How To Lead When You're Not In ChargeSample

The greatest danger with not being in charge is the passivity that wants to settle upon you. I’ve noticed this in my own life and leadership. When I’m not in charge, the danger is to feel out of control. When I feel out of control, I become passive. In order to cultivate influence without authority, you and I need to reject the passivity that is so contagious in the roles we’re in. 

In my early twenties, I was in a season of going from one internship to another. During that season, just about every internship included some kind of closet I had to clean out. I now realize that in every church or organization, or even a home for that matter, there is that closet that just accumulates all of the junk. When you don’t know what to do with something, you just throw it in that closet. In most organizations, there is a day that comes around every year, coincidentally just around the time interns begin working, when the closet needs to be cleaned out.

Now that I’m on the other side of the closet-cleaning equation because I can give direction to interns, I love seeing interns that choose to clean it out before being asked. Every organization has closets like this. The closet represents that thing that needs to be done, but no one wants to do. There are projects, problems, and processes that just get neglected. They may have worked once, but over time were forgotten or abandoned. During a crisis season some things were dropped and never picked up again. Often, these are the long-term planning items, the practices and habits that make an organization healthy over the long run. But they will take some work to clean out and polish off.

What can you do to activate yourself to pick up something that no one else is willing to work on?