Leaders fail when they are toxic; succeed when they are healing. In order to heal, leaders must tap the wellspring of their own brokenness. This brokenness is too easily ignored because leaders assume that a perfect resume matters. The problem with the pedigree and accomplishments list of the resume is that leadership is a “present time-period game”. The past is largely irrelevant to those with us in the current tempests and afflictions. Those with us in the present want connection and competence. If you are lost out on wild water, they want to know if you can paddle with them, not what credentials you have. They want to reach out and touch you and feel what your accomplishments have made in you. They want to feel what the deeper story has made in you. The deeper story lies far beneath the accomplishments. Henri Nouwen said, “Beneath all the great accomplishments of our time there is a deep current of despair. While efficiency and control are the great aspirations of our society, the loneliness, isolation, lack of friendship and intimacy, broken relationships, boredom, feelings of emptiness and depression, and a deep sense of uselessness fill the hearts of millions of people in our success-oriented world.” What followers want to know now, today, is who are you? Have you navigated the scary deep waters and did it change you? How will your knowledge of the bone-breaking deep waters help to heal them?

Only through connection to and deep understanding of their own pain can leaders heal that which is broken in others. Leadership is not the coercion of cosmetic compliance, but the stimulation of willful engagement and convergent collaboration among followers. The assumed strength we think we have from our inauthentic armor plating actually shields us from the greater power of vulnerability. Paradoxically, a flawless leader’s hidden strength is in appropriate vulnerability, not in competitive conquests and pinnacle positions. Flawless leaders speak authentically from the heart, not from behind slick perception management techniques. There is neither perfect leader nor perfect follower. The best we can be is the broken leading the broken. When a bone is broken, then set and healed well, it becomes strongest at that point. We, too, can become strong through our collections of healed brokenness. The wounded make the best healers, and those who remember well their scars make the best leaders.

When are you a toxic leader?

What are your wounds and scars? What wounds have not yet healed?

What strengths do you have because of your wounds?