How to Lead When You're Not in Charge

by Clay Scroggins

  This is not about whether you should convey the thoughts that could better those around you. It’s about how you pass on those thoughts. I’m convinced that you can say anything—even hard and honest truth—if you say it in love and with a caring tone. When you communicate critical thoughts to those beside you, below you, or to your boss, you need to do so with a helping hand, not a grading tone. Here are a few practical ways to do this:

  • Assure the listener you are for him or her. When we know others are for us, we can better hear feedback that might otherwise feel critical.

  • Always present a solution to any problem you raise. Issue recognition doesn’t win friends.

  • Keep your blood pressure as low as possible when communicating feedback. If you can’t talk about it without getting emotional, you’re not ready to talk about it.

  • Deliver potential challenges in the rhythm of positive-challenge-positive. Some call it a compliment sandwich and some just call it wise.

  Great leaders know how to communicate critical thoughts in a way that benefits others. Jesus knew just how to do it, and through the way he loved the woman at the well, the woman caught in adultery, and even his longtime disciple Peter, Jesus showed us the way.

  THE POWER OF THE TOWEL

  Just east of downtown Dallas sits Dallas Theological Seminary. I’ve spent a lot of time on that campus and feel a huge debt of gratitude to that institution. One of the most vivid images in my mind from there is a statue I passed hundreds of times. With fantastic clarity and deliberate emotion, the statue depicts a famous scene from the life of Jesus. It’s a sculpture of Jesus in the upper room, just before the Passover festival, and he offers a striking model for leadership. After the dinner, Jesus does something that was and still is almost unthinkable for any leader, let alone the Savior of the world.

  The apostle John sets the scene by telling us, “Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power” (John 13:3). This is an odd statement. Powerful people do not do what Jesus does next. John continues, “So he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him” (John 13:4–5).

  When I was in school, I passed that statue so many times that it eventually blended into my surroundings. It became invisible to me. Then, one day, church history professor Dr. John Hannah eloquently brought this statue to life for me. At the beginning of the semester, he opened his class by telling us he was not there to give us a grade, but to give us a hand. He assured us that if we felt graded by the tests and papers, it was unintentional. He wanted us to know that his desire was to help us more than he wanted to grade us. I can still feel the genuineness of his words. Dr. Hannah’s words were wonderful, and as I passed the statue again walking out of class, it immediately connected his words with those of Jesus. Jesus never held a clipboard, but if anyone had the right to grade others, it was the perfect, sinless Son of God. But that’s not why he came. Jesus didn’t come to condemn the world; he came to save it. He was far more interested in helping others than in grading them.

  So think positively. And be a critical thinker as well. Be known as a value-add, a problem solver. As you pursue the skill of thinking critically, keep that image in mind—the picture of Jesus on his knee, towel in hand, washing the filthy feet of his closest followers. The Creator of stars and galaxies gave us a picture of what we need most—to be served and washed clean in our heart of hearts. Jesus did for us what we needed most and deserved least. He could’ve graded us, pointing out where we had failed and missed the mark, but he didn’t. Instead, he introduced us to the radical concept of servant leadership by grabbing a towel and dropping the clipboard. Thinking critically is crucial to becoming a leader who leads when you’re not in charge. And as you learn to think critically, never forget that the towel is the way God leads us, and it is always more powerful than the clipboard.

  CHAPTER 7

  REJECT PASSIVITY

  As an able-bodied, cheerful, and social college student who was deeply involved at an already large and continuously growing church, I was a prime candidate to help somebody move some furniture. To make matters worse, Matt BeVier, my closest friend at Georgia Tech and coleader of our high school ministry at church, owned a truck. Owning a truck is the kiss of death to your Saturday afternoon dreams of kicking your feet up and watching football. If Matt and I were more economically astute and entrepreneurial, we could’ve likely turned a profit from the dozens of friends and families who requested our services each week. Let’s just say I never got rich moving furniture.

  One of my clearest memories of our work was not something we moved, but something I learned from someone we moved. I remember a family that was upgrading homes and asked us to help them with the move. After a moving company had done the lion’s share, we showed up to move one final piece—the dad’s beloved pool table. It was getting moved to their new basement. Now, let me stop here and ask you: have you lifted a pool table recently? Of course not. Lifting a pool table is like trying to lift a sleeping rhinoceros. My favorite part of that job was the seventy-five-year-old, potty-mouthed grandfather who took on the role of foreman of the operation. I can’t recall his name and can barely remember his face, but the sound of his cigarette-scarred, raspy southern voice is unforgettable. I felt like I was enacting a Saturday Night Live skit as grandpa stood around watching us eventually move the table, offering a running commentary on every misstep and wall-scrape.

  He repeated one line over and over and over again, and it has stuck with me through the years. Every time I move something heavy, it pops into my head again. Anytime it looked like the pool table would win and crush us to death beneath its weight, the old man would yell in his raspy voice, “Don’t let it beat cha! Don’t let it beat cha!”

  That day, I smirked every time he said it. But it keeps ringing in my mind, popping in there at the oddest moments. It’s become something of a rallying cry for me to cultivate intentionality and assertiveness. Even though the pool table was an inanimate and mindless object, if I wasn’t on top of my game, it could have and would have beaten me down.

  “Don’t let it beat cha!”

  THE LOSS OF CONTROL

  One of the benefits of being in charge, of having authority over others, is the semblance of control that authority brings. We all know that the feeling of being in control can be powerful. When I start making decisions, I experience that sense of control and I’m more naturally assertive and intentional. When I’m the one calling the shots, I enter the zone and focus. I’m personally connected to these decisions, and when I’m the one who is ultimately responsible and accountable for the outcome, I just feel more buy-in. That’s why the feeling of ownership we talked about last chapter is so powerful. Owners feel a sense of control over the plan, the strategy, and the way forward for the organization. And while we all want to be in control, we shouldn’t assume that this control makes it any easier, because it’s not. But the feeling of control does naturally bring us more intentionality and assertiveness in our leadership.

  One of the most dangerous temptations we face when we’re working for someone else is passivity. If authority brings us a feeling of control, the lack of that authority makes us feel, acutely, our lack of control. And when I feel out of the loop, without any control over the plan, I tend to feel disconnected from the outcome. As much as being in control forces me to think deliberately about my decisions, feeling like I lack control causes me to do the opposite. When I feel like I’m being handed decisions, I throw my hands up, but not in the Taio Cruz kind of way. Worse, when I make decisions to move forward and those decisions get overturned by “those in charge,” I tend to respond by sitting on my hands, passively.

  The example that immediately comes to my mind in our organization is the preaching calendar. For those of you who preach, what would you say is the key ingredient to a gre
at sermon series? If we can agree to set aside the power of God for a moment, I would argue that it’s great planning. I’ve found that my best preaching happens when I’ve had time to let an idea simmer. Just like great pork butt, low and slow is the key. The further out I plan, the better I can prepare, and the more likely I am to cultivate life-changing, God-breathed principles and applications.

  The challenge I face as a campus pastor is that Andy Stanley ultimately controls our preaching calendar. And don’t misunderstand me; he should control it! He’s the one preaching around thirty-five Sundays a year, the majority of our services. And even though he tries to plan ahead, sometimes the length of his series changes. A four-part series turns into a five-part series, and that turns my three-part series into a two-part series as the schedule changes and I adapt around him. If I’m not married to an idea, it’s not usually a problem to change. But it can be frustrating and problematic when I’ve spent hours and hours planning and preparing for a three-part series only to find out a week beforehand that it’s changed and I need to drop an entire message. As frustrating as that can be, the greatest temptation is for me to become passive about my planning for the next time. It’s easier to just wait on the firm plan than to create firm ideas around a wobbly plan.

  Maybe you don’t have the authority you want. Or you’re frustrated because your well-planned idea keeps getting shot down. Maybe you’re discouraged because you feel like you’ve been labeled and it’s keeping you from the opportunities you want. Well, “Don’t let it beat cha.” It wants to. If you don’t pay attention to it, it will. Before you even realize it, the passivity of subordination will settle on you like the plague. That’s why resisting passivity is the best response.

  THE GENERATION OF CONTRADICTION

  Every one of us is walking around carrying loads of messy contradictions. For starters, I know I’m a sinful wretched person; yet I also know that I am fully forgiven because of Jesus’s work on the cross. Both are true and I walk around with the cognitive knowledge of both at the same time.

  Growing up on the border of the millennial generation, I can relate to one of the common criticisms made of them: being known as the trophy generation. I received participation ribbons and was applauded by teachers, parents, and administrators for anything and everything. And like many twenty-somethings today, I grew up being told I could be anything I wanted. And I believed it. I grew up believing Shakespeare’s line, “Why, then, the world’s mine oyster, which I with sword will open.”1 And of course there will be a diamond-studded pearl inside. Everyone has told me for my whole life that thus is so.

  Despite the criticism of receiving too much positive affirmation, there is a part of this I think is good. The sense of accomplishment and confidence it has built has created a generation of young leaders who are bold, confident, eager, and ambitious. Why wouldn’t you go for it when you’ve been told your whole life you can do anything? Sometimes, you just start believing it. This thinking creates a courageous mindset that is willing to try things, audaciousness to go for gold, and boldness to bust through obstacles that have held previous generations back. I know it has created confidence in me. Maybe an overconfidence, but I’ll let the sociologists arm wrestle over that one.

  The contradiction that many point out with the millennial generation is that even though we’re highly confident, we’re also deeply risk averse for some reason. The parents who have done all the handholding haven’t helped this generation move ahead on their own. When your parent does your homework, you get a great grade, which is nice. And it might help you get into a better college, but it teaches you that you don’t really have a risk of failing.

  As much as we laugh at it, trying to keep kids overly safe, avoiding failing or falling, has its own consequences. My friend Dr. Tim Elmore says that the removal of monkey bars on playgrounds is perhaps the clearest example of this. The monkey bars teach us something about controlling our bodies, learning to take calculated risks, and still avoid the nasty falls. Even though there is always the potential for an injury, a child who learns to play on the monkey bars experiences that feeling of accomplishment that most other pieces of playground equipment cannot provide. Taking away the monkey bars has led to the walking contradiction we see in this risk-averse, overconfident generation of young leaders.

  I see the contradiction in my own life, and I bet you do too. So, what do we do about it? Awareness is a great first step. Learn to recognize that a low risk tolerance may be resulting in passivity in your leadership. In the poetically poignant movie Tommy Boy,2 Ray Zalinksy, played by Dan Aykroyd, offers a fantastically helpful piece of advice to Tommy, played by Chris Farley. Tommy steps onto an elevator with Ray and within just a few moments, Ray detects an unusual odor coming from Tommy. Without making eye contact, Ray says with a strong Midwestern accent, “Went a little heavy on the pine tree perfume there, kid?”

  Tommy sheepishly replies, “Sir, it’s a taxicab air freshener.”

  I love the brilliant retort by Ray. “Good. You’ve pinpointed it. Step two is washing it off.”

  Obviously, there is nothing helpful about passivity when leading others. Anyone who has created anything has done it through intentionality. Even those who try and fail gain the benefit of an opportunity for learning. Thomas Edison is credited for saying, “I didn’t fail. I just found 2,000 ways not to make a light bulb.” The greatest danger of not being in charge and waiting around until you are, is that you never learn to risk or fail and how to handle that experience. You never learn from those mistakes. Learn to recognize that low-level fear in you that says, “If you try and fail, you’ll get labeled as someone who can’t.” Learning to ignore that voice is crucial. So being aware of passivity is the first step, but step two is learning to reject it and take action.

  WHEN WAITING DOESN’T WORK

  There’s a value in our organization we call remaining openhanded. This is massively important for us because we know that a team filled with closefisted people will become toxic. The best teammates are those who are willing to share ideas, who are able to withstand their idea not being used, and who understand when they’re asked to carry something outside of their job description for a season. That’s remaining openhanded.

  The danger of this value is that we begin to create leaders who lack the intentionality to fight passiveness. We’ve all worked with people who were too hesitant to take on more responsibility. Instead, they wait for direction. Maybe they hesitate for fear that their intentionality will be perceived as a land grab. Maybe they hesitate for fear of mishandling the responsibility. Maybe they hesitate out of laziness or because they’re already overwhelmed with their current load.

  Hoping someone will hand you responsibility may not be helping your boss. If you truly want to be a leader who is leading when you’re not in charge and capable of being trusted with more, you have to be willing to add responsibilities to your current role. When you sense yourself standing around waiting for more, a great first step is to look around for things that no one is addressing and take the first step. Don’t play the waiting game. You’ll miss opportunities to lead.

  A few years ago, a young leader who worked for me would end every one-on-one meeting by telling me he had margin for more responsibility. I thought his job was flush with responsibility, but obviously, it wasn’t keeping him busy enough. He wanted more, and told me so . . . on the regs (that means with regularity for those of you who can’t handle my abbrevs). To his credit, at least he was honest about it.

  With the best of intentions, he would tell me, “What’s on my plate is not completely keeping me busy and I’ve got more to give. If there’s anything else you need me to do, let me know.” While I appreciated the sentiment, I finally had to tell him that I needed him to be more intentional about picking up responsibilities. I told him he’d be most helpful if he could find problems that needed to be solved. I needed him using his additional margin to add value to what we were trying to accomplish. Part of his
job was to find ways within his area of responsibility to make better what we were trying to accomplish. That was his job, not my job.

  When you wait for your boss to tell you what to do, your boss then has to think about how to do their job and your job. If you’re always waiting to be handed more responsibility or a new opportunity, you’ll likely become someone who can’t be handed anything of importance. On our team, the people I trust most are the ones handling the most and taking the initiative to find and solve the problems I haven’t even noticed yet. So if you’re not busy, get busy! A waiting posture doesn’t win in the long run. If you don’t know where to start, look around. There are always responsibilities, projects, processes, products, or even people who are underutilized that others around you are just not noticing.

  ACTIONS YOU CAN ALWAYS TAKE

  Two years ago, my life changed radically. I’m not sure why it took so long, but for some reason, it wasn’t until age thirty-four that it finally clicked for me. I finally decided no one else could fix or ruin my life. That’s my job. Granted, I was in the middle of a pretty substantial job transition, but the change happened because I decided to quit playing defense and start playing offense. Every person is either on one side or the other. There are those who are deciding what kind of person they want to be and those who are simply responding to what life is handing them.

  We may have every intention of being in the first group, but it takes more than just intention. I decided that to be the leader I wanted to be, I had to quit responding to life and instead get out in front by developing better daily habits. I decided to wake up earlier, become more consistent in doing what I said I valued most, and spend more time preparing for the day ahead. I became convinced I didn’t have to be in charge to take charge.