• Leadership: Self Correcting #3
Leaders: Self Correcting
After watching numerous hours of professional tennis, I have observed how the pros seem to be able to “adjust their game,” as their game develops. It is like they find “another gear” to raise the level of their performance. The opponent tries to a find a weakness to exploit. The defender raises their level of play to counter this attempt. When what they are doing fails to work, they make a correction to the game plan, while they are playing. This is a bit like trial and error, but it works. This reminds me of…
The battery-operated cars that I bought my grandsons. When to cars go forward and bump into something, it backs up and turns to go another direction. This process of trial and error allows the car to “self-correct” its direction when it encounters any obstacles.
As leaders we move forward in admin/leadership efforts until we encounter resistance, which should give us pause and encourage another attempt or response to rectify any opposition. This resistance has the role of forcing us to deal with realities on another level. We have to find another way. If we are doing something wrong, we have to deal with it, make an adjustment, try something else or “self correct.”
The only way we learn anything is always at someone else’s expense. After all, the church pays you for your expertise, but they also pay you to learn from your mistakes! The better you become at handling this adjustment, the better your leadership becomes. So you must make an effort to learn from everything you do as a leader. Learning to evaluate, think, assessing your situation and/or getting feedback on “what works” and “what does not work” is what “self correcting” is all about.
The more you practice “self correcting” the less others will attempt to correct you. Also the more you practice the faster you can adjust even while you are doing the work. As in tennis, sometimes the smallest adjustment can win the game, set, match. Finding “another gear” is what “self-correcting” is about.
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