Pressure on the Leader

Let's face it - we all in a culture that screams at us to succeed.

Just recently I took a huge pay cut and by huge a 50% drop in pay in order to become the Executive Director of a very small start up ministry.  I can tell you that all my friends, all my colleagues, my wife, (not my kids though) and my partnership connections think that I am crazy and are offering me jobs because they think I have made a huge mistake. 

That is one kind of pressure as life has become exceedingly complex.  The work ethic seems to have been replaced by a corporate success syndrome that measures a person's worth in terms of prestige, promotion, wealth, and appearance.

Men, generally speaking, find themselves identifying their core being with their job and not with their family and the measure of their worth, not by the kind of husband and father they are, but by how well they do at work.

Here I give kudos to my wife - as my life was spiralling out of control, as I was enjoying building up my core identity through my giftedness, I was missing out of my family and my wife identified the problem quickly.  Before my daughter reached her seventh month, I had made huge and drastic changes in my life to ensure I was home every night (planned possibilities) and spent their every waking hour with them - playing or reading.

The problem if not arrested, is that the home is seen as an interlude between periods of work.  In desperation to succeed, we tend to spend more hours at work and not at home. 

The problem, is of course, that everyone wants you to succeed.  Believe it or not, your wife does want to see you promoted, you want to succeed so that your giftedness is recognized, your management team wants you to succeed because you make them look good, your company wants you to succeed so they can give favourable reports to the Board etc. etc.

Here is what I found - the voices, coming from all directions, are what kills us at the end of the day.  Each voice has a different expectation.  Expectations not met meet with disapproval, that means no recognition and it ultimately means you have failed.  Even though you most likely have only one direct line of responsibility to a senior person above you, your team, your other teams, your other partnering organization, even your volunteer places of service - have this voice communicating their expectations to you all the time and you feel you have to report to six different people all at the same time and all wanting something different.  At the height of my corporate climb I had a report for my direct superior, a report for a number of Board members, a report for a functioning committee from the Board and senior management team, a report for my own team on how well we were engaging with our goals, a report for major donors and a report for another Board that had loose requirements from my position.  Each report was entirely different than the other and definition of terms were different - the amount of work to obtain the numbers and do the analysis of each report consumed the activity of four staff, full-time, two weeks out of the 3 month period between meetings - and can you imagine how we also were able to do the job we were paid to do.

The solutions - we cannot be "all things to all men."  If you are married, try being the best you can be for your spouse.  Set up some realistic boundaries that determine what are the maximum number of nights a week you can miss dinner or how many nights a year you can travel away from home - those kind of flexible numbers keep control in the spouse who is adjusting and they will determine when and where they will make the sacrifices to be home with the family.

That is of course if family is still holding dear to your hearts today.

What does a leaders spouse look like?

Is this an odd question?

I can tell you that many individuals who had amazing leadership qualities and giftedness, were not called upon to step up into position of leadership because of their wives.

In my case, I had one incident where I was removed from leadership as a result of something my wife had said.

There is a legend of Mrs. Cranmer, wife of the first Archbishop of Canterbury. Henry the Eighth had succeeded in breaking the iron rule of Rome, and the Church of England, at last, was an entity in itself. the Archbishop set a brave precedent in marrying.  However, the populace was not yet ready such scandalous behaviour.  As a result, Mrs. Cranmer spent most of her married life in hiding.  It is said that when the Archbishop desired that his wife travel with him, she was forced to journey in a wooden box with ventilation holes in it.

Wish I had another story of a women in leadership and what she had to do when her husband travelled with her - but alas, I could not find one.

Here are some points that I think the supporting spouse, whether they themselves are leaders or not, should be aware of. ---

• be dignified
• do not gossip
• if the children are present, be the responsible parent at the event
• if hospitality is required, be the manager, promotional and operational to ensure success and if yourself influential, balance between obtaining favour for your spouse and ensuring that your better half is getting the due attention they acquire.
• remember our ultimate call is to - serve
• model what a Christian marriage looks like and what a Christian family looks like
• you are a team - have each others back
• understand each others gifts and use them whenever possible to ensure the success of each other
• you are no leader at all if you cannot lead your family and in particular, I am suggesting your children - make this a point of priority and do not grudge your time with them for each moment of personal, intimate time is a building block to a leader of the future.