A little bit more clear.

I entered a ministry that has existed for 40 years in July 2022. I work with a paid staff team and a volunteer leadership board. There are a lot of history, traditions, pre-existing tensions, and what you may call “scared cows.” I walked into this job knowing that there was a lot of work to do, but I was gravely mistaken that my primary responsibility was going to be solving the day-to-day operational problems or handling parent, staff, and student issues. It turns out I have many people on my team who are very capable of handling these issues.

My primary responsibility as a senior leader of an organization is inviting volunteer leaders into the daily work of our staff team. This was a new learning for me, as I am still trying to summarize my job into a 1 sentence job description (an explanation of the essential purpose that you fill in your organization). You can watch Andy Stanelye’s talk: Simply Lead, here (30min).

In the past 6 months, I have adjusted my 1 sentence job description a few times to match what I think I should be doing after speaking to different team members. It is an ongoing learning process. Sometimes I feel pretty vulnerable because my path to leadership is not as solidified as I want it to be.

I am fortunate to be reminded that I am only 6 months into this job, and I have yet to see a full school year. There is still so much for me to discover and so much for me to see.

This is the result of investigating what my job is really about, or at least what people think my job is about. I am still learning to ask questions, find out people’s expectations, and figure out how to put the responses together like a puzzle. I wonder if this is what a start-up feels like where there is so much space to create because there are still a lot of unanswered questions.

At the same time, my confidence increased because I knew I had the skills to investigate, strategize, communicate, and implement, and I needed time to get myself through the process.