I recently read The Practice of Adaptive Leadership:  Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World, by Ronald Heifetz, Alexander Grashow, and Marty Linsky.  I read this book while preparing for the Young Clergy Women Project conference on leadership.  If you don’t know who they are, you should check them out at www.youngclergywomen.org.  Reading this book has prompted me to start series blogging about developing the discipline of leadership.  There are a few things I’d like to say from the beginning.  First, leadership isn’t easy and it doesn’t come fast!  According to these authors, many of us are really good at doing what we’ve been asked to do and most of us do not spend much time on the edge, which is where leadership happens.  Leadership is hard work!  Leadership is never ending, in other words, you will always be working from the edge!  Leadership requires core strength.  If you are not strong in your core, then standing in the tension will exhaust you in painful ways.  When you are strong in your core, it can exhaust you in exciting ways.  Either way, it is exhausting when done well, but takes only a small shift in perspective…this is your chance!

Congregational Leadership Boot Camp Exercise One:  Getting in touch with your limitation.

All of us at one point or another are either going to over estimate or underestimate our capacity, which is your tendency?  A couple of years ago, I hired a personal trainer to help me learn how to take care of my body.  We stayed in a constant battle about how many of anything I could do.  Vince always wanted me to do one more when I just knew I couldn’t!  Oh, wow, did I ever want to hurt him!  But, you know what…inevitably, he was right…I could do one more.  Don’t get me wrong, I was often sore and sometimes we had to alter our direction, but I learned that I could do more than I had ever dreamed!  What are your limitations?  What do you really do well?  What gifts and skills do you bring to the table?  What could you stand to work on?  Do you over estimate, do you underestimate?  If you are uncertain about your responses, then I encourage you to ask three people who care about you and want what’s best for you to help you with this assessment.  Only when you know where your limitations are can you cautiously push against them! 

If you take this challenge seriously, you will never be the same.

Melissa Clodfelter, Coordinator of Coaching  July 2010