What Competence Was Carrying
Opening Reflection
Lately, I've been struggling with the calling to write.
I knew there would be a challenge in learning a new skill. I was up for that challenge, even though I would never have considered myself gifted at writing. In all honesty, I spent most of my career writing as little as possible, often relying on templates and standard formats.
I expected I would need time to learn technique, improve my craft, and find my voice.
What I didn't expect was for the process to expose something deeper.
I thought the struggle would be about developing a skill. Instead, much of the struggle has been about discovering where I had grounded my identity.
For most of my career, competence felt normal. It was simply part of the landscape. I knew how to analyze complex situations, help organizations make difficult decisions, and bring clarity to challenging problems. Those abilities had been developed over decades and reinforced through experience.
What I didn't realize was how much reassurance competence provided.
Not consciously. It was just there.
Only when I stepped into an area where I was a beginner again did I begin to see how much weight it had been carrying.
When the Ground Beneath You Shifts
But isn't this true of almost every significant transition we experience?
A pastor becomes an executive director. A fundraiser becomes a CEO. A director of operations steps into executive leadership. A program manager becomes a director. A CFO becomes a writer. An executive director becomes a retiree.
Whenever there is a significant shift in role, something gets exposed.
Sometimes the exposure is straightforward. The new role requires skills we have not yet developed. Most leaders eventually recognize those gaps and begin finding the advisors, training, and experience they need.
But transitions often expose more than skills.
I've noticed that leaders who navigate major transitions well are not necessarily the most confident or the most experienced. Nor are they the leaders who have all the answers.
More often, they are leaders who have learned to ground their worth somewhere deeper than the role itself.
When the familiar sources of confidence disappear, they still have something stable to stand on.
That doesn't mean they never wrestle with doubt. Most do. The difference is that they don't automatically accept every accusation that surfaces in the process.
When the inner voice says, You're not capable of this, they examine the claim rather than assume it is true. When the fear of failure surfaces, they don't immediately conclude they are failing. When uncertainty appears, they don't treat it as evidence that they are in the wrong place.
They also rarely navigate those seasons alone. They have people around them who will tell them the truth—not merely offer encouragement, but help them see clearly when their perspective begins to drift.
And perhaps most importantly, they remember.
They remember other transitions that once felt overwhelming. They remember God's faithfulness in previous seasons. They remember the Scriptures that sustained them when certainty was harder to find.
The role may be new, but the need to trust God in unfamiliar territory is usually not.
Steady leadership begins with seeing clearly.
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