The Next Level

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been spending a fair amount of time in the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes.  As I said to someone last week, it’s a depressing book.  Ecclesiastes is where the line made famous by the King James Version comes from:  “Vanity of vanities; all is vanity.”

Just to be clear, vanityin King James English is used differently than we often use it. It’s not about conceit or ostentation, it’s about futility.  The New Living Translation puts it this way:  “Everything is meaningless…, completely meaningless.”  Like I said, Ecclesiastes is a depressing book, and if all we had in the Bible was what Solomon (the wisest man of all time) wrote there, we’d be in deep trouble.

Ecclesiastes points us to one of the many paradoxes we find in the Bible—and in life.  What is a paradox?  A paradox is “a seemingly absurd or contradictory statement, even if actually well-founded (Oxford).”  Notice that it only seemscontradictory.  Put another way, a paradox points to the tension that often exists between two equally true or valid statements.

So, back to Ecclesiastes and meaninglessness.  What do we do with it in the broader context of the Bible, life and leadership?  The New Testament writer to the Hebrews has something different to say—that “Faith is the confidence that what we hopefor will actually happen; it gives us assuranceabout things we cannot see (11:1).”  Put hopeand assuranceopposite completely meaningless and there’s a tension—and it’s not just some “Old Testament-New Testament” thing.  It’s a real tension that runs throughout the Bible—and throughout life.  The hard truth is that there are times we can’t help but wonder if something is worth it, whether it’s at work or school, with a family relationship or friendship, or in some other area.  There are times when things seemhopeless.

When it comes to leadership specifically, someone has said that the first task is to “define reality.”  Someone else has said that leaders are “dealers in hope.”  Let’s face it, reality and hope don’t always seem to go together.  Reality is often much more dire than we either recognize or admit, and many leaders have failed by not being honest with themselves or those they lead.  I’ve been there myself.  We have to be honest about where things are at.

And yet, perhaps more often than we realize, we should listen carefully to what Sir Winston Churchill said:  “Never give up.”  Now it’s true that there are no guarantees that anything we do will change things. But it’s also true that doing nothing will probably guarantee that they will definitely not change.  If all we do is settle ourselves in the mud and muck of life—whether it’s professional or personal—we can pretty much be sure that we’ll stay there.

There are two things I’ve found to be true, even in the most dire circumstances. One is that doing our best—and doing what is right and proper—often leads to good outcomes we do not immediately see, either for ourselves or others (Back to Hebrews 11:1 and the assurance of things we cannot see).  Second, doing our best—and what is right and proper—gives us the assurance that we did all we could, and the ability to say that we sought to maintain our own integrity. And even if the final result is not what we would have wished, knowing those things is worth more than we probably realize.

I recently had the opportunity to (finally) get certified as a Myers-Briggs professional.  I’ll spare the details of why I did it now as opposed to earlier, and just cut to the chase of the single biggest impression I came away with:  Leadership is first and foremost about people. That may seem obvious, but is it?

Think about the United States, and one of the things we often consider unique about our great nation:  the idea that we are a “nation of laws” and that we are governed by law, not by individuals.  I understand the reason people say that.  As a constitutionally-structured republic, the assumption is that we are subject to the “rule of law” and free from the arbitrary whims of “rulers.”  That should make us different from absolute monarchies, oligarchies (remember that term from your Civics or Poli Sci class?), or dictatorships.  But does it?

Think, too, about organizational leadership.  Over my roughly 25 years of ministry, I have spent a lot of time on things like policies and procedures, particularly when it comes to staffing, finance, and similar issues.  It’s certainly not all I’ve done, but for some reason it seems to have demanded a lot of my time.  What I have sometimes thought—and what I have often heard others voice—is that “It’s good we finally have a policy about thus-and-such.  That should protect us.”  But is that true?

One thing I often say to leaders is that it does no good to have policies if no one pays attention to them.  In fact, having a policy that is not followed is can be more dangerous than not having a policy at all.  Think of how many prominent business leaders have gotten caught by violating their own companies’ policies.  True, in the end those policies may have brought some kind of accounting for the leaders, but too often the real damage is already done.  Which brings us back to this:  leadership is ultimately about people—whether it’s the leader himself or herself, or those whom he or she leads.  Even the terms “organization” and “company” tell us that.  “Company” implies companions, and an organization is nothing more or less than a group of peoplebanded together for some common purpose.

Bill Hybels observed many years ago that there are three things to look for in selecting people for your organization:  character, competence, and chemistry.  The fact that Hybels himself has been tripped up over one of those in recent years does not diminish the validity of his point.  As leaders—and as followers—no matter what the setting we find ourselves in—each of us needs to be committed to pursuing excellence in each of these areas.  In other words, each of us needs to be developing as people and pushing ourselves toward the “next level” in each of those three areas.  And for those of us who are leaders in particular, every one of us needs to be enabling and supporting the people around us to do the same.