Tag Archives: self evaluation

The root of insecurity

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How much damage is caused by insecure leaders?

So many behaviors in leaders can be traced back to a basic insecurity and the leader’s attempts to compensate for it. As I mentioned in my last post, Chip Ingram says there are weak and strong responses—an idea he credits to an out-of-print book by a Swiss Christian psychologist, Paul Tournier: The Strong and the Weak.

I’m not a psychologist, but let me try to use Tournier’s and Ingram’s thoughts to trace a few of the manifestations back to this core weakness. Rather than point at current-day figures, I’m going to draw on Scriptural examples and let you apply them to what you see in the world around you, whether it’s celebrities, political leaders or supervisors in your organization. Or in yourself.

Strong responses

Some cloak themselves by “powering up”:

  • Putting enormous effort into their appearance
  • Having an excessive need to count—how big their church is, how many people report to them, or how fast they’re growing
  • Gathering status symbols like cars, electronics or a network
  • Flashing wealth in various ways, including name dropping
  • Taking credit and seeking acclaim
  • Bragging and demonstrating arrogance
  • Aggression and intimidation through anger, threats, blaming and creating power imbalances
  • Other forms of attempts to control, such as manipulation and passive aggressiveness

A few Biblical examples stand out for me.

  1. Ahab is an abusive king featured in 1 Kings 17-22 who, along with his wife Jezebel, kills the Lord’s prophets and leads the nation into sin. But there’s one moment when Ahab opens up about his deep insecurity. When Naboth stands up to him and doesn’t let him push him aside, the king sulks and stops eating (1 Ki 21:4-6). Only Jezebel sees his vulnerable state and steps in with a brutal display of authority that keeps the mask intact for those under their thumb.
  2. In Isaiah 22:15-23, God calls out Shebna, King Hezekiah’s palace administrator, for his flashy chariot and for the tomb he’s building for himself. Was he insecure? He was an outsider, a foreigner appointed to a high position of leadership, and one possible meaning of his name is “uncertain” (Biblegateway Encyclopedia of the Bible). It seems likely that he tried to cover his imposter syndrome by projecting his status and through a clumsy attempt to leave a legacy.
  3. When we first learn of King Saul, he downplays his status (1 Samuel 9:19-10:1) and then hides in the baggage to avoid appointment as king (1 Sam 10:20-24). His insecurity presents as humility, but we soon discover a leader who has a weakness for people pleasing (1 Sam 15:24-30) and feels threatened when another is celebrated (1 Sam 18:7-9). His jealousy leads him to a vindictive hunt to kill David, his protege, and slaughters priests when they help him. 
  4. Jacob always comes in second place. He is a twin who fights unsuccessfully with his brother to get out of the womb first and then misses out on the favor of his father (Gen 25:22-28). His desire for approval leads to an over-competitive disposition and a lifelong tendency toward manipulation and deceit. He tricks his favored brother out of his firstborn birthright (Gen 25:29-34) and blessing (Gen 27), he bests his uncle in a battle of deceit (Gen 29-31), and he even wrestles with God (Gen 32:22-32). While his family members are all impacted by his actions, the worst thing is that he sets the stage for an entire nation (Gen 25:23, Gen 32:28, Gen 37, Hosea 12) who will wrestle with God.
  5. In the New Testament, King Herod demonstrates a similar pattern of jealous abuse of power as he tries to kill the newborn Messiah (Matthew 2:13-16). And Pontius Pilate demonstrates indecisiveness and fear of the people (Mark 15:1-15) that leads him to give in to crucifying the Messiah.

With those examples in mind, can you spot similar tendencies in some current-day leaders?

Weak responses

There is another, opposite way of cloaking insecurity, with so-called “weak responses”:

  • Presenting extreme humility, over-apologizing or perhaps demonstrating a victim mentality to gain sympathy
  • Withdrawing and pursuing isolation to avoid potential rejection, perhaps avoiding people or eye contact
  • Protective or superficial responses, to dodge introspection or disclosure
  • Defensiveness or avoiding feedback mechanisms
  • Deflection of any hint of depth through humor or sarcasm, or dismissing compliments
  • People-pleasing in a desire for validation or to avoid upsetting others. In leadership, this can come out in deferral of decisions or difficult conversations.

While there are plenty of examples in Scripture, this blog is focusing on those in leadership. Here are some examples from the Bible:

  1. Twice Abraham tells self-protective half truths to save himself, putting his wife Sarai in a risky position (Gen 12:10-20, 20:1-18). While he could rationalize his actions, because he had married his half sister, his actions undermine his credibility, cause his wife harm and bring plagues against innocent rulers of other nations.
  2. After Moses fails in his first attempt at leadership, he isolates himself in the wilderness—for 40 years!—leading sheep instead of people (Ex 2:11-15,3:1). When God calls him to a place of prominent leadership, he fights and fights that calling with multiple arguments, self-deprecating beliefs and even begging (Ex 3:11-4:13).
  3. Moses’ brother Aaron caves in to the demands of the people when his brother disappears for 40 days on Mount Sinai (Ex 32). He lets the people break loose, creates a golden idol that leads them to sin and abdicates responsibility when confronted with his role (Ex 32:21-25). His actions lead to a brutal punishment against the people he had been responsible for.
  4. Jephthah was a man forced into exile by his family because of his illegitimate birth until they needed a warrior to lead them as judge (Judges 11:1-11). His guarded response and negotiations for guarantees are understandable in light of his background, but his leadership is derailed by his rash vow even after the Spirit of the Lord came upon him (11:29-35). It reads like a clumsy attempt to negotiate with or even manipulate God. His six years as a judge are marked by internal wars.
  5. I could also mention Jeremiah, who told God all the reasons he couldn’t use him (Jeremiah 1:4-10), and Barak, who wouldn’t lead the people without help from courageous women (Judges 4:6-10).

Tournier says the goal of either strong or weak responses is to maintain distance or create a false image so no one will know who I really am. I need to keep people away because, “If you ever knew who I was, you wouldn’t like me.”

If we were all truly honest, how many of you readers and those you lead have this basic core belief? We all need to deal with the root of insecurity before it causes deep hurt.

This post is getting a bit long, so I’m going to split it. In my next post I’ll approach the question, if everyone is insecure, what can we do about it?

Related blog posts:

How long is too long?

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Let me follow up an obvious question regarding my last post. As Vineer Bhansali1 says about investing, “there’s no glory in staying too long.” But how long is too long for a leader? 

We likely all know a leader who stayed too long in a role. In remaining in place, he managed to steward the organization right past the point of high returns and ride it down the back slope of decline. As I was weighing my decision during my 2022 sabbatical, I had a conversation with another CEO who had recently refused a request by his board that he extend his time in office. He said he would rather leave with more to do than to hang on too long.

The question at hand is obviously contextual, so my advice is to define your own standard in advance. Ask yourself regularly what indicators will tell you it’s the right moment to leave. Regular check-ins will help you extricate yourself from initiatives, keep you light on your feet and make sure you can let go when it’s time.

So much has been written about this topic that I’ve wondered if I have anything fresh to add to the discussion, but this topic was an obvious void on this blog. So I will draw from my own experience and my personal indicators that it’s time to go.

1. If I know what needs to happen, but don’t have the energy to do it. I heard this one first from Andy Stanley. As I was debating my decision, there were several initiatives that came up in which I was motivated to take on the challenge, even if that meant I would have to extend my time in the role to really make the initiative successful. But I can recall a day that someone raised an issue that needed addressing, and I sighed. It was something previous leadership teams had discussed at length, and we thought we’d solved it. Now here it was again, and I didn’t want to deal with it. Alarm bells went off in my head.

2. When new challenges come up, my response is backward-looking. I remember hearing myself saying more than once in response to questions, “You should have seen how bad it was when I started! It’s so much better now.” In other words, when there’s an opportunity or need to change something, you’re looking back and trying to advocate for the change that was already made, not recognizing that you’ve been around long enough that your changes might need to be changed. More alarm bells. As Tom Robbins once wrote and Andy Stanley often repeats, “When your memories exceed your dreams, the end is near.”

3. Have I stopped doing the little things? I’ve collected a number of indicators that fall within this category, though I can’t recall the sources. 

  • You stop asking people on Monday how their weekend was. It’s a sign you’ve stopped caring about people. 
  • You stop doing the foundational things that built your success. For instance, attention to building strong meeting agendas, or finding opportunities to invest in young leaders. 
  • You begin disengaging or even disappearing during the day, perhaps caring more about some pet projects than about the core business. 

The biggest warning for me in the David and Bathsheba story (2 Samuel 11-12) is the line, “In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war, David sent Joab out with the king’s men and the whole Israelite army” (11:1). David stopped his normal behavior and abdicated his responsibility to lead from the front. He then found himself with extra time on his hands that led him into sin. Was it entitlement? Was it boredom? While he couldn’t walk away from being king, you can walk away from your leadership role if you’re not doing the little things anymore.

My friend John Pellowe, CEO of the Canadian Centre for Christian Charities, has put in four five-year terms, and he recently decided to put in one more. His decision follows his usual rigorous time of discernment when he asks himself, his team and his board, What kind of leader does the org need for the next five years? Then he asks himself, Can I become that leader? 

I’ve always been impressed at this process, because it forces him to ask some deep-cutting questions, like these from Larry Putterman2:

  • Are you able to continue to reinvent?
  • Do you continue to have fresh ideas?
  • Is a different skill set necessary?
  • Can someone do the job better?

The important thing is that you think ahead to know what you’re looking for, and do regular self evaluation. Even better? Give permission to a few trusted advisors to tell you if they see warning signs. They may see things that fall in your blind spots.

References:

  1. How To Ride A Bucking Bull: Stay Calm And Hang On…For Now, article by Vineer Bhansali, Forbes, Sep 19, 2018
  2. 13 Reasons a Leader Knows It’s Time to Step Down, blog post by Larry Putterman

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A penetrating question

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One of the other things Perry Noble asked young leaders pierced pretty deeply.

Are you more interested in being discovered or being developed?

Ouch. I had to do some self evaluation. Here are a few random follow up questions.

Do I feel deep down that I deserve that next step? If I arrive at the wrong conclusion, the result of my pride will be bitterness… and jealousy when others don’t notice my abilities. I recently started compiling a list of people who used to work for me but are now in higher positions than me. It was a good discipline, because it exposes my sin nature! I had to remind myself that those are successes. Perhaps I played a part in their development, even if the best thing I did was get out of the way and not hold them back.

Do I have a realistic picture of myself? I completed a 360 review last summer that even looked back on some previous jobs. My memories of my abilities and acomplishments in Canada were dashed as I read the feedback of two colleagues who pointed out some real flaws. Amazing to think that these two were among my biggest encouragers and supporters. When they looked at me, they obviously saw my potential more than my abilities. Thank God I’ve grown a lot since those days.

Am I a lifelong learner? Many have said that the first step of leadership is leading yourself. After all, the first and easiest thing I can control is myself. As I mentioned in a previous post, even those at the top don’t have it all figured out. I pray that when I’m 60, I’m just as devoted to trying new things. I pray that I continue to read and listen to things that challenge me and disagree with me. I pray that I still learn from others — even those with less experience than me.