The Two Changes Every Leader Needs (Most of Us Only Do One)

I just bought practice golf balls, a mat, and a net.

I've written previously how my perspective of golf changed. Something genuinely shifted in how I see the game, and I'm not exaggerating when I say I play differently in my head now. My internal perspective is not what it was.

And my swing is still my swing.

That's the part I keep running into. The new perspective was real. It just wasn't sufficient. So now there is a net in my garage, and I need to hit ball after ball after ball until my muscles know something my mind already figured out.

I think most of our lives work this way. Our thoughts, emotions, attitudes, words, actions, and reactions change through two separate and equally necessary influences. One is internal. One is external. And nearly everyone I know leans hard into one and avoids the other.

Lasting transformation requires two kinds of change: internal transformation and practiced behavior. The internal work addresses the beliefs, identity, wounds, fears, and desires underneath our reactions. Practice trains us to respond differently until a healthier response becomes increasingly natural. We need both.

The Internal Work: Transformation Starts With the Cause

The internal is where the origin gets addressed. This is where new life in Christ actually begins. His Spirit comes to reside in us and changes us from the inside out.

For me, that reoriented everything. It began to change what I thought, how I felt, and when I reacted. It gave me insight into what was causing those reactions in the first place, showed me what God would prefer, and then, and this is the part I could never have manufactured, gave me the power to actually choose differently.

Here is how I know it's real. The lag time keeps shrinking.

Early on, I'd become aware of a bad reaction later that day. Sometimes the next day. Now, with some sensitivity to the Spirit's prodding, I'm often aware immediately. And the time between awareness and being able to respond differently has collapsed too. There are moments now, real ones, where I respond in the moment the way God would prefer I respond. I'm simply not triggered the way I used to be.

None of that came from trying harder. It came from admitting how far short of godliness I fall and then experiencing unconditional grace and forgiveness right there in that moment. Grace is what makes a different choice possible. Shame just makes you hide better. The cool thing about forgiveness that comes through Christ is that he has forgiven me of all of my sins, past, present and future.  When I become aware of my sin, all I need to do is agree with God that is sin.  This is what confession means, agreeing with God that it was not his desire.

I should say something uncomfortable here. Most people who knew me before I came to Christ wouldn't have noticed this radical change in the way I acted. I already acted nice. That was the whole strategy. I was pleasant so people would trust me, and I used that trust to manipulate them where I wanted them. Nobody saw the switch because the outside didn’t look that different.. However, the inside was a different person entirely.

Some people would say my responses today still aren't Spirit-chosen, because what comes out can sound blunt. Sometimes it is blunt intentionally. But there are moments when the most loving thing available is the honest truth spoken with compassion, and I've learned to say it and then stay in the room for what comes next. I told someone recently that she was hard to please. It landed hard, and I could see it land. So my next question was, "Then what do you like?" That second question is the love part. Honesty without it is just me being careless with someone and calling it courage.

A good coach or therapist helps with all of this: the awareness, the preferred response, the power to choose it. For those of us who've experienced internal spiritual rebirth, this is where it starts, not where it ends. Life transformation is not behavior modification. It is not sin management. It is an internal change that runs from awareness of the issue, to knowing what better would look like, to being empowered to actually pick it. When our identity is transformed, we start changing from the inside. And once our security is settled in Christ, we can finally be honest about the insecurities driving much of our behavior. Steve Cuss has been enormously helpful to me here, and I've written about his work before.

Why Internal Change Isn't Enough: Leaders Have to Practice

The internal is where it begins. It is not where it ends. There is a second part, you have to practice.

Not think about. Not understand. Practice. Over and over, the response you'd prefer to have.

• It is saying "I'm sorry."

• It is not saying the words that just showed up in your head.

• It is taking that thought captive instead of letting it run loose in your mind.

• It is choosing to name something good first when you've just spotted a problem.

• It is focusing on what went right instead of cataloging what went wrong.

• It is picking up the trash somebody else dropped.

• It is saying thank you to the person nobody else notices.

Just like standing in front of that net hitting the same shot again and again, you are building muscle memory and mental memory. And I'll be honest, it gets pedantic. Boring, even. You'll feel like you're going through the motions. Do it anyway.

Eventually it stops being a performance and starts being who you are.

What Spiritual Disciplines Are Actually For

I think this is where the spiritual practices come in, the ones we've long called disciplines.

They are mostly physical ways of creating time and space to practice. They don't earn you stars. They don't accrue you more of God's love. They are simply the means by which you experience the grace, love, and power he has already made available. A practice net for the soul.

That's the point Paul is making at the end of his first letter to the Thessalonians:

Rejoice always, 17 pray continually, 18 give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. 19 Do not quench the Spirit. 20 Do not treat prophecies with contempt 21 but test them all; hold on to what is good, 22 reject every kind of evil. 23 May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. 24 The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do it. 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24 (NIV)

He gives them practices.

·      Rejoice

·      Pray

·      Give thanks

·      Test

·      Hold on

·      Reject

Then, without pausing, he says God himself will sanctify them through and through, and that the one who calls them is faithful and will do it.

The work is His, and the practice is yours.

You cannot practice your way into a new heart. And you cannot pray your way into a new swing.

So which half have you been skipping?