For me, one of the hardest parts of leadership is sustaining both passion and perseverance.
However, I also know this is the call of leadership. If you are to lead, you must have passion for what you do AND an ability to persevere as you do it. You need grit, as so well described in Angela Duckworth's book, "Grit".
Leading must involve your passion. The person with the most passion is the leader. This is not the person with the biggest voice or the most “charisma” but the person with the most passion for the task at hand.
And, leading must involve our own ability to persevere. It can be developed, but you must be intentional about developing it. Ask yourself some questions to work it out: Can I see things through, or do I give up before we get somewhere? Do my interests change too fast, or can I maintain focus?
You must have both passion and perseverance to be a leader in any area, but this is especially true in social change leadership, where the cause is the driver (as opposed to profit).
At Project Nexus, we also believe you need to take it another step. It is not enough for cause-driven organisations to have passion and perseverance in the leader. That leader must also develop both passion and perseverance in the leaders around them and in their organisations–in churches, business as mission organisations, schools. The reason is simple: these communities will be asked to make decisions with them. A good leader helps those they lead to see how it all comes together in the vision, mission, and practice of what they all do and why they all do it.
If only the leader has passion, then the cause will ultimately fail. If only the community has perseverance to keep going, then our leadership will fail. It is only when we all have a developed understanding of what our collective passion and perseverance is that we will ultimately change our communities and our world. Anything short of this is just survival.
None of this happens by accident. If you would like to develop passion and perseverance then speak to Project Nexus. We have tools and people to help you work through it.
