It’s widely accepted that one of the most important duties of any leader is moving people beyond their comfort zone. I completely agree.
But I also feel like we sometimes get the concept all wrong.
It’s good to stretch someone beyond their comfort zone. To put people in situations that stretch their capabilities and familiarity. It’s how you pull potential out of people they didn’t even know they had. Make them realize they are capable of things they won’t believe until they do them. Past the edge of our comfort and convenience is where God can raise our lives to new heights.
But there’s a crucial corollary point that we can’t afford to forget. While it’s good to stretch a person out of their comfort zone, we have to understand that it was God who wired them, gave them life experiences, passions, burdens, and skills to do what He called them to do.
In other words, they have a God-ordained sweet spot. A place of intersection where God has called them to live in and function out of.
People can’t be anything they want to be. Or anything we want them to be. But they can be everything God created them to be. And this only happens as they’re operating in their sweet spot. Where they’re using everything God has equipped them with to be all He has called them to be.
Stretching someone out of their comfort zone should be a means of developing people in their sweet spot. Not taking them out of it. There’s such a thing as being uncomfortable because you’re being stretched. And then there’s being uncomfortable because you’re doing something you weren’t created for.
I want my creative team sweating because they’re working on projects that test their limits. I don’t want my creative team sweating because I decided to stretch them for a week by running the church’s finances.
Extreme example, but you get the point.
As a leader, you’re responsible for helping people maximize the gifts God has given them. But you’re also responsible for making sure they maximize them for the calling God has given them.
Stretch people beyond their comfort zone.
But don’t force them outside of their sweet spot.
Resource of the Day: For some tips on how to identify your sweet spot or the sweet spot of the people you lead, here’s an old school sermon from a series we did a few years ago: All-Stars.