How often do you go through life with ‘gum on your shoe’ only to find out that it wasn’t your gum? It came from other people… their thoughts, their voice, their reactions and behaviors that became yours while you were simply walking and leading through life.
To put things bluntly, no one can lead without stepping on it. Many leaders find it is just completely unavoidable.
If a leader truly leads, his or her decisions will either positively or negatively affect everyone within their sphere of influence. Years after the completion of one’s leadership journey, there will often be “gum” stuck to your proverbial shoes.
Relational Gum.
Corporate Gum.
Emotional Gum.
Sometimes, even Financial Gum.
If you allow for it and don’t completely and cleanly remove it, that old gooey and sticky residue of leading will tug at your sole (and soul) every time you take a step. To say it doesn’t happen is to ignore reality. To pretend that it doesn’t affect you is to deprive yourself of the opportunity to eventually be free from it.
A few former leaders that I have known often referred to its existence. In my youth I just wrote it off to their own personal disappointments and inability to “suck it up” and move on with life, but the truth is, they weren’t altogether wrong.
No, it doesn’t cling to your shoes everyday. Most days, it’s hardly noticeable. But on those occasions when someone has carelessly left their gum in your path and the heat of emotion has melted it down to a soft adhesive, before you know it, you’ve stepped in it at full-stride. Now, to try and lift your feet in an attempt to move on just leaves sticky strings of past memories you wish did not exist.
Whether or not you were directly responsible or even liable for a decision doesn’t matter. If you were part of the whole, you have to deal with “the gum.” Out of nowhere, little residual reminders confront you and leave you asking yourself, will this adhesive residue ever dissolve and go away?
Someone didn’t get something they wanted from you. Someone got left out or left off and you were in the mix of the decision makers that disappointed them. Maybe, you were drafted by the larger group to be their spokesman and make a less than popular announcement. Or sometimes, you just had to do what leaders have to do—get out front and take the bullets in order to protect someone in your care or at least in your shadow. In every case, it all leaves “gum” that never seems to go away.
Here’s the hard truth.
Too often leadership may cost you friendship. Making some decisions and holding to them creates a divide that not everyone can or will cross with you. Leadership collateral has a way of “boomeranging” on you and about the time you think you’re beyond it, it comes up in a conversation or at an event where someone just wants to remind you that you possibly could have performed differently than you did.
Leadership will cost you some platforms. It’s true, there are tables you may never again sit at and some venues where your presence will not be required or welcomed. If you ever wonder why, just chalk it up to the “gum.”
So what does one do to walk freely and unencumbered by the gum?
First, just accept it. That doesn’t mean you have to like it, but accept it for what it is. At the same time remember, everybody didn’t chew on it.
Second, get rid of as much of it as you can. Don’t let it linger and mess up a good pair of shoes. There is such a thing as glue and gum removal. The chemicals in it were concocted to dissolve the lingering and messy effects of such lingering substances. Now that I think about it, It reminds me of what a good prayer life will do for you. Just apply it.
Finally, just keep walking. Don’t stop too long to keep messing with someone else’s discarded mess now attached to you. Wipe it off, polish your shoes and don’t get stuck there. You still have work to do, decisions to make and leadership to give. I have discovered that given enough time, many who didn’t understand certain decisions in the moment, will likely appreciate them later.
Yes, I’ve had gum on my own shoes. Sometimes it’s irritating. At best it’s annoying and reminds me of some difficult moments, but it also reminds me that what is past is past and it’s time to walk on. Like me, you too will discover that the more you walk and the farther you go, the gum will eventually and completely lose its hold.
Above all, recall what the Word of God tells us,
“Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing!
Isaiah 43:18
Tim Hill
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