In 'The Power of Belonging: Discovering the confidence to lead with vulnerability', church leader Will van der Hart and psychiatrist Rob Waller integrate the story of Scripture with the science behind mental health. This is an extract used with permission.
Longing for home
It is increasingly difficult to talk about 'home' in a manner that resonates positively with most people. It's not just that traditional nuclear families are becoming less common as much as the fact that the digital age has convoluted our experience of core relationships.
We both grew up in small families, long before the Internet, mobile phones, and social media were easily accessible. Home was relatively defined by a fixed membership and a set of distinct values. Our parents both still live in their family 'homes'.
Though such families are not guaranteed to have a sense of belonging, they do help to offer a vision of what home could be. Your experience of 'home' may be wildly different. You may come from a broken home, have step-parents as well as parents, or have moved house often, maybe at critical times in your development. You may have even come from a 'home' in which love and security seemed entirely dependent upon your performance, behaviour, or achievements.
If this is your experience, it can be harder to find a secure base and it is more tempting to hide your vulnerabilities. The three books written by Veronica Roth in the Divergent series (made into films in 2014–16) tell of a dystopian future where people leave their families and enter 'factions' based on their personality and skills. The factions are meant to be home; 'stronger than blood and where you belong', but something in the system is not right. It takes one 'divergent' person who doesn't fit into a faction to bring the whole idea tumbling down and to show it for the oppression it is.
For many people, especially those in leadership, success appears to offer a form of 'home'. People around us, and on the Internet, react with approval to the achievements we present to them. Unfortunately, this model relies on our ability to replicate these success stories. It is called a news 'feed' because it gives rise to suppliers and consumers. We 'feed in' our news, and our reward is that our hunger for belonging is satiated for a while. Yet when the news runs dry and there is no more genuine success to share, news gets replaced by fake news or people end up liking pictures of our evening meals.
The Internet isn't the only place that encourages conditional belonging. Work and social environments can do this too; even supposedly accepting places like the church can feel conditional at times. In leadership, the standards for your belonging can feel even more rigorous and your vision of home can become hostile and dependent upon your latest performance.
It is for this reason that capturing a better vision of 'home' and a sense of belonging is so fundamental to establishing authentic leadership. If you don't know where you are coming from (sending) and what you are going to (receiving), there isn't much of a chance that you are going to get there or feel secure along the way.
The young Moses
Like many shame-bound leaders, Moses (from the early chapters of the Bible) was devoid of a secure model of home. Moses was born an exile slave during a period of particularly intense Egyptian oppression, only to be adopted into the house of Pharaoh following his rescue from the Nile. These confused foundations had a significant impact on Moses' personal and leadership development, and yet they were also experiences that made him uniquely equipped for the mission to which God was to call him.
Our work on belonging is assisted, not by denying our fragile foundations, but by acknowledging their impact on our lives: revelation always precedes restoration. I imagine how a counsellor might have struggled to help Moses come to terms with his early home life: 'Yes, Moses, I understand that it must have been hard being born into slavery whilst the Egyptians were seeking to kill your peers.'
...'I know, your mother did pop you in a basket when you were a baby and put you into a crocodile-infested river, but she had good intentions.'
...'Indeed, you were found by an Egyptian Princess, but I am sure she wasn't like her father at all. She was probably very kind.'
...'Yes, your mother pretended to be a midwife rather than admitting that she was your mother, but at least she got to spend time with you, Moses.'
...'I know, she ultimately handed you back to Pharaoh's daughter, but there really wasn't much more she could do.'
...'I think that's probably enough for this week, Moses ...'
Leadership loneliness
Being without a home and feeling adrift is more than just an unpleasant emotion. It's dangerous, and we ignore it at our own peril. The fact is that in the absence of a positive vision of 'home', where we belong in healthy collaborative relationships, leaders naturally isolate themselves. They default into seeking the respect and admiration of others rather than looking to connect and collaborate.
They dress this up with bullish statements like 'It's tough at the top!' and 'Leadership isn't for wimps', but isolation isn't a strength, or a sign of good leadership. Tough decisions sometimes have to be made in leadership, but they don't mean that a leader has to be devoid of real friendships, real collaboration, or a real sense of belonging. Indeed, the leaders who inspire us the most typically are those who have a reputation for good relationships as much as they do for great achievements.
One example is Archbishop Desmond Tutu from South Africa. It is not just that Tutu is full of virtue in the task; he is overflowing with joy in its outworking, and this joy infects others. I (Will) was once privileged to be part of an interview with him, and I would guess that at least half of the interview was spent listening to him laughing!
In his book No Future without Forgiveness, he writes about a term called ubuntu: A person with ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed.
Some recent American research pooled many different studies on loneliness and found that being in healthy social relationships decreased mortality by around 50 per cent – the same as giving up cigarettes. Being thin as opposed to obese gave you a 30 per cent edge, and treating hypertension gave you 10 per cent.
To put it another way, loneliness is as bad for you as smoking and five times as bad as not taking your blood-pressure pills. Loneliness is not the same as being alone. Indeed, being alone and learning to be comfortable with solitude is a key marker of maturity and having a sense of home.
The loneliness we experience in leadership is often felt most keenly in the company of crowds of people; it's that we feel completely unknown by those around us and unable to allow ourselves to be known lest we are judged and found wanting.
'The Power of Belonging: Discovering the Confidence to Lead with Vulnerability' is published by David C Cook. For more information or to buy click here.
