Overcoming Obstacles in Leadership

I love this portion of John Maxwell’s, Developing the Leader Within You.

“A wise philosopher once commented that an eagle’s only obstacle to overcome for flying with greater speed and ease is the air. Yet, if the air were withdrawn, and the proud bird were to fly in a vacuum, it would fall instantly to the ground, unable to fly at all. The very element that offers resistance to flying is at the same time the condition for flight.”

I can’t tell you how many times as a leader I have thought or communicated the idea that if a specific obstacle was not standing in our way, we would be able to accomplish much more than we were able to in that moment. However, looking back on those times, I now see that without those obstacles or problems, we would have never achieved what we achieved. Erwin McManus shares that it is the very lack of resources that forces us as leaders to be more creative in achieving our goals…but many times people look at obstacles as God “shutting a door” or “God not providing.” So instead of mobilizing and moving forward towards our goal, we back down and sit paralyzed staring at the obstacle that we allowed to stand in our way. I immediately think about Joshua and the Wall of Jericho. Joshua knew what God had called him to but he had the choice to obey or to be paralyzed, we all know based on the Biblical account, he did not allow the obstacle to stand in the way. Here is what Maxwell goes on to say…

“Many of the Psalms were born in difficulty. “Most of the Epistles were written in prisons. Most of the greatest thoughts of the greatest thinkers of all time had to pass through the fire. Bunyan wrote Pilgrim’s Progress from jail. Florence Nightingale, too ill to move from her bed, reorganized hospitals of England…Bury a person in snows of Valley Forge, and you have a George Washington. Raise him in abject poverty, and you have an Abraham Lincoln. Strike him down with infantile paralysis, and he becomes a Franklin D. Roosevelt. Burn him so severely that the doctors say he will never walk again, and you have Glenn Cunningham, who set the world’s one-mile record in 1934. Have him or her born black in a society filled with racial discrimination, and you have Washington Carver, or a Martin Luther King, Jr. Call him a slow learner and retarded-writing him off as uneducable, and you have an Albert Einstein.”

So what obstacle are you allowing to be an excuse to be paralyzed as a leader? Finances, Space, Volunteers, Lack of Knowledge/Wisdom, Lack of Skill??? Sometimes the very thing we think is holding us back is the very thing that propels us forward! (By the way, if you have influence you are a leader – Christian, Business owner, parent, spouse, employer, teacher, we are all leaders in some way).

Join the Conversation: What obstacles as a leader are you facing? Is it paralyzing you or is is propelling you forward to be more effective?