When Leadership Feels Impossible
A 3-Stage Model That Inspires Real Change (and the Napkin Sketch That Sealed the Deal)
“They just don’t seem to want to follow, and there is no one following them!
I can say the same thing over and over, but no one is doing it.”
She sat across from me at the café, hands wrapped around her coffee, frustrated and full of doubt. For 45 minutes, she poured out her heart, her struggles, her disappointments, her fears. And finally, she asked the real question that every leader asks at some stage:
“Am I just the wrong person for the job?”
The Leadership Crisis We All Face
If you’ve ever led anything, a team, a ministry, even a family, then you’ve probably felt like this. You try to inspire, to cast vision, to encourage, but it feels like standing on a cliff, shouting into the wind. You start to wonder if you’re the problem.
It all started with a simple text:
Hi❤️ Hope you & the family are doing well!If you’re free any time soon, I’d love to go for a coffee and get your insight into leadership as I’m navigating some challenges and would love someone to speak into it and process it all with. Nothing hectic, just some hard seasons with leaders. No pressure at all of course xxWe met, and her honesty was raw and real. She’d been in her role for a year, it was her dream job, and despite her best efforts, nothing seemed to shift.
Why Inspiration Matters (And What the Research Says)
Here’s the truth: Most people don’t change because they’re told to. They change when they’re inspired, when they feel seen, valued, and invited into something meaningful.
Research backs this up:
Daniel Pink, in his book Drive, found that people are motivated by autonomy, mastery, and purpose, not just rules and rewards.
A Harvard Business Review study called inspiration “the most overlooked leadership skill.” Inspired teams are more productive, creative, and loyal.
Biblical leaders knew this too:
Jesus didn’t just give orders;
He invited people to follow,
To see,
To belong.
Elijah mentored Elisha, passing on not just authority, but vision and trust.
The Three-Stage Model: How to Inspire Real Change
So what do you do when your team (or your church, or your family) just isn’t responding?
Here is our 3-stage model, which I use to activate change, along with a PDF framework that I call the “Leadership Clarity Map” to print and implement.