Why Good Employees Struggle in Leadership | Jared Deverna

Why do some of the most capable, dependable people struggle once they step into leadership? In this conversation, we unpack the shift from being a strong doer to becoming an effective leader and why that transition is harder than most people expect.

We talk about the tension of wanting to be liked while still making hard decisions, the challenge of handling criticism, and why so many new leaders struggle to delegate. There’s also a real conversation here around what it takes to stop doing everything yourself and start building trust in the people around you. 

That shift doesn’t happen overnight, but understanding it can change the way you lead.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hey everyone, welcome to the Vander Bloom and Leadership Podcast, where we help you build, run, and keep great teams. Thanks for being here. Let's dive in. Why do good people fail at leadership? Why do they struggle when they're empowered to a position of a manager? William, today that's our topic of conversation because I know you've seen it of when people are elevated to a role of oversight, they struggle to make that transition. I want to hear from you. What are maybe some trends that you've seen of maybe characteristics or things that people would struggle with if they were, especially I'm thinking of the person who is really successful as a doer, but is finding it hard to be a leader?

SPEAKER_00 0:52

This is such a good question. And listeners should know Jared came up with this like and brought it to me. Uh we have some problems with the question though. Why do good people fail at leadership? I don't know that I'm a good person, and I'm not quite sure whether I'm a leader or not. So I'm not a hundred percent certain you're asking the right we did an episode recently where you said you have to ask the right question of the right person. You might have both of them wrong this time. So uh but I'll take a stab at it. And and you know what was so interesting? I heard several questions inside your question, and we can go to each one of them. But going from doing to leading. Yep. And then you use the word managing in one of your in one of your parts of that question. Uh I think leading and managing are two very, very, very different things. No, one's not more valuable than another. One they're both needed, but they're very different tasks. Um and I uh you know, we place pastors at churches all the time, right? Yep. And invariably your church calls us and says we need a new senior pastor. That's the one that we do more than anything else. Uh we do the other things more than anyone else, but the head person is kind of the the thing that I don't know, for whatever reason, God keeps calling us to do. Yep. And uh in that setting, you'll say to a search committee, and they're they're just ner what's the old saying? Nervous as a bunch of long-tailed cats in a room full of rocking chairs. Uh, they're just scared to death, they're gonna make the rolling call. They never heard past it. And then you say, Well, this one, Jared would be great. Jared's done this and this and this and this and this. And somebody will say, But has he been a senior pastor before? And a lot of times the answer is no. Yep. And that that's a whole nother podcast about birth rates and where we are with generational handoffs, and but it's a real thing. Very often, it's someone who hadn't been a senior pastor yet, and they're like, How are we gonna know? I'm like, you're not. You're not. Everybody who's a leader had a first day they were leading. That's good. And not all of them are gonna work out great, but I remember when I became a senior pastor, I was like 28 or 27, right around there. I don't know. 27, I think. And uh we had a big long conference table, old Presbyterian church, you know, and uh I they told me go sit down at the end, you're leading the meeting. And I sat down there, I looked at all those people, and they looked at me, and I'm like, oh, I'm supposed to say something now. What do I do? And if you haven't felt that, then you're a rare individual. Because if you're facing leadership for the first time, I think there's just a whole lot of things that um don't come naturally. Yeah. If they do come naturally, then yay, you, but I'm a little worried about you. You might need some therapy. And I'll think of the first one is uh if you're a really good leader, you can tick people off. Yep. And if we were on the Howard Stern show, I would not say tick people off. I would use a lot more blunt language. Yep. And if you want everybody to like you, don't be a leader. That's good. If you want everybody to like you, don't be a leader. If you think about the people who win Miss Congeniality or Mr. Class mascot or the everybody loves all, you know, da-da-da. They're probably not leading anything. Here's the trick in church. You know, the president, whoever the president is, and whatever you're not going politics, um, but if a president has a 60% approval rating, that's kind of through the roof. Yes. Yes. So that means four out of 10 people don't like you. That's a lot. And I don't like people not liking me. Likewise. I want to be liked. And I think one of the gaps that happens until you get okay with the fact that people might not like your decisions and will do it personally and not like, then you got a problem. Now, here's the wrinkle. Uh, president, I think the president right now's approval rating is is a little less than 50%. So more people dislike his job than like his job. Forget whether you like it or not. Pastors can't win with that. No. In fact, an elder who I said, oh, you're wrong, and he was right, said to me, I don't even know if pastors can get by with a 90% approval rating. And and here's the the the background to that. I'm I'm sitting, um, and this we'll get to why do people, we're gonna get back to our topic, but I was in seminary at Princeton. I I went there because I wanted to be a PhD and teach. I didn't want to be a pastor because I didn't want to, I don't own a robe. I don't even know what to do with that. Uh, I don't have good hair, and I hate asking people for money. So, what else is to do the job, right? So I didn't want to do that. Um, so I was gonna do PhD, but then I realized PhDs really like you know what energizes a normal PhD is going to the library all day and reading what got dug up in the ancient Near East and how it might be a clue to someone to be around people. I mean, honestly, I'm a salesperson. I I love to persuade, I love to convince you there's a better reality. And so you start running the list of I feel called to help the church. I really like persuading people to live a better life. I'm pretty good at public speaking. You start doing like a job search with that criteria, it gets filtered out pretty quick, pretty quick, pretty quick. And uh when I finally decided I was gonna try ministry, it was right before my senior year at Princeton Seminary. And we used to have family dinner in North Carolina at my grandparents' house. Uh we have it now at our house, but uh was sitting there with my granddad, he was greatest generation, uh World War II at 17, not 18. Uh fought at Okinawa at 17. Yeah, yeah. And then came home and put himself through college and all the things that Tom Brokaw would have loved if anyone even knows who Tom Brokaw is. So uh he he was a chair of the Deacon Board at First Baptist Church in our little town and taught Sunday school. I've got all his handwritten notes from his Sunday school. Pretty cool. So he loves the church, he loves his pastor. In fact, when he died, I did the funeral with his pastor, and his pastor said, Your granddad just loved the church. I said, Well, I know that. And he said, Did you know he would send me and my family to Europe every other year and pay for the whole thing? I said, No, I didn't. He said, Yeah, he didn't want anybody to know that. So why am I telling this story? Not to lionize granddad, but to say he loved the church. Okay, back up. I've decided I'm gonna go into ministry. We're sitting at family dinner, we're sitting like us with a table in between us, where he would always sit over there. What are you gonna do? Well, granddad, I think I've decided. I think I'm gonna go into ministry. You don't want to do that. I thought he loved his pastor. You don't want to do that. And I said, Well, granddad, I don't, you know, I think I do. No, you don't. I promise you don't want to do that. Like, okay, now I'm now the sales guy kicks in. I'm like, how do I? He's a marine. Okay, I think it's my duty to Semperify, you know. Like, yeah, he'll say, Yeah. Nope. You don't want to do that. Like, so I tried all these different ways. And finally we're sitting like this, and he I'm Galax is gonna kill me for moving the mic, but we're moving. He leans over to me and says, Do you want to spend the rest of your life? Knowing no, how matter how effective you are at your job and how good you are at living a clean life, if you make the wrong group of people mad, you're done. And I said, Well, now that's not how church works, granddad. And uh he was right. That's funny. That's funny. But the truth is, if you're gonna lead anything, you're going to make people mad. So you're in a job where you can't live with a low approval rating, but you've got to do things that people don't like. Yes. I think that's the tension that a lot of people just can't manage. Yep. And if you want to be like more mature about how you say this, it's like, are you fearing God or fearing man? Like a lot of good therapists will say you have a fear of man thing, which is true. Uh, but but I think that managing that tension of who am I serving? Yep. And by the way, the guy I'm serving, Jesus, loves all these other people. Yep. How do I manage in a way that leads without uh alienating and and develop enough of a uh belief in what God's called me to that I don't care? Yes. That's really good. If people don't like it.

SPEAKER_01 9:22

That's really good. I think too, a lot of it is like I think of even of personally, of the things that you have to fight is honestly, it's it's that almost that insecurity of like, I just really want them to like me. I just really want to be, I want everyone to to to appreciate me. You know, it's it's that it's battling that and just coming to the to the understanding of that if I'm going to steward, lead, execute whatever it is, doesn't have to be even ministry specific, apply it to you know, the corporate world, apply it to um nonprofit, whatever it is, if you're leading anything and everyone likes you, you're probably not leading it well. Well, you're not getting anything done.

SPEAKER_00 10:15

That's right. That's right. You're just not getting anything done. Yeah. And uh I see it, you know, all the time. It's interesting as a search guy. I see verses differently than when I was a pastor. Because once you're a pastor, you're always a pastor. But uh, you know, can you think? And you probably don't have an answer, and that's fine. But why what was the number one reason Jesus got in trouble with his friends, not with the religious authorities, the people who actually liked him? If you don't have an answer, it's fine. Um, by my read, the number one reason Jesus got in trouble with his friends was he was always moving around. He said, I came to teach and preach and heal. And he went from village to village and town to town. And there are all these passages where everybody's like, Where is Jesus? Where did he go? He's out on the lake walking. What is he doing? And people are going over there. Can we not just stay here? He's on his morning stroll. Always getting stuff done. Yes. I mean, he had a three-year run. I was saying the client, if they don't stay five years at their job, they're no good. I'm like, well, that's I guess we got judgment on Jesus then, because he didn't know. No. If you're going to lead and get anything done, it is going to tick off some people. Yep. And so the tension to manage is am I doing what God's told us to do, even if that costs me some human relation? And am I doing it in a way, irrespective of a relationship, that is loving toward the people. Yes. Not so they will love me, but because he loved them. Yep. And until you get your own head straight, like I had to worry about what people thought about me. And I did have a real, I think I was probably still do, fear of what people thought, or as a biblical counselor would say, a fear of man. Yeah. Like, what are they going to think about me if I do this? Rather than thinking, what does God want done through me for the people he loves, literally loves to death. Yes. Yes. Right? And and what I couldn't get out of my head was um criticism. I'm t as a Presbyterian minister, you if you want to be a minister in any one of the branches of the Presbyterian church, you have to go through a pretty long process. You know, in the in the you grew up in the Baptist church? No. Uh it would be non-denominational or so. My granddad's church, Baptist church. You, you know, the end of the service, do you feel called to be baptized, come forward? And then they say, Do you feel called to ministry? Come forward. And if you you might get ordained that day. I mean, it was like, let's do it, let's get going. Make it happen. Wesley rode on horseback and rode his rode backwards on horseback so he could write his sermons, hit a desk on the back of his horse. That's insane. Because it's speed. Well, the President's were quality control. So you got to do this long process. You got to do three years of seminary, you got to do the Greeks and the Hebrews and all the things. And and you also have to go to counseling to find out if you're really like, are you wired for this or not? Wow. Right. So I go to uh career counseling, basically, was one component of the thing. And uh, you know, took all these Myers, Briggs, and Berkman and all the different you know, things. And so um, we're sitting down at the end of all this testing, and the and the counselor says, uh, it looks like you do this really well. I mean, this is what pastors do, and you're naturally fit for that, and this is good, and this is good, good, good, all this positive reinforcement. And then she said to me, Now, listen, the results do show that you might have some trouble accepting criticism. And I think about a half a second went by. You might have trouble accepting criticism. And I looked at her and said, I do not. And she just looked back and said, Is that right? And I'm like, Oh, okay. So right. So if you're moving from doer to leader or doer to manager, or someone who's responsible for getting things done, yes, you know, an agenda is the old Latin word for the things that have to get done. If you've got things that have to get done, your agenda, you're gonna make some people mad and you're gonna receive some criticism you don't deserve. So I think if I were teaching people, it's not just don't give a crap and do what God called you to do. That's that's using God as a license for being a horse's rear end. You know, that's not cool. Yeah. Oh, I'm not very high in a mercy gift. I had a pastor who was a mentor say that to me. I'm like, I don't think you get to say you're it's not like I'm only five, six or like that's not a thing. Like maybe you're not great at hospital visits, okay, fine, but you don't get to say I'm not good at the mercy thing. That's funny. Yeah, exactly. But but learning to figure out how do I respond to God with what he wants done and lead in a way that doesn't care what other people think, but does care deeply about the people God loves. Yes, that's so good. And the way I've seen it, uh it's not like the criticisms go away. No. I thought once you got good, then the criticisms get nope. Uh there's an old movie, it's called A Beautiful Mind. Uh it was Russell Crowe. He plays a mathematician named John Nash, he won the Nobel Prize. Okay. Um, it's it's fantastic. It's set in Princeton. He was a professor there, um, as was Einstein. Pretty cool place to be a professor. So uh he's also schizophrenic. Wow. Yeah. And you don't know, sorry, spoiler. Uh, you don't know that he's schizophrenic in the movie when he's talking to these voices and characters. You think he's like really talking to until you figure out, like, oh, wait a minute, this isn't real. Yeah. So you're kind of living in the schizophrenia. That's and it's really disorienting. And I think it won some Oscars, you know, because it was like, Sure, oh wow, it took you on a journey of people yelling at him all the time that weren't really there. Yeah. So at the end of the movie, best scene in the whole movie, the very end of the movie, he's received the Nobel Prize, he's gotten healthy, but the criticism hasn't gone up. The voices are still there. And he's putting his coat over his his wife's coat over her shoulder leave, and he looks over at the staircase, and there are the three voices that have been talking to him through the whole movie, and they're still there. And his wife sees him looking over there and says, What is it, honey? And he says, It's nothing. Criticism will not leave you if you're a leader. But you have to be able to see it and say, It's nothing. That's really good. As long as you're serving what God's called you to do in a way that loves the people God loves, you've got to be able to say, It's nothing. That's powerful. And it takes a long time to get there, and I'm still learning it. Um, it does take a little bit of arrogance, but that that's the number one reason I see people fail. Now, number two, can we go there? Yes, please. Let's get past the emotional part. Let's go to the getting stuff done part. Yep. If you're a doer, I'm a doer. If I see something I want done, I go do it. And that's really good. But my wife is a better leader than I am. Because if my wife sees something that needs to be done and sees somebody walking by, it's like, hey, Jared, could you do this for me? Yeah. She is the master delegator. Not in a way that's like, I don't want to do anything. It's like, no, that's not something that's the best use of my time. I'm gonna, she just, I don't even think she thinks about it. I think it's just like, I mean, I've learned if I'm really busy doing important things, don't walk by her because you'll get asked, like, can you do this and this and this? And it's I can't tell her. No, I love her to death. She's had the best circuit ever done. So, like, you know, it's so I I think the shift from getting it done to how do we get it done. Yes, is the biggest mind shift. Rather than saying, how can I go get that done? It's like, how can I, a couple different ways. If it's something that no one else knows how to do, how can I do this and bring three people with me or two people, even just one person, so they can see it?

SPEAKER_01 18:17

That's really good. Replicate yourself.

SPEAKER_00 18:19

Always take someone with you when you lead. It's great. Always so that they can learn. But maybe there's a person around that could do it. Well, I don't know if they'll do it right. This is the paralysis that people who are great doers run into when they're asked to be leaders or managers. Yes. Well, what if they don't do it right? Well, what if they don't? I've said it probably five times on podcast with you, Jared, but golly, it's just leadership gold from my friend Craig Richel. Uh if you if you want to just tell people what to do, you can do that, but you're never gonna lead anything great. And here's how he says it if you uh just give out tasks, yeah, you're gonna raise up a bunch of really good doers. If you give away as good authority, you're gonna end up raising up leaders. That's great. Now, giving away authority literally means giving it away. And yes, I mean, hey, if you're a new leader and you're a good doer, here's something you're gonna do that's gonna I'll say tick off because we're doing a clean podcast, but it's worse than that with other people, is when you give them a task to do and then you come back and redo it for them. That's the most demotivating thing in the world for your team. Yep. So, well, I know you did it, but I'm gonna redo it. So, so it's to me, it's learning to delegate. It's also learning to delegate in a way. We talked about this a couple podcasts ago with you, Jared. Your your current church you're working at is amazing in that they say, here's a task, I'm trusting you with it, I'm delegating it. I want a result from you. Yep. By the way, here's what we've done in other settings. Yep. Here's what I've learned along the way. So as you're doing this, please let me pay the stupid tax. Don't so yes, so whatever it is you're leading, are you sharing what you've learned and then releasing that person to actually go do it and be able to live with it being wrong? Yes. And the and the the the I think what I'm learning slowly, the trick to that is delegating things that are okay to fail at. That's good. You're not gonna delegate the financial audit to a finance junior in college unless you like wearing orange. So that's good. She's so like that doesn't work. Yeah, right. So, you know, uh, but but the Easter egg drop, yeah. Don't drop rocks on little kids' heads. I guess that'd be a bad delegation, but like in general, that's gonna be okay if it fails. So I think the the the question for leaders if they can get past the I have to do it part, and some of them just can't. Some of them just can't. If they can get past that to delegate, then it's not just delegate, but it's delegate the things that can fail and delegate it in a way where you're telling them some things that you've learned along the way. So you're you're kind of like, hey, I remember when I had to do this and it worked like this back then, but I'm ancient. That was back when we, I mean, we just got cable when I started ministry. I'm kidding. You try it in your context, but learn from my mistake. Yeah. And I'm gonna go get I'm here for you as a resource. Yep. But it is yours to go do. That's great. And and the you're a perfect example of that. I gave you a task, and you're here, figure out what we need to do with those social medias. Yeah. Because I'm ancient, right? And uh you figured it out. And our traffic went way up. And by the way, if the traffic hadn't gone up, who cares? It's not that big a deal. So I think when you say, why do people who are great doers have a hard time managing or leading? It's probably a whole nother podcast to talk about the difference between managing and leading. But Part of it is learning to be okay with people not being happy with you. Yep. Always in a way that does what God says, not what you want done, what God says in a way that honors the people he died for. Yep.

unknown 22:13

Right.

SPEAKER_00 22:14

Really good. So if you can do that and then they're still mad at you, number one. Number two, learning not to do everything. That's get someone else to paint your fence. Yes. Or whitewash the fence or whatever you know the thing is. Um, you know, whether that's Mark Twain or Danielson, like wax the car, stand the floor. It wasn't just go do these tasks for me. It was learn leadership as you do it. That's great. And and I think those are the two biggest tension points. Uh, because people want to be liked. Yes. And leaders don't get to be liked. That's great. It's great. So and then the flip side is, well, if no one likes me, at least I know how to do things and you end up doing everything. You know, one of the hardest searches we people say, what's the hardest search you ever do? Well, we could do a whole podcast on children's searches. Children's pasture searches, like I was gonna swear them off because you know you're defined by what you say no to, you narrow your focus. And then something about getting a millstone hung around my neck and you know, bad things for people who don't help children. It's a long story. They're like, okay, fine. Children's pastor searches are hard. No, no, no, no, no. The hardest search I've ever done, and it's the same one. Uh, usually executive pastors are one of our best searches. Yeah. But if it's an executive pastor search for a senior pastor who can't delegate, I can't do it. Yeah. And usually, uh, if you're a planter and you've done well, kudos to you. You're one of the green berets of the army of God. I mean, you're like special forces. Yes. You've got a gene that very few people hate. You saw a reality everybody said was crazy, and you said, no, I'll make it happen. And you did. So that's awesome. So you probably had to put out your own parking signs. You probably had to set up the chairs yourself. You probably can tell me stories about things you had to do that you can't believe you were the one that had to go do it, right? Then you get to a size where you're the lid. That's great. You're the reason you're not growing past many times as a thousand people, which is a great big church. I mean, that's 10 times bigger than average.

SPEAKER_01 24:24

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 24:25

But you get stuck because your span of care of detail only goes so far, and the thing won't go farther without releasing. I mean, it's the old image of, you know, if you did a pie chart of Jesus' time and ministry, it was only three years. Okay. Uh, and in that three years, if you really looked at what we know about his daily diary, most of it was developing some severely underqualified people to be able to lead this thing when he left. Yeah. I mean, you had a a failed tax collector, a fisherman who couldn't catch anything, a brother because nobody else would do it. I mean, like it was a ragtag group. It was. And within two chapters of the book of Acts, after Jesus leaves, the authorities are saying, Who are these people that have turned the whole world upside down? And that would not have happened if Jesus said, I have to do it all by myself. No. So I I think the two tension points that I would say that I have had to struggle with is understanding that people are not going to like me if I'm going to get things done. Yep. That's not a license to be mean to people. Yep. And I've been mean to people and shouldn't, and I probably did it this week and don't even realize it. Uh, the weight of a leader's voice is heavier than they ever realize. That's a good say that again. The weight of a leader's voice is heavier than they realize. Could you do this? Well, of course I could do this. You didn't tell me that your mom's dying of cancer today, but you said yes, I'll be the leader's voice carries more weight than they realize. So can you honor God and deliver that news in a way that still loves the people the same way he did when he died on the cross? That's and even after doing all that, some really great people are not gonna like you. That's tension number one. Tension number two okay, if nobody likes me, at least I'm good at doing things. No, that doesn't work. No, no, uh, a conductor never plays a note. Yeah. Phil Jackson never touches the back basketball. Right? It's it's so I think those are the two we could we could park on this a long time. And I I wish I could go back and talk to the younger me, but he wouldn't have listened because he knew everything. Oh, it was really cool to know everything. Lasted a while, but now I it's older and I don't. But I I'd say if you're if you're looking to move into leadership, then be prepared to have people not like you. Be prepared to suffer through that and not just say, well, they don't like me because I'm a leader. No, that's not yeah, it's not, that's I'm just not good at mercy. And number two, you got to figure out how to not do stuff. It's great. You gotta figure out how to not touch the ball, not play a note, and equip others so that the people who come after you can turn the world upside down.

SPEAKER_01 27:00

Yep. And I think that's good too, because it's the I think of even the moments of on and leading some teams of even the people who you are empowering and entrusting to go and take ownership from you of as it's your responsibility to make sure that they get the vision of what you're trying to accomplish. So and that um kind of that that picture of the the the senior leader who won't delegate anything because he's close fisted in what he's leading. If you're going to and when you do, because you should. And if you don't, you're putting that lid on it, on your whatever you're leading. When you release it to them, it's releasing it to someone who carries the weight to the best of their ability, because no one will carry it like the senior leader, but can carry it to the best of their understanding and truly in a way, capacity of viewing it as my own.

SPEAKER_00 27:59

That's right. And and let me- I know we're running out of time, but can I give a leadership hack? Please. I don't I didn't come up with this, I learned it from others. Really good leaders do keep a self-contained amount of things that they high control, and then they can funnel their high control into it. I'll give you a couple of examples. Please. Uh long, long time ago, I asked Bill Highwells to come speak to a group of Presbyterian pastors, like, we wear robes. Like he, and people may not even know who he is. And he had an unfortunate ending to his time at Willow Creek, but he did do a lot of leadership. And uh he said, Yes, I'll come talk to you. It's a Friday night. I'm like, what in the world? So I talked to his assistant, Jean, who is, oh my gosh, she's probably sitting right next to Jesus whenever she dies. She's amazing. And I said, Why in the world did I not go through you? Why did he respond to me directly? And she said, Because Fridays are his to micromanage. He lets me do what I want with all the other days of the week. Yep. And then Fridays, he gets to make the most random choices, like coming and talk to you and your Presbyterian friends. That's pretty random. Right. Another story, and I don't uh uh uh okay, I'll just go ahead and name the name. Um my friend Joel Osteen, who's a driver and a wedge from our office, he's a master delegator. He delegates however. Now I don't know if this is still true, but but up until recently, and maybe even now, uh Sunday, he does his messages, he goes out in the lobby, he greets every V uh visitor that wants to greet him fine, and then, oh, I'm so tired, I go home. Nope.