How to Lead When You're Not in Charge

by Clay Scroggins

  The opposite is true when others champion us publicly. We feel built up, believed in, and pushed forward because of a public affirmation. It’s powerful. And sure, if we were more secure, we could handle anyone at any time confronting or challenging what we’ve built, but we’re not all that secure. We’re all fragile in different ways. Choosing to champion your boss publicly is always a win. It builds a strong bridge, which can then handle the weight of challenging up. When you are ready to have that challenging conversation, the environment where you talk is also important. If you’ve put in the time, built trust with your boss, and championed him publicly, you might be able to challenge him in real time as something comes up or in a meeting with others. Most often, though, the conversation needs some blocked-off, dedicated, personal time.

  In our organization, managers are expected to have routine one-on-ones with their team members. If you don’t have a regular one-on-one with your boss, maybe it means you need to request a time for the two of you to sit down and talk. The more challenging the conversation, the more private it should be. Challenge privately. Champion publicly. Do not confuse these two! Though they sound similar, very little does more to damage a relationship than confusing them.

  YOUR POSTURE

  Another essential ingredient when you challenge up is your posture. Sit up! Sit straight! Your physical posture is defined as the way your body is positioned when you are sitting or standing. If you haven’t seen Amy Cuddy’s TED Talk entitled, “Your Body Language Shapes Who You Are,”1 you need to see it. It’s fascinating and quite hilarious as well.

  Though your physical posture is important, when I talk about the posture of a leader, I’m thinking more about your nonphysical posture. How do you position yourself? How do you carry yourself? Your physical posture is important, but your nonphysical or emotional posture is just as important, if not more so. Your emotional posture is determined by the thoughts and feelings you allow yourself to have toward yourself and your boss. Nothing affects your posture more than what you tell yourself about yourself and about your manager.

  Choose to trust your boss. If you constantly dwell on how frustrated you are, you will go into your meetings feeling closed and negative. Those negative emotions, feelings, and thoughts will naturally leak out in what you say. And even if you guard your words, your boss will likely pick up on your nonverbal cues. For more on this, Markus Buckingham’s chapter from The One Thing You Need To Know: . . . About Great Managing, Great Leading, and Sustained Individual Success is a must-read. Buckingham argues that the most common behavior in every great marriage is the decision to believe the best about the other person. He summarizes his advice with this directive: “Find the most generous explanation for each other’s behavior and believe it.”2 This insight is congruent with what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13:7 about love: “It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.” Very little will influence your posture toward your boss more than choosing to trust your boss.

  Trusting that your boss has your best interest in mind is a choice. Unless you have seen mounds of evidence that your boss is unworthy, you must choose to trust. If your trust is broken, talk to someone about how you are feeling and seek advice on how to respond. Otherwise, choose to trust your boss. It will not only help your boss, it will help you as well. And choosing to trust your boss builds trust with your boss. You’ve felt this yourself if you’ve had someone report to you. This is also one of the more interesting truths of parenting. When you trust your kids, your kids feel trusted. When they feel trusted, they make better decisions to keep that trust. When they make better decisions, you trust them more. It’s a spiral of positivity.

  Choosing to trust your boss builds trust with your boss.

  Admit to yourself and to your boss that you may be missing information. I find it’s quite helpful to admit that if you knew more about the situation, you would be less frustrated. This is good because it’s honest. Admit it: you don’t have all the information. When my sister and I cut the hole in the wall, I misunderstood my dad’s anger. I didn’t know it at the time, but I didn’t have all the information. When we don’t have all of the information, we can’t fully understand why the other person is feeling what they’re feeling.

  Simply saying out loud that you do not have all of the information will directly affect how you carry yourself when you approach a challenging conversation. If you think you have it all figured out, that you possess all knowledge, facts, and insight about this situation, what will your posture likely be? My guess is that it will look like this: arrogant, closed, and judgmental. There is no way to engage in a healthy, fruitful conversation if that is your posture.

  I first heard this quote in seminary, and I’ve never forgotten it. It’s brilliant. I’ve found it helps me determine the posture I want to have. Ashley Montagu, a British-American anthropologist, said, “Humans are the only creatures who are able to behave irrationally in the name of reason.”3

  Do you hear what Montagu is saying? What might seem completely irrational to Jenny actually makes sense to me. So who’s right? Jenny, of course. I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I’m not a complete moron either. But what explains the gap between us? We see the world differently. She sees it her way. I see it my way. If I saw it her way, I’m guessing her ideas and suggestions would make more sense to me. And if she saw things my way, I guarantee it would make more sense to her.

  It does you no good to walk into a situation thinking you have it all figured out. There is always information you’re lacking that can help you understand the situation more clearly. And if I repeat that to myself over and over again, it will radically change my posture as I approach a situation. If I saw it your way, I would understand why you feel like you do and why you’re doing what you’re doing. You need to stop just short of getting that phrase tattooed on your body.

  Stay in the balcony to remain emotionally neutral. My professional coach, Dean, has convinced me of this. The drama of a play happens on the stage, not in the balcony. Onstage, the actors in the drama are emotionally engaged as their characters. The more they’ve taken on the emotions of that character, the better the play will be. In the balcony, you are an observer. You are watching the play, but you are also able to reflect on it from a distance. Those watching in the balcony have the ability to stay emotionally neutral toward the characters, and this allows for more rational and objective thinking.

  If you’re assuming I’m a cold, dispassionate machine, I should mention that one of my gifts is that I’m a pretty passionate person. My heart is wrapped up in what I do. The danger I face is that when my emotions rise up, I say things I later regret. I can’t begin to count the number of meetings I’ve attended when I’ve had to apologize for something I’ve said. It’s as if I lose my ability to think clearly and function well when I allow my emotions to lead the way. I’m not alone in this. Fortunately, there’s a biological explanation for what happens to me and to those who have this problem.

  Have you noticed how difficult it is to remember someone’s name when you meet them? Within seconds of a person telling me his name, I’ve forgotten what he said. I may have even repeated it to myself. “Great to meet you, Garrett.” Seconds later, Wait, what was his name again? How in the world does that happen? When our emotions rise, our ability to think rationally declines. When we are learning someone’s name upon introduction, we are naturally more nervous and anxious because of the social context. When our nervousness rises, our cognitive ability to do something as simple as remembering the word “Garrett” declines. Emotions are such a powerful force for us, which is why we must learn to stay in the balcony when we’re in the middle of tense situations.

  If you can’t stay emotionally neutral about a situation, you’re not ready to bring it up. An emotional person is not a stable person, especially in a discussion with their boss. To be able to talk about something potentially complicated and personal, you need to be able to keep your emotions in ch
eck. You cannot allow your emotions to lead you to say things you would regret if you hope to maintain influence with others. You need to develop emotional maturity. If you feel you’re too angry or upset, just wait. Learn to control those emotions and practice thinking through them by thinking through interactions in advance. Thomas Paine said, “The greatest remedy for anger is delay.”4 Time has this amazing way of calming us down. The further away from a situation we are, the more clear-minded and levelheaded we can be. And the more effective we will be at challenging up. So stay in the balcony as much as possible.

  Prepare yourself to be okay with a no. I’ve never bought a car at a dealership, but I’ve bought loads of random stuff from Craigslist. Jenny and I have come to an agreement: if she will choose to buy used, I will go and make the purchase. Nothing looks shadier than meeting someone in a Walmart parking lot to negotiate the price of a used dollhouse.

  What I’ve learned from these fascinating interactions is that the person most willing to walk away without the deal usually has the upper hand. On the flipside, the person with the most to lose usually loses. We make worse decisions when we feel like we can’t walk away. But “no” is not the end of the world.

  When I’m willing to walk away from the conversation with a “no,” I handle that challenging conversation better. I put less pressure on others. Most importantly, this says something about what I believe about God. Do I believe God can do what he wants to do if the answer is no? Our good friend and local bar theologian, Garth Brooks, had something profound to say about this in “Unanswered Prayers”: “Sometimes God’s greatest gifts are unanswered prayers.” Sometimes God is giving you an unexpected gift when you get a no to your great, world-changing idea.

  I’ve also learned to translate a no as a not yet. If I feel passionate about something, but my boss just doesn’t see it the way I see it, I will translate his answer of no into not yet and go back to the drawing board to find a new approach. I refuse to take it as a loss; instead, I choose to see it as a potential approach that didn’t work—I can now cross that approach off the list. God is still God. He can find a way. If I believe that he establishes authority and he is not bound by time, I can translate my boss’s no into a not yet, and it’s not the end of the road. This keeps me energized and allows me to stay in a healthy posture toward the person in authority.

  Scott Adams, the voice and author behind the comic strip Dilbert, has written a fantastic book called How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big. In talking about careers, Adams writes, “Avoid career traps such as pursuing jobs that require you to sell your limited supply of time while preparing you for nothing better.”5 He says that everything we do should provide preparation for something else we can do in the future. I don’t think Scott Adams is a Jesus follower, but what he writes is completely congruent with God’s sovereignty and his ability to redeem even our losses. The more you trust God, the healthier your posture will be in those high-stakes, challenging conversations.

  The first two ingredients for challenging up, the relationship you have with your boss and your nonphysical, emotional posture, are primarily about you. As we saw in chapter two, identity is the foundation for great leadership. Who you are is more important than what you do and how you do it, but the last two aspects still matter. You are not the only ingredient in all of this. So these last two ingredients drive us to find the meaning behind what we’re challenging and the best approach to how we’re challenging up.

  THE MEANING

  Bringing a call for change can be empty if we don’t make it very clear why we are bringing this challenge. What’s the meaning? The reason behind the challenge? The Leadership Challenge says this well: “Leadership is not about challenge for challenge’s sake. It’s not about shaking things up just to keep people on their toes. It’s about challenge with meaning and passion. It’s about living life on purpose.”6 I’ve found this aspect to be a bit complicated for me because I want so badly to make my mark. I want to make a profound difference. I want my life to be useful and purposeful. If you’re in professional ministry or working on a church staff, this is especially tricky. One of the main attractions individuals feel toward full time, vocational ministry is the sense of purpose and fulfillment that comes from this work. That’s why it’s healthy to think through your motives. The temptation is in all of us to make change just for change’s sake.

  The most powerful reason to challenge the status quo is to make it better. Any other reason for change is counterproductive. But not everyone will agree on what defines better. The challenge is that it might be clear to you, but it is your responsibility to communicate this and make it crystal clear to your boss. In the first class I took at Dallas Theological Seminary, I’ll never forget the legendary professor Dr. Howard Hendricks saying, “If there is a mist in the pulpit, there’s fog in the pews.” This isn’t just true for preaching, though. If you are fuzzy on how a change you propose will make things better, your boss will be confused as well. Make sure the reason for the change and the benefits of the change are clear to you and that you’re able to make this clear to others.

  Start by finding the why. Begin by answering some simple questions: Why? Why are you suggesting this change? Why will this change make it better? The answer to why is not always easy to find, but if you can nail this, it will help you be clear about the meaning and purpose of this change.

  With over thirty million views, Simon Sinek’s video has brought insight, and the power of the question of why is no secret anymore. Not only has his TED Talk shaped me, but the guiding principle of his book, Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action, has been profoundly helpful as well. He writes, “People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it. And what you do simply proves what you believe.”7 Although pastors and preachers need to be careful not to “peddle the word of God for profit” as the apostle Paul reminds us in 2 Corinthians 2:17, there is a sense in which we are all selling something. When you challenge up, you are selling an idea, a new way, a different path toward a better future. The clearer your why, the more they’ll buy.

  Hold tight to why, but be loose with what. Year after year, our leadership team would bang our heads against the conference table as we evaluated the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend. We were not content with the results we were seeing. Because our suburban churches in the Atlanta area have a lot of families that attend, the school calendar creates our ministry seasons for us. Memorial Day weekend is a clear break between the school-year season and the summer season, and for that reason and many others, it’s typically the worst attended Sunday of the year for us.

  A few years into this frustrating dilemma, I noticed one of our partner churches had found a simple solution. In all of their communication, they let people know, “We’re not meeting on the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend.” I remember reading that and thinking, Well, that fixes the problem. But no church? Can they even do that? After thinking through all of my theological hoops, I convinced myself that it was okay. And so a few of us bonded together around this idea, and we gently brought it up to the leadership.

  Our why was clear: we wanted to begin the summer with as much momentum as possible. Our what was to cancel the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend and apply that energy to the summer. This was our pitch: “Hey, we have an idea. It seems like we are always frustrated and can’t find a great solution. What if we use this as an opportunity to kick off the summer as strong as possible and also honor our volunteers who serve so faithfully all year long?”

  So, how did it go? Shot down. No chance. No way. Terrible idea. “We can’t just cancel church. And, most importantly, do you even love Jesus?” That about summarizes the response we received from the higher-ups. To their credit, they agreed with the why. They also wanted to build as much momentum as possible heading into the summer. But the thought of cancelling a Sunday of services just seemed like too much, at least until we had exhausted every other what. So, year after year, we tinkered a
nd tried multiple options. Because our family ministry directors insist on giving as many volunteers as possible a break for that weekend, we tried having adult services but without children or student ministry environments. That created other problems with the way our adult service felt for those attending for the first time, because there were so many kids in the service. Then we tried to manage our student and children’s environments with very few volunteers. Our adult service felt better, but our family ministry leaders were unhappy with the experience of first-time children and students. Either way, every year when we reviewed that weekend, someone was unhappy with the results. Ultimately, nothing feels great when it feels like no one is in attendance. A full room does wonders for everyone. An empty room feels like a sinking ship.

  So a few years later, we brought up our suggestion again. What if we didn’t hold services for the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend? What if we used the day to give our volunteers a break? What if we took that energy and poured it into the first Sunday of the summer for a big kick-off to a new season? The ideas were the same, but the approach was much different. This time, we brought up the idea earlier in the year, brought a better plan for how to communicate it, positioned it as an opportunity for growth for our churches, and had better answers for the most common objections. We held tightly to the why; we had tried all the options of what; and we were patient but persistent.

  After years of conversation and debate, the leadership decided to pull the trigger and give it a shot. We think it has worked. Our attendance in the summer has been stronger, our volunteers have felt appreciated, and I’ll let you guess how the decision affected our staff culture. Finding the meaning behind the change empowered us to present a challenging idea. It also helped that we worked hard to make it less personal and to give a compelling answer to the questions of why and how.