joked, he's like, "I'm always looking for more time to get work done." And Aaron and I have joked about this too. Aaron gets an email from me at 8:00 PM at night. He's like, "Don't you have two kids?" I've gotten better. But I guess when I think about why is leadership so hard, how are you helping leaders find a better margin, find a better rhythm? You're an Enneagram eight. You're in Houston right now. You're letting us know that. You're consulting. You're working for a seminary. What does that right margin and rhythm look like so that, hey, leadership is hard, but don't make it harder than it needs to be?

Tod Bolsinger: Well, this is going to sound a little bit like a broken record. But the very first thing you do is you acknowledge that leadership is hard. I mean, there's a famous old book called The Road Less Traveled by Scott Peck, that starts with one of the first noble truths of Buddhism, which is life is difficult. And then once you realize that life is difficult, it ceases to be difficult in the same way. And it's not like saying, "Oh, get over it." It's saying when people ask the question: Why is leadership hard? There's two ways of asking that question. The first one is almost like a complaint. Why is this so hard? It shouldn't be. Second one is: Why is it hard? And the answer is it's hard because you're trying to change things. Leadership is hard because we're trying to change things. We're trying to make things better. We've seen the world as the way it's supposed to be. We dream of a world that's better, and we want to make our little piece of the world better. And that's hard work.

Tod Bolsinger: People resist that change, so yes, it's hard. Now once you know that's what you signed up for, now the question to ask is: Why do you make it harder? And the reason we make it harder is because our ego is attached to needing to be the person who brought the change. So here's, for those who don't want to get the book, here's the single biggest thing I learned in writing Tempered Resilience. It's the entire blacksmithing metaphor. It's about how steel gets transformed into a tempered tool. The question though is: What's the raw material of the steel? What's the thing that you know the steel is worth it? What's that character? And the answer to that is it's given lots of answers through lots of different fields, which it basically boils down to this. Leaders who can bring change, who can really make a difference, are grounded in something other than their ego need to bring change.

Tod Bolsinger: They're grounded in something else. They can show up and take a risk on failing because it means their identity is not a failure. They're grounded in something else. And for me, this is why I'm a Christian. The example of this is Jesus, one of the most powerful passages for me in the Book of Mark is the very beginning where it says, "At this time, he came to the river to be baptized," at this time. At what time? Before he had done a sermon, before he had confronted a power, before he had done a miracle, before he cast out a demon, before he had done anything. And he hears, "You are my beloved son in whom I'm well pleased." Eugene Peterson translates that as you are the pride of my life. When did Jesus make God proud of him? Before he'd done anything.

Tod Bolsinger: So part of why we make it harder is because we're trying to prove ourselves rather than live out our calling. We're trying to prove that we want to bring change and we want change to happen that we brought, and there's a big difference between participating in doing something that God wants to do to change the world, and my being a small part of it, and my being the person who gets the credit, the person who brought the change, the person who succeeded in it. I think that's why we make it difficult is because our egos are wrapped up in it.

Peter Englert: Well, just a followup, just to be really practical, so Christians like pastors like me, we talk a lot about identity. Hey, it's the good news of the gospel. So you're talking about it being rooted. What does a workweek look like if you're rooted? Again, if I'm starting to let go of my ego, or if I'm starting to go there, what are some concrete ways that I'm like, "This is out of balance," that you've seen? That you'd say, "Hey, you need to stop and kind of look for this rootedness."

Tod Bolsinger: Yeah, since you used the word rooted, I used the word grounded. But actually, the scripture that I often go back to is rooted and grounded in love. So the most important thing for me is ... I mean, the scripture passage I often come back to is the only thing that counts, Paul says, "The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love." So how I know I am being rooted and grounded in something bigger than myself is I am actually more aware of being loved, and people around me feel more loved. It really is more about love than anything else, that it's like, "Do the people around me feel as if I love them?" Do I have a sense that I am loved even if this thing goes and fails, even if I take on this task that I need to take on, and I fail miserably? Can I believe that I am grounded in something other than my success and my need for success?

Tod Bolsinger: And when I start living my life that way, I start making different decisions. That's when you don't send an 8:00 email because you think more than anything, my kids need to know they are loved before they go to bed tonight. And why I'm sending out an email is I'm way more anxious about whatever's going to happen tomorrow than I am about this kid right in front of me. And we do it all the time, I do it all the time. I'm not saying you're perfect. I think but acknowledging where that comes from, this is why in the book I talk about resilience starts in vulnerable self reflection.

Tod Bolsinger: We all thought resilience starts in getting stronger. No, it actually starts in getting more vulnerable, more honestly self reflective, more aware. Hey, I'm doing this because it's my ego need. I'm doing this because I'm insecure. I'm giving this extra time because I'm so afraid of failing. That vulnerability actually ends up becoming the thing that can be used by God to actually make you resilient in the end.

Peter Englert: Wow. That's a great place to close with our last question. So Tod, we're going to ask this. So we always ask: What does Jesus have to say about why leadership is hard or whatever topic? So the good news is you get to still be a great pastor because Aaron and I are going to respond to that question, and then you get to clean up our mess, which it seems like as a consultant, you're pretty used to. Does that sound good?

Tod Bolsinger: Fair enough.

Peter Englert: Aaron, why don't you go ahead and get started?

Aaron Mercer: Yeah. No, I mean, I really have enjoyed this conversation, Tod, and thank you. I really appreciated what you ... Especially the whole conversation, but what you just said in those last few moments too. I was struck while you were saying that. I think that Jesus does care about leadership, obviously. He wants us to ... He knows leadership is hard from his own, from who he is and what he's done. And he knows it's hard for us too, if you want to be a real leader. And one of the things I really appreciated, Tod, that you were hitting on was real leadership is coming from a place not of your own ego, not of yourself. And that might be really at the end of the day why it's so hard. Leadership itself, and then whatever the cause is that you're trying to make better is not about us. And it's not about puffing our ego, or not even feeling like we're in control of everything.

Aaron Mercer: And it really comes back to being willing to be vulnerable. You mentioned vulnerability. You mentioned needing to be willing to learn. I mean, that's in a sense vulnerable also, realizing I don't have all the answers. I think that really gets to the spirit that God wants us to be in, in the first place, is realizing that we don't have all the answers. And he wants to use us in ways that we can't even imagine. And we can be leaders in that way, as long as we don't get in our own way, is really what it comes down to. So those were my thoughts, now I'll let you two pastors actually clean. I'm just a communications director. You guys clean it up now.

Peter Englert: I thought that was good. When I read Tempered Resilience, and even now, I was brought back to Romans five, and it says this, that we not only so, but we glory in our sufferings because we know that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance, character, and character hope. And hope does not put us to shame because God's love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who's been given to us. And just even on the last thing that you said, Tod, to be able to look at the love in our life. Why is leadership hard? Because God loves us enough to change us. Why is life hard? God loves us enough to change us.

Peter Englert: And if we're rooted in that identity, what happens with perseverance and suffering and character is, it is redeemable. And we're really asking, "Why is life hard? Why is leadership hard?" And I think even what you're saying in the beautiful illustration of the book in Tempered Resilience is it's worth it. And it's worth it to walk through this. It's worth it to see what God's doing and to see that gap, and to be a part of it, to throw your ego aside and watch what God might do in that gap as a leader is just pretty powerful. So that's kind of what I'd say that Jesus would say about it. And that's kind of the big impression of this verse in Romans five that I'm leaving with.

Tod Bolsinger: Well, I think you're 100% right that's what Paul would say about it. That's the way Paul would describe it. I'm trying to think. What would Jesus say? Actually, in one sense, I think you're both right. And Jesus would say this simply, the servant is not greater than the master. Leadership was hard for Jesus. I mean, all the people he led left him. The people didn't understand him. They didn't get him. I mean, there's whole scenes, like John six. He does wonder if they all want to make him king. They want to ask him to do another miracle. He says no. The crowd leaves him. He looks at the disciples and they say ... They look at him like, "You're nuts. You're making this hard." And he goes, "Are you going to leave me too?"

Tod Bolsinger: And you read Peter saying, "Where else are we going to go?" I don't think he was being faithful. I think he was saying, "We can't go home. We've made everybody else mad. Where are we going to go?" I think what Jesus would say is, "I really do understand that leadership is hard. I went through it, and I'm inviting you into it. And the only thing I promise you is I will be with you in it, and it will not be wasted. A day is going to come when the kingdoms of this world will become the kingdoms of our God and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever and ever. Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah." It is hard now. And as Paul said, it's momentary inflictions. That's not meant to minimize. That's meant to acknowledge it.

Tod Bolsinger: For me, what gives me hope is the hope that God is in the midst of it all. As Dr. King said, he's lifting up every valley, tearing down every mountain, a river will flow through it, and the glory of the Lord will be revealed because he believed that God was going to redeem the world down to the dirt, he said in front of 250,000 people at the Lincoln Memorial. We go back to work. We go back to the South. And with this faith, we'll be able to hew out of a mountain of despair, stones of hope. And that for me is what leadership is about. It's about taking a little chisel and hewing stones of hope out of the mountains of despair.

Peter Englert: Wow, what a way to close. If you're watching on video and you can't see, I have the book, Tempered Resilience. I'd encourage you all to buy it. No matter what, where you lead, I think it's very helpful to faith and just in growing. And Tod, where's the best place people can follow you?

Tod Bolsinger: Well, I'm at The Church Leadership Institute. It's depree.org, D-E-P-R-E-E.org/church. Depree.org/church. That's the Church Leadership Institute and Fuller Seminary. And then you can Google me and find my consulting company and stuff like that too.

Peter Englert: That's awesome. Well, Tod, thanks for being with us. The best way you can get ahold of us to get this episode or any other episode is go to whygodwhypodcast.com. We're so glad you joined us, and we're thankful that we hope you ... Man, I am losing it at the end of the day. We hope that you responded, that you sensed that we're asking the questions that you don't feel comfortable asking in church. Thank you so much.