Your Team's Greatest Growth Barrier: Invisible Lids You Didn't Know Were There | William Vanderbloemen

In this episode of the Vanderbloemen Leadership Podcast, William Vanderbloemen unpacks one of the most common but overlooked challenges in leadership: invisible lids. These growth limiters—whether personal, organizational, or team-related—often hold leaders back without them even realizing it.

• Growth lids are often invisible but real.

• Flexibility fades with time—stay intentional.

• Time management is a leader's greatest asset.

• Mediocre hires = long-term team ceiling.

• Don't settle—anticipate and outgrow your lids.

Whether you're just starting out or you're decades into your leadership journey, this episode will help you name the lids that might be holding you back—and how to plan ahead to grow beyond them.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hey everyone, welcome to the Vanderblumen Leadership Podcast, where we help you build, run, and keep great teams. Thanks for being here. Let's dive in.

SPEAKER_02 0:10

Today we are going to talk about the invisible lid, the glass ceiling, the limiters of growth that are in the organizations in the churches that we're leading that we maybe don't know are there. William, what are just some of your initial thoughts when you start thinking about hey, what are some growth limiters in organizations and churches alike? Socks. That's right. If you guys can't tell.

SPEAKER_00 0:44

Invisible.

SPEAKER_02 0:46

Do you have socks on?

SPEAKER_00 0:47

No.

SPEAKER_02 0:48

I don't either.

SPEAKER_00 0:49

Yeah. I think that's the first thing.

SPEAKER_02 0:52

That's right. And then you'll be able to really take off in 2025.

SPEAKER_00 0:58

There's so many barriers, and I, you know, I could sit and point fingers at other people, but I think what I've uh can speak with the most authority on is whether the barriers are that I've had.

SPEAKER_02 1:08

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:08

Yeah. And then how does that uh maybe help somebody else? Yeah. And I think the barriers, I've I feel it more now than ever because I'm actually older today than I've ever been.

unknown 1:21

Whoa.

SPEAKER_00 1:22

Think about that a minute. Right? So no, but uh, as I've gotten older, I've started to realize that um it's pretty it's it's a discipline to keep trying new things. That's really good. It's a discipline to keep trying new things. And our uh natural bent is to atrophy, not to keep moving and trying new things. We're not whatever the opposite of the law of inertia is, that's what we are, right? And and I've said this before on the podcast, this story where I have a hard time stretching, and uh our youngest Macy was little, and I'm trying to touch my toes, and I couldn't touch my toes, and sweating more from that than the run, and she laughed at me and she, you know, tied herself in a human pretzel because she was little and that's what you can do when you're little. And when she was leaving, I thought, oh William, every day you're alive, you get less flexible. Every day you're alive. And that's like biological truth. I can tell it at a pastor's conference, and everybody's like, Oh, that actually that dog will hunt. Because every day we're babies bounce, like they can stretch. Old people don't. How many of us have had a grandparent? We say, Well, granddad fell.

SPEAKER_02 2:40

Ooh, yep.

SPEAKER_00 2:41

And then it just wasn't ever right after that. So our natural inclination is to calcify and not to stretch.

SPEAKER_02 2:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:51

And the ability to stretch goes away with time. The the the older your church is, the harder it is for it to stretch. The older your team is and has been working together, you every day you've worked together, you've gotten less flexible. And I think the lid for me that I'm trying like crazy to stay ahead of as I'm in my 50s now, is uh the lid that naturally says, let's do what we've always done. Let's keep doing the same thing. Yeah. No, how do you how do you keep trying new things? Same message, new methods. And that's been the the trick to doing the art of church work forever. Yeah. Same message, new methods.

SPEAKER_02 3:36

Yeah. You don't have any new content, Pastor. It's kind of it's kind of all there. Yeah. Yep. It's finding new ways to new ways to um I guess promote it, like you said.

SPEAKER_00 3:47

So I think for for me, I'm at an age where you really do start to get less flexible. Like, so that's front and center for me. And it's front and center for me in how we're doing this podcast is vastly different than it was done a year ago or a year or two ago, or four or five years ago. I I'm trying to address that lid because I know at my age, it's going to become a uh a default choice just to do what we've always done, unless I work at that lid. For somebody that's 25 years old, I mean, when I was 31, the lid to my performance was the fact that I thought I knew everything. I mean, I was arrogant and know it all, and everybody loves to be around and know it all. I've found that like 100% true, right? Oh, you know, and when we're younger, we do have a little bit of a cockiness, especially leaders do. Um, and that's I God hates the proud, but there is something about being uh confident, yep, right? Um, but the the flip side was I knew everything, and it just made me no fun to be around. Um, unless you were me. I like to be around me. Yeah. But um, I feel what's the old my favorite Ted Turner quote? I've probably said it on this podcast a million times, but he said, you know, if I had a little more humility, I'd be perfect.

SPEAKER_02 5:04

That's so true. So that's so true. I I told I I was uh texting with um Brett today, one of our consultants here at Vanderblumen, and we were joking around, and I said, you know, I'm the self-proclaimed world's hum humbliest man. There you go. That's right.

SPEAKER_00 5:23

And don't you tell me otherwise?

SPEAKER_02 5:25

That's right. That's right.

SPEAKER_00 5:26

I I told you, I am the most different stages of life have different lids. Yeah, that's really good. And, you know, if you're here's a lid, if you're young with a family, which is what every pastor search committee in America wants, bring us a 42-year-old William. We want him to act just like Jesus, but we want him to get married and stop drinking. Oh yeah, it's what everybody wants, right? So if you're that 40-year-old with Little League and dance recitals and all that going on, here's a line that is your lid, okay? I'll never forget Diogenes Allen saying this at Princeton Seminary. He looked at us and he said, Never forget the church is a very jealous mistress.

unknown 6:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:11

If you're in that season where you're building your family, where it's younger, I promise you, whatever's going on at church is not always the most important thing. Yeah. And the lid to your life may be that you need to remove the lid of saying, I have to be at work, I have to be at the church four nights a week, I have to be. Maybe maybe it's not uh what's holding my career back in professional development. You think, well, if I go to one more thing, if I preach it one more thing, if I write one more book, if I maybe that's not the lid. Maybe the lid is what your family's trying to let you become. Wow, that's really good. And and your career ambition, which is pretty high, particularly in men, particularly in the age when they think they know everything. Yep. You can you can end up uh keeping a lid on the most important thing. Yeah. We did the podcast years ago with my friend Tim Lucas. You can look it up. So uh he'll link it. Started Liquid Church years ago, doing an amazing work in New Jersey, which is very hard soil to till spiritually. And he said he made this very mistake. It's with with the lid. Wow. And he came home one day in Connie, his wife was crying, and uh he said, What is it? And she it literally said, It's that damn church.

SPEAKER_02 7:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:27

And they got things straightened out, they got a beautiful marriage, wonderful. It's a great podcast to go listen to. We can link back to it.

SPEAKER_02 7:33

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 7:33

But uh he realized that the lid was actually the work he was doing was keeping him from becoming what God had you know. Another friend who said uh this same sort of professionalism being the lid, he said um he got to a break point and he said, I realized that the speed at which I was doing the work of God was killing God's work inside of me.

SPEAKER_02 7:59

That is really good. Pretty good. Yeah, pretty good.

SPEAKER_00 8:02

I don't know where your lid is, but different stages of life have different lids. Impatience is actually a lid. What would happen if if Joseph had been impatient?

SPEAKER_02 8:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:13

I mean, you know, he gets thrown in prison, he gets he's in charge of the prison. He he gets put in charge of Egypt, he runs all the whole world's food storage. I mean, yeah, you know, if he had been impatient, oh man, we might not have ever gotten the leader that we got at the end. Exactly. So different stages have different lids. So what stage am I in and and what lid is that? For me, the stage, the the lid for me is let's not fall into doing it the same way every time. And uh, and then I think you know, if you if you really want to talk about the single lid that I would focus on in all seasons, so you may not want this, but okay, the single lid I would think about. Yeah. Um and I see the most successful people I know in home, family, professionally, all over, the most successful people are maniacal about the lid of time. Wow. How will I spend the time that I have? How will I invest the time? Because it's gonna go away. Yeah, so one commodity you cannot create more of. It just doesn't happen. And so um, I've cited this study in a couple things I've given talks at, but the study was done sometime back of people who were born um, and it was in the US, so they were born in a wealthy country, so they had a leg up in that regard, right? Even our poorest folks are royalty globally, right? So yes, they had a little head star of being poor, but they weren't born into super wealthy families within their context. They weren't born with trust funds, they weren't born with you know a job to just go take at the family business, okay? Yep. People that kind of made it on their own, whatever that means, and went from nothing to eight figures of worth, so $10 million floor for worth. What do those people have in common? Really interesting question. Yeah. And so they studied thousands and thousands of people. And the number one common denominator they found of self-made successful people is that they are maniacal about how they schedule and invest their time. Wow. And the older you get, the more you realize that. Yeah. But uh man, time just it doesn't come back. No. And the successful people are the ones who just budget out every little piece and make sure they're not wasting their time.

SPEAKER_02 10:32

That's so good. I think that's so important. And something that's really great, I think, to keep in mind, like you said, at all stages of leadership, whether you're just starting out and you maybe think that you know a lot, um, or whether you're needing to be more flexible, needing to uh make sure that you can still touch your toes and such. Also, I I just have to say, I couldn't, I haven't been able to do a somersault since I was 12 years old. I can't imagine how non-flexible I'm gonna be when I am older. So that's that you were talking to me right there.

SPEAKER_00 11:08

Um, you know, for I'll tell you though, you know, figuring out what those lids are ahead of time and reverse engineering your life away away from them. Yeah, if you'd figure that out right now, you wouldn't have a problem. Ms. Boetzko. Uh do you know this book, Outlive? Double Sun No. Oh gosh, really interesting book. Uh Peter Atia is a uh physician and then was a consultant and now uh uh is a physician again and is all about um quality and quantity of life. How do you make your last 10 years ones that you actually enjoy living?

SPEAKER_02 11:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:40

And so he has a uh, if you become one of his patients, he has, I'm gonna get the numbers wrong, but let's say it's a board with 200 activities on it.

SPEAKER_02 11:50

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 11:51

Okay, let's say you live to be 90. What are the 10 on this board you want to be able to do? And it's like get in the floor and play with my grandchildren, um, still be able to walk on an airplane and put my suitcase above the thing.

SPEAKER_02 12:03

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 12:03

Oh, you pick the suitcase. Yep. Okay. Well, uh average weight is whatever it is, 25 pounds, right? And so to lift that up, you can be lift 25 pounds, but muscle mass decreases at this percentage over time. So you're 45 right now, you're halfway to nine. So that means you really ought to be doing lifts over your head right now of whatever the nuts, 60, 70 pounds as a regular thing, so that when that lid arrives, it's not there anymore.

SPEAKER_02 12:31

That's great.

SPEAKER_00 12:32

It's really forward thinking. Like if you can anticipate where the lid's gonna be and build a plan for it ahead of time, like stretching every day. Yeah, then maybe do a somersault on Sunday. It's just never now. If you the the the really wise leaders I see will anticipate what that lid is gonna be, kind of like a retirement savings account. Yeah. Start planning for it ahead of time. And uh when the lid arrives, it's either not as bad as it would have been or it's not there.

SPEAKER_02 12:59

Hmm. That's so good. What are maybe some you know, talking about lids, and we've talked a lot about personal growth um and personal leadership, maybe within the structure of a of a organization within a church, are some things that you've noticed like, hey, if you don't have this there, this specific part of the organization, this specific part of the church. Um it can be an invisible lid if we're not careful. Um it can be, you know, that that glass ceiling, uh, so to speak. Is is there anything that you've you know, we've worked with so many different uh companies, is there anything that you've noticed?

SPEAKER_00 13:37

Oh you ask questions that make me want to say things that are gonna get us all in trouble. Oh no. I I would say the biggest lid in the organizations we've worked with over the years that the most common one I've seen is the people.

SPEAKER_02 13:55

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 13:57

Um it's like people are just so thrilled that anyone would want to come work at a church, that they'll hire anyone to work at a church. Oh, you're alive? Great. You can put fog on a mirror, you can you know, this is gonna sound antiquated, but if you rated leadership skills zero to ten, you get a grade. Ten's great and zero's nothing. Yep. Uh here's a rule. If you hire a seven or a six, you know what they will never hire? A ten or eight or nine or anything above them. Yeah. And uh unfortunately, a whole lot of teams that we've worked with over the years have some long-tenured sixes on staff that are here's how I say it. And maybe this is true in other places too. I just see it a lot in the church world. You have somebody on your team, tell me if you know this person. There's someone on your team who's working just hard enough to not get fired. That's the lid. Yeah. And it's been a long time since I've been on church staff. I know it's hard. I don't want to I don't want to come off as this harsh critic. But there is no more important team on the planet than Team Jesus.

SPEAKER_02 15:15

Like very true.

SPEAKER_00 15:17

We're the only ones talking about anything that's gonna last past all the lids.

SPEAKER_02 15:21

That's right.

SPEAKER_00 15:22

And if we don't just insist on the very best, most called people, doesn't mean most talented, look at Jesus 12, he picked. They were, you know, not the team I would have put together, and and one of them didn't work out, but different podcasts. Yeah. But uh, you know, the most called people that are insistent on giving their lives to excellence in this work that we're doing, uh, that that's the most common lit I see is we just settle for wherever we can get. Instead of like, no, we need to build, we we don't just have a dream, we have a reality of heaven. Yeah, we're gonna build a dream team for that reality.

SPEAKER_02 16:00

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 16:00

So I'm gonna go into full preacher mode if you keep egging me on with questions. But I just think I I've done it before. You get your back against the wall, you just settle for whatever you can, yeah, or whatever feels safe. And you know, you can't there are only two lids that I know to anyone on Team Jesus, particularly in churches, schools, and nonprofits. Okay. There's two. How am I going to fund this?

SPEAKER_02 16:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:26

And who's going to help me get the mission done?

SPEAKER_02 16:28

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 16:28

That's it. Funding problems, people problems. Yep. We don't do funding problems. All we do is try and remove people problems. That's right. That doesn't mean remove people, don't call us for that. That's not our gig. But solving your people problems, and and maybe that's maybe all I've got's a hammer, so everything looks like a nail. But my goodness, the time and energy that could be saved by just not settling and saying, So is this person the one that Jesus is calling here? And and are they gonna give their very, very best to try and get done what we're trying to get done?

SPEAKER_02 17:02

That's so good. Don't settle. Don't settle for the leader right in front of you. Find what's best for you. I uh just as we kind of close today, talking about leads uh and our personal growth, personal development, organizational growth, organizational development. Um do you have any lasting, lasting words of advice, lasting words of wisdom for our listeners today?

SPEAKER_00 17:26

No, you know, if you the more I read the Bible, the more frequently I notice how many times God's calling us to look up. Lift up your eyes, look up. You know, just look up, look out and beyond. You want the nations? Just ask for the nations. I'll give them to you. Yeah. He's he's always encouraging us to expand our field of vision. And it's almost like I I've gone through life self-imposing some lids that would say, I can't think that big, I can't look up. Yeah. I I think God might be saying to you, you you know, there's life beyond whatever lid you have put on yourself.

SPEAKER_02 18:03

That's so good, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:04

And so let's look a little farther, let's look up, let's let's do a little more than you ever thought possible.

SPEAKER_02 18:09

Wow. That's really good. What a way to close. Um, leader, here's what I know is that you're able to go beyond the lid that you may think is there or may be actually there. But if you're able to solve some of the people problems, you can go further than you ever thought possible.

SPEAKER_01 18:28

Thanks again for joining us on the Vanderblumen Leadership Podcast. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. If you're looking for more leadership resources, you can find us at Vanderbloemen.com and on socials at Vanderbloemen. We'll see you again next week where we continue discussing how to build, run, and keep great teams.