Leaders Name Problems!

Every Christian leader's been there…

"The church band gets up to play but immediately something’s off. The guitarist's started too slow, the drummer’s trying to speed up and the congregation's completely lost. The show must go on, however, so no one says anything and instead the band press on and play to the end."

"You get up to preach. As you make your way through the introduction you feel your nose start to run. You play it cool and reach for a tissue but come up short. Still, rather than stopping and dealing with the problem you power on; subtly wiping your nose with your shirtsleeve and sniffling your way through the rest of the sermon.”

“It’s the night of a big evangelistic event. It’s been months in the making. The night arrives but no visitors show up. You sense the disappointment but not wanting to be a downer, don’t mention it and instead carry on as if the room was full and the night had gone exactly as planned."

A sage piece of advice I was once given is that in moments like these “the leaders job is to be the one who names the problem.”

Here’s some thoughts on what makes this such good advice.

Everyone’s Already Thinking It

The first reason leaders need to name the problem is because everyone's already thinking it.

Not mentioning it, doesn’t hide the problem or make the issue go away; it just makes you seem oblivious. Worse, the problem becomes a distraction, because everybody can see it but feel they’re not allowed to say anything.

The Christian leadership guru Craig Hamilton puts it this way:

Whatever the weakness is, the people on your team already know about it (...) So the point is that if you try and pretend they don't exist, you either make yourself look like a fool or you make your team think you can't be trusted.[1]

When leaders acknowledges an issue, all this dissipates. Rather than a looking a fool and leaving your team feeling embarrassed to bring the issue up , everyone knows the leader knows and so it’s okay to talk about it. This in turn actually builds trust and credibility in your leadership.

That’s why it’s so good when a band leader realises a song has gone off the rails stops and says “how about we try that again” or when the preacher with a runny nose, pauses and asks “does anyone have a tissue?” With the issue named, everyone can relax, have a chuckle and move on to addressing it.

It Gives Permission to Fail

Leaders who are willing to name problems also serve those they lead by giving them permission to fail.

When we don't speak about failure our implicit message is that failure is not okay; something to be hidden and avoided at all costs. This is problematic for while failure ought never be our objective in ministry, as finite and fallen people it is an inevitability.

It also stifles gospel creativity and risk-taking. Who's going to be willing to try something new, if those responsible don't have the capacity or vocabulary to handle when things don't work out as planned?

In contrast, when we name that something's failed we communicate that we don't expect everything to always go well in our ministries. There will be some ideas that we experiment with that don't work out, and that's completely okay.

More than that, acknowledging failure keeps us grounded, helping us not take ourselves so seriously and instead reminding us that we are not God’s plan of salvation; Jesus is. Our job is to trust him who works through weakness to bring about his good purposes.

It Invites Growth

Perhaps the biggest reason leader’s need to name the issue is because in the end doing this invites growth.

When a leader is defensive or unwilling to admit that something didn’t work, people will be far more hesitant to offer feedback. Perhaps not wanting to hurt your feelings or appear overly critical they’ll tippy-toe around the issue. If they do offer feedback, it’s unlikely to be the whole story.

When the leader admits there’s a problem, the effect is to invite people into the solution.

No longer do they have to work out how to raise an issue, you've already named it and invited their input. That means you can get on to analysing what went wrong and considering solutions.

I experienced the benefit of this recently in the campus ministry I'm involved in.

The attendance at our weekly bible talks had been dwindling all year. The issue came to a head, however, during our annual mission week. We invested a bunch of energy and resources into it, advertised far and wide. But much like the example at the start; the attendance was disappointing to say the least. So much so that I overheard one student apologising to the guest speaker after his talk for the lack of visitors present.

We could’ve ignored the problem. Theologised it away, stood on our convictions about 'faithfulness not fruitfulness' and 'the sovereignty of God in mission' (which I believe wholeheartedly by the way) and moved on to the next thing.To do that though would've been to miss an opportunity to grow.

So instead we chose to look the problem in the eye.

The result was an honest conversation with our leadership team that identified some deeper things going on. With those insights, we're now much better armed to address the problem we'd been facing. Had we not named the issue, this never could happen.

Keep Naming the Problems!

So leaders, whether it's as trivial as stopping and asking for a tissue, or an issue where there's far more at stake, please take up the challenge to keep naming problems in your ministries!

Everyone knows about them anyway, plus it might just result in your people being less afraid of failure and more honest in their feedback as you work together as one for the sake of the gospel.

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[1] Craig Hamilton, Wisdom in Leadership (Sydney, N.S.W.: Matthias Media, 2015), 220.