In the last post, I broke down some of the most common ways I have noticed women leaders in ministry tend to self-sabotage. In this post, I will continue with two more examples of internal barriers. If you are a female leader reading, ask the Holy Spirit to help identify areas that he would have you grow in, without shame or guilt. For male leaders, ask the Holy Spirit to give you wisdom for how to navigate these issues with women that you may lead or work with.
Not Leveraging Our Emotional Intelligence as Leaders
For years, I felt like being soft-hearted was one of my greatest weaknesses in leadership. When people shared their hardships with me, I would cry openly. Steven teases me that I can’t hide my face – if I’m angry, frustrated, sorrowful, or amused, everyone will know it. I was ashamed of this trait until one day, a woman I was leading told me “I love that you are a strategic leader, but also an emotional one.” What I hadn’t realized was that my tears were actually key to building trust with her, and that my openness created space for her to feel like she could be authentic in how she felt too.
What it is: One of the greatest strengths many women leaders bring to the table is emotional EQ and empathy. Many female business leaders tend toward empathetic and collaborative leadership styles that involve deeper relationship building and personal connection. And while both men and women have emotions and express them, many professional and leadership contexts still hold to the tradition of “keeping emotions at the door”. Women who show emotion will more quickly be stereotyped as “hysterical” or more “irrational”, while men are usually given a pass. Ironically, women who are less prone to showing emotion can be stereotyped as “cold”. Consequently, women who are more connected with their emotions are often not trained to appreciate or leverage their emotions in their leadership for God’s glory, but instead may feel pressure to stuff down their emotions to avoid a stereotype.
Underlying beliefs: When we have weaker emotional control or understanding, we may believe that our emotions are simply too much. We may feel like we are out of control and weak, or that emotions sabotage our leadership. As a result, we fear portraying our authentic selves to others because we internalize that who we truly are is embarrassing, could never be accepted, and would end up only burdening others.
What Poorly Leveraged Emotions Look like:
- Suppressing emotions – Western society has generally limited what emotions are appropriate for women to essentially always wearing a smile. But women experience a whole gamut of emotions, including negative ones! So we often associate emotions with weakness or disapproval, and will do everything in our power to not express them. This creates dissonance within ourselves and causes others to perceive us as unapproachable. In addition, the longer we bottle up our emotions, the more likely we are to overreact.
- Manipulation – Sometimes, our emotions can take over. We may lash out in anger, gaslight, or cry to manipulate and win sympathy from others. Women without control over their emotions may be seen as volatile and untrustworthy.
How to address poorly leveraged emotions: God created women in his image, and a unique thing about God is that he also experiences emotions! Jesus wept over the death of Lazarus (John 11:35), turned over tables in righteous anger (Matthew 21:12-13), and rejoiced in the Spirit (Luke 10:21). Our emotions help us to connect with God’s heart, and to reflect him to the world when we express our emotions out of the security, safety, and union that we experience in Christ. We don’t have to be ashamed of them. If you want to learn more about how to leverage emotions, we wrote an article on emotional thriving on the field.
When women leaders are unable to properly express their emotions or understand how to leverage emotions into their leadership, we lose a huge opportunity. Being vulnerable in our emotions allows us to display our authentic selves and to invite others to do the same. More often than not, properly leveraged emotion draws others towards us. The heart of ministry is always the people, and people are complex, messy, and emotional. Learning to be comfortable in our own feelings allows us to understand and be comfortable with others’ emotions too. This allows us to build empathy and collaboration into our leadership.
Application:
- Learn to be curious about your emotions. At any given time when you experience strong feelings, pause to consider where those emotions are coming from. What are your emotions telling you about your values, motives, situation, needs, and your place in it? What are they telling you about the values, situation, motives, needs, etc. of those you lead? A helpful tool to use is the Emotions Wheel.
- Step away when feeling emotionally overwhelmed and surrender your feelings to Jesus to carry. An easy tell for when you are emotionally “flushed” can include behaviors like complaining about others, speaking poorly of others, feeling overtaken by a feeling, or dumping raw emotions and venting onto a listener. It may take at least 10 minutes to calm down when you feel “flushed.” Learn to ask for time to process. “I want to take some time on this one and I’ll get back to you.” In that time, pray and ask Jesus to carry your emotions for you, and to help you sort through them.
- Share your feelings, not just information or directions, while maintaining proper boundaries! If you are emotionally aware and comfortable in expressing your emotions, those you lead will likely feel more comfortable being authentic with you. Ask those you lead for feedback, if you are uncertain how they received it.
Perfectionism
One of our best leaders in Thailand was a self-proclaimed perfectionist when she first launched overseas. And for her whole life, perfectionism served her well. She was excellent at almost everything she attempted and was the one you always could depend on. But when she landed in Thailand, language learning nearly broke her. No matter how hard she tried, planned, practiced, she couldn’t ever hear the tones of the Thai language. In a matter of weeks, she went from the consistent excellence she was always used to, to bottom of the class, just struggling to keep up with her husband and teammates. She had never not attained what she worked for, but the ability to pick up language was completely out of her control. Everybody around her had a front row seat to her failures. What must they be thinking of her? Every day she went to class, she experienced more shame at what a failure she was.
What is it: Perfectionism is the tendency to demand an extremely high or even flawless performance, in excess of what is required by the situation. Perfectionists maintain this high standard by controlling their own behavior, others, a narrative, or circumstances.
Perfectionism particularly impacts women because social messaging often portrays ideal women in confusing contrasts – beautiful but not tempting, nurturing others but never expressing personal needs, smart and assertive but not bossy, and always smiling – leaving women spinning as they try to be all things at once.
Underlying Beliefs: Perfectionists learn that people value them for what they do instead of who they are and come to see their worth as contingent upon other people’s approval regarding their contribution. This leaves them dependent on external validation and highly vulnerable to criticism. To protect themselves, perfectionists adopt the false belief that being “perfect” or achieving “perfect work” is their best defense against criticism and is the way to secure the future they desire. Perfectionist thoughts sound like, “if I can get this right, I can attain what I need and God will come through for me (or love me). It’s up to me. I can’t make mistakes.”
What Perfectionism Looks Like:
- Having a standard for yourself that is higher than the standard you would say is appropriate for others.
- Overwork and the inability to rest or delegate. Perfectionists will often take on the work of others (including work that really belongs to the Holy Spirit and not us!). Over time, working too hard leads to joylessness.
- Deep shame in failures and mistakes creates an inability to learn from those failures, admit mistakes, or receive critical feedback.
- Lacking grace for others when they make mistakes. Judging and competing with others. If other people perform better, they may become a competitor for the validation you seek.
- Oftentimes, those who are led by perfectionists may feel anxious, controlled, and pressured to be similarly perfect.
How Jesus Addresses Perfectionism: Freedom from perfectionism is found in the truths of the gospel. Perfection is impossible for us apart from Christ, and no amount of effort, discipline, or control will ever attain it. That’s why Jesus achieved perfection for us (Hebrews 2:10)! And through his death and resurrection, the inheritance of Jesus is yours by grace, not works (Colossians 1:12, Ephesians 1:3). Therefore, there is no need for striving, anxiety, or fear. Your work, your vision, and your fruitfulness is ultimately God’s responsibility, and he will accomplish it through you if you will surrender your methods for his (1 Corinthians 3:5-7)!
We also can remember the examples of biblical leaders who “failed” or did not have a perfect reputation, like David, Rahab, Peter, the Samaritan woman, or the sinful woman. How did God respond to these people? Despite making major mistakes, God still chose, anointed, and used these people in powerful ways. In fact, many times it was their weakness that magnified and enhanced the perfection of God (2 Corinthians 12:9-10).
Application: For perfectionists, battling perfectionism can feel like a lost cause because a mistake can trigger intense shame and hopelessness. But keep learning to extend grace to yourself every step of the way, and trust that it is Jesus who will give you freedom!
- Acknowledge your limitations and take intentional time to meditate on and receive God’s love for you, and how much he desires to show up for you in your weakness. Figure out what triggers your feelings of perfectionism / control. In what situations do you most feel like God won’t come through? What are the worst case scenarios that constantly play in your mind? Who are the people you most need to impress? As you learn to better recognize your triggers in the moment, take a step back, surrender whatever it is you’re trying to control, and remind yourself of your identity in Christ.
- Set reasonable goals that make sense for yourself and for others, and preemptively surrender the outcomes. Sometimes it helps to run your goals through others to make sure they aren’t unrealistic. Practice delegating responsibilities to others. And fight the urge to hover or dictate how other people complete these assignments.
- Set strong personal boundaries to prevent overwork. Schedule in times to rest, connect with community, and to disconnect from work.
- Own mistakes gracefully and view them as an opportunity to learn. Practice self affirmations when receiving feedback – “I make mistakes and that’s okay. God can use my mistakes for His glory.”
In reading lists like this, it is easy to feel discouraged. I know that I have personally struggled with each of these internal barriers, and sometimes become overwhelmed at what it will take to keep growing in order to be the leader that God has purposed me to be. But my encouragement to you is that finding freedom from these obstacles is not your sole responsibility. In fact, your sanctification and growth is the responsibility of the Holy Spirit, and he has every resource and wisdom to do so. Philippians 1:6 is a great comfort to me:
And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.
Philippians 1:6
The leader I mentioned in the section on perfectionism experienced this promise. Here is the rest of her story:
“The language learning season was the most painful, prolonged, and difficult season of my life to that point. I was the kind of person who never did anything that I wasn’t good at and only focused on the things that I was good at and that ‘worked’ for most of my life. I fell into a deep and dark depression, wrestled with suicidal thoughts, and became a shell of a person.
Even in the midst of that darkness, I knew the Lord was with me and was doing something in me. I know now that God was using that season to show me the ugliness and wickedness of my sin. Perfectionism which is rooted in pride is sin. Ironically, I prided myself on my perfectionism because it was how I achieved many things in my life. I finally saw perfectionism for what it was and realized it was not just an empty promise or a bad coping strategy but that it was destroying me.
The Lord lifted me out of the pit. Once I understood what perfectionism was and what it was costing me, I wanted it gone forever. I didn’t want to be ruled by it anymore. The Lord supplied the faith I needed in the moment to believe and trust that He could heal me forever of perfectionism, and He did.
Let it be known to you therefore, brothers, that through this man forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you, and by him everyone who believes is freed from everything from which you could not be freed by the law of Moses.
Acts 13:38-39-38
For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.
Galatians 5:1
These verses were so precious to me in that season. The heart of Christ is to free his people from their sins. Christ has purchased our freedom and the FULLNESS of our freedom. It’s so much more rich and vast and beautiful than we could ever imagine. But sometimes we fail to take Jesus up on his promise and live out of these truths. This doesn’t mean that process will be easy and pain-free, but it’s so worth it. I would walk through that season again just to live out of the freedom I have been walking in.”
I would walk through that season again just to live out of the freedom I have been walking in
This story happened ten years ago, and this leader would say confidently that God healed her of her perfectionism. She hasn’t struggled with it since. Not only that, in the past ten years she has gone on to disciple and develop women on our team and dozens of Thai women (speaking in Thai!), and take on leadership of her own team. Currently, their team and their Thai ministry partners are seeing weekly baptisms and churches planted in some of the least reached parts of Thailand!
God knew what he was doing when he called you into leadership. He knew who you were and still desires to not only work with you, but IN you! He wants to finish the good work he began in you at salvation by helping you find freedom from impostor syndrome, perfectionism, the need for approval, and uncontrolled emotions. Our job is to simply surrender these things to him in faith, trusting that the Holy Spirit will give you the power, guidance, and desire to overcome.
Take a moment to pray with the Lord:
- What would it look like if he freed you from all the obstacles in your heart that hinder your leadership?
- What would you attempt for God?
- What could he accomplish through you?