The Hidden Struggle of Young Leaders

As a young leader in the business world and the church, I can get frustrated easily. I see things that are broken and I rush to fix them. When I see too many broken things, I want to give up. This is a common. Many people struggle with this feeling and some people give up. Why does this happen?

As I was listening to an interview with Dave Ramsey on the Catalyst podcast, he answered this question for me. God has probably been trying to tell me this for years though! Here’s a paraphrase of what Dave said:

“Young leaders don’t lack energy, talent, motivation, focus or skills. The number 1 thing they lack is patience. They lack the mentality that ‘this too shall pass.’ This will work itself out. We don’t have to fix everything right now. We will get to our goals, but not immediately. I would tell them it took us 15 years to get where we are now so we won’t fix all our problems overnight. We’ve seen a lot of team members come and go. Young leaders would come to me all frazzled that a key member of their team just quit and they didn’t know how their team would survive. I would tell them to give it a couple weeks and it would work itself out. Churches will also deal with drama around church members and volunteers. It will work itself out. Have patience.”

The hidden struggle of young leaders is patience. That was eye opening to me. I don’t have patience. I want everything to be amazing today. I want a 20% pay increase every year. I want our church to experience the same growth pattern as Rob Bell’s church. However, what I need to do is slow down and experience God’s patience in my life.

Good to Great companies were not built in a day or a year or a decade. The “get-rich-quick” mentality glamorized by dot com, network marketing and real estate are just bubbles and eventually crater. God has seen it all and he is not shaken. “There is nothing new under the sun.” (Ecclesiastes 1:9) Click here for some other bible verses on patience. How have you learned to have patience in leadership?