I wanted to impress people. I thought I should impress people. I thought I was impressive.

I’m not saying I actually was impressive in every way I imagined. But I was a standout. I was bright, ambitious, creative, and usually had ideas about what ought to happen next. The problem wasn’t that I had no ability and mistakenly thought I did. The problem was that I didn’t yet know what to do with the ability I had.

I’ve been thinking about Joseph in the Old Testament. We usually focus on his arrogance when he tells his brothers about his dreams, which is fair enough. But Joseph wasn’t just a blowhard. He really was a standout. If he could eventually distinguish himself among all the people in Egypt, imagine how much he must have stood out among twelve brothers watching sheep. He was gifted, and he knew it. He was also immature.

I can relate to that combination.

I Thought Gravity Should Work Differently for Me

I grew up around rural people, and rural people are not easily impressed. They particularly don’t like self-importance. Everybody works hard. Everybody matters. Your ability doesn’t entitle you to more than anyone else.

I didn’t appreciate that nearly enough when I was younger.

Somewhere along the way, I developed an assumption that gravity ought to work more actively for me. If I could see something other people couldn’t see, shouldn’t they listen? If I had the idea, shouldn’t somebody provide the resources? If I had a big vision, shouldn’t other people get excited about helping me accomplish it?

I didn’t think other people were unimportant. But I did tend to imagine myself at the center. I would come up with the vision, and other people would help make it happen.

The genius with 1,000 helpers.

That model can actually accomplish quite a bit if the person at the center really is capable. But it has an obvious limitation. Everyone else remains a helper. Their contribution is measured largely by how well it advances the vision of the person in the middle.

I also had some rough edges. I made people mad on a fairly regular basis in my younger years. That doesn’t happen much anymore. What’s strange is that I don’t consciously feel all that different. I’m still me. I still have ideas. I still see possibilities and get impatient sometimes.

But I’m different.

What I Needed Was Development

Looking back, I don’t think I needed someone to convince me I wasn’t a standout. That would have been dishonest and probably not very helpful. I needed someone who could recognize what was there without being overly impressed by it.

There were probably one or two people who could have done that for me. I can see them more clearly looking backward than I could at the time. I needed more development. I needed to learn how to partner with people, how to listen, how to bring other people’s strengths into the work instead of simply figuring out where they fit into my plan.

Some of that change came much later. In 2010, several things happened at once. I went through a depression. The church I had planted experienced a leadership collapse, largely because many of our leaders moved away from our small town in search of opportunity. Ironically, that was the same pattern I had watched growing up. Talented people left rural places because opportunity was somewhere else.

Around the same time, I had the opportunity to learn from Reggie McNeal, and I was first exposed to the Coach Approach. Those experiences began changing the way I thought about leadership. I became less interested in being the person with the answer and more interested in what could happen if the people around me developed the capacity to think, decide, and lead.

I’ve experienced that personally, too. I grew enormously working with Chad at Coach Approach Ministries. Chad is a standout. Working with another highly capable person is different from having another helper. You don’t always get your way. Your ideas aren’t automatically the best ideas in the room. You have to adjust, learn, and occasionally discover that something became better because somebody else had significant influence over it.

I wish I had learned that earlier. But then again, I didn’t know what I didn’t know.

A Different Measure of Success

If my 35-year-old self could see the church I planted today, I think he would be disappointed by its size. It never became the large church I imagined. I don’t regret planting it, but I do regret some of the time I spent trying to make it bigger.

There was good work happening that I didn’t always know how to value properly. We did meaningful work in the community, particularly in the schools. And today that church is pastored by someone I mentored. I love that.

I’m not sure my younger self would have recognized that as one of the best possible outcomes. He was still looking at the size of the thing he had built.

That realization affects what I want from the remaining years of my professional life. I want the people around me to develop into mature, resilient leaders. I want that for people I mentor. I want it for my family. I want successors at Coach Approach Ministries who understand our vision and have the competence to carry it forward.

I’ve also realized that mentoring can’t be something you save for the end of your career. Lots of leaders imagine that eventually they’ll stop doing and start mentoring. I’m not convinced it usually works that way. Developing other people has to become an always-on part of how you work long before anybody throws you a retirement party.

I Still Want to Be Impressive

There is one problem with all of this.

If coaching became deeply embedded in churches and regional networks, if other people carried the work farther than I ever could, and if nobody knew I had anything to do with it, would I be completely satisfied?

I’d like to say yes.

I’m not sure I would.

There is still something in me that wants to be impressive. I don’t think the answer is to kill that desire by deliberately becoming unimpressive. I don’t think God needs to humiliate us until we finally understand how worthless we are. That’s a harsh picture of God, and I don’t believe it.

I still want to write things worth reading. I’d like my writing to reach more people. I may do more speaking and podcasting. I still want Coach Approach Ministries to accomplish significant things. I haven’t lost my ambition, and I’m not particularly interested in losing it.

But I would like the need to impress to die on the vine. Starved.

Maybe the way to starve it isn’t to stop doing things that impress people. Maybe it’s to stop feeding it with every decision. I can do excellent work without needing the work to prove that I’m excellent. I can develop someone without needing them to become evidence of my influence. I can have an idea without needing to become the genius surrounded by 1,000 helpers.

I don’t need to become less capable.

I want to need being noticed less.