Leadership and suffering are synonymous. As stark as that may sound, more than twenty years of leading, and of studying leadership, have convinced me that both experience and data bear it out. If you are going to lead at any level, you are going to suffer, in great ways and in small ones.
Think about the presidents you have watched in your lifetime. Have you noticed how dramatically most of them seemed to age in office? After four years, many looked ten years older. The weight of the role took its toll, and it showed up in the greying hair and the deepening lines.
In nearly every arena, great leadership is accompanied by great suffering. I am convinced that to become a great leader you must endure trial and suffering, and you must learn from every season of it.
What shaped Paul
Whether or not you are familiar with the Bible, consider the apostle Paul, arguably one of the greatest leaders in human history.
Before he became a follower of Jesus, Paul was already a leader among the religious elite of his day. Then he encountered the risen Christ, and his first suffering came immediately: sudden blindness. From there he went on to make history. He planted churches across the Roman world, raised up leaders and wrote thirteen of the twenty-seven books of the New Testament. By any measure, he was a phenomenal leader.
But what shaped him? In his second letter to the church in Corinth, he tells us:
"Are they ministers of Christ? I am talking like a madman. I am a better one: with far greater labours, far more imprisonments, with countless floggings, and often near death. Five times I have received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I received a stoning. Three times I was shipwrecked; for a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from bandits, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers and sisters; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, hungry and thirsty, often without food, cold and naked. And, besides other things, I am under daily pressure because of my anxiety for all the churches." (2 Corinthians 11:23–28)
Look at that list:
Flogged, beaten with rods, given the lashes
Imprisoned
Left for dead
Stoned
Shipwrecked
Adrift at sea
In danger, danger, danger. He uses the word eight times.
Sleepless, hungry, thirsty, cold and naked
And under daily pressure from his care for the churches
These are only the sufferings Paul chose to list. Why did he endure them? Because of what Jesus said about him at the very beginning: "I myself will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name" (Acts 9:16).
And why would Jesus allow that? Because these were the very things that made Paul the compassionate, strong, resolute, kind, vigilant and humble leader that so many of us have come to know through his letters.
Forged, not found
All great leadership is forged in the cauldron of suffering.
That idea is unsettling, I know, but history keeps confirming it. Your suffering and mine may never reach the degree Paul endured. But if we are going to lead, we are going to suffer.
Suffering cultivates the heart and hews the character needed to handle success and steward influence. How we respond to it will shape the kind of leader we become, and how the people we love and lead experience us.
Augustine, one of the great theologians of the early Church, put it this way in his reflections on Psalm 61: "Our pilgrimage on earth cannot be exempt from trial. We progress by means of trial. No one knows himself except through trial, or receives a crown except after victory."
We are not left to make sense of this alone. The One we follow walked this road first. Scripture says that Jesus himself "learned obedience through what he suffered" (Hebrews 5:8). The suffering that shapes a leader is never wasted in his hands.
Will you accept the cost?
I want you to be a great leader, one who changes the world within the scope of your influence. I want to see every one of your gifts exposed and applied to the great issues facing our world. I want to see you be and do all that you can be and do. But you must accept the cost of leadership.
If you are going to lead, you are going to suffer. How will you respond?
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