The Thing About Leadership Is

The Thing About Leadership Is… You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know

Here’s the challenge with some leaders: gifting has become the great qualifier. Gifting is great but it isn’t enough. Gifting without humility leads one to think they’ve got it all figured out - be it after reading a book, watching a few TED talks, and leading a small group of people who mostly agree with them.

But leadership—real leadership— isn’t about confidence. It’s about realizing how much you’re missing.

Enter the pastoral residency: a glorious crash course in humility.

It’s where theory meets reality. Where your clever ideas hit the wall of actual people with actual problems. And it’s where you start to see the blind spots you didn’t even know you had.

You don’t just learn how to preach or lead meetings. You learn how to listen. How to fail. How to grow. And, crucially, how not to be an idiot with a title.

So if you’re serious about forming leaders worth following, give them the gift of discovering just how much they don’t know.

Then stand back and let the transformation begin.