I've sat across from a lot of leaders over the years.
Some of them were impressive. Articulate. Confident. Impressive resumes. Great rooms to be in. You walked out energized, inspired, convinced they knew exactly what they were doing.
And some of them were hollow.
Not all of them. But some. And the hollow ones were often the most impressive in the room.
That gap — between performance and actual formation — is what keeps me up at night. Because the world rewards the performance. And the formation… doesn't get much applause.
🎭The difference between performing and becoming.
Performing leadership means you've learned the language, the posture, the moves. You know how to inspire a room. You know what a good leader looks like. So you look like it.
Becoming a leader means something is actually changing on the inside. The values you espouse are restructuring the way you live. The people around you are genuinely growing. The pressure reveals something good, not just something skilled.
Performing Leadership
- Talks about vision; avoids accountability
- Inspires the room; isolates at home
- Builds a following; struggles with peers
- Grows under success; shrinks under pressure
- Needs admiration to function
- Development stops when the title arrives
Becoming a Leader
- Gives power away; doesn't need the credit
- Is the same person in every room
- Actively pursues honest feedback
- Grows most under pressure and failure
- Doesn't need to be needed
- Gets more curious the longer they lead
You can fake most of the first column. Nobody can fake the second column for long.
🪞The question nobody asks in job interviews.
Most leadership development focuses on competency. Skills. Frameworks. Strategies. Communication style. All of which matter.
But the question almost nobody asks — in hiring, in coaching, in development programs — is the most important one:
"Who are you becoming? Not what have you done or what do you know — but what is the direction of your soul?"
Dallas Willard said that the spiritual life is about the transformation of the will — the deepest center of who we are. Not behavior modification. Not information acquisition. Actual transformation.
Leaders who are becoming are in some kind of ongoing formation. They have a spiritual director, a therapist, a mentor, a small group — someone who has access to the parts of their life that don't show up on the org chart.
Leaders who are merely performing have the stage. But nobody has access to the backstage.
🤔How to know which one you are.
Some honest questions worth sitting with:
These aren't rhetorical. I've asked them of myself more than once. The answers are sometimes uncomfortable.
That discomfort is the point. It's the indicator that something real is being worked on.
🌱The good news.
Becoming is available to everyone. Performance is easier in the short term. But the formation that produces a real leader — one who moves mountains and leaves people better — is learnable. Chooseable. It just costs more than most people are willing to pay.
The cost is humility. Honest assessment. Slow work. Willingness to be seen in the places you're still not formed.
The payoff is a leader whose depth matches their platform. Whose influence is based on who they actually are, not just what they've learned to project.
The world has plenty of impressive performers.
What it needs is a few more people who are actually becoming.
