“When you’re in the room, you have to be on.”
I had to think about that advice. Did I agree? I’m not sure I agreed.
I’ve never really liked the idea of “being on.” To me, it felt fake. I don’t want to be fake. Authenticity is my currency, I’d like to think. I am who I am. If you don’t like it, maybe that’s a you problem. It can’t be a me problem . . . can it?
So when I was told that I had to “be on,” so to speak, I was tempted to recoil. Sometimes I’m on; sometimes I’m not. But what if being who I am is actually the limiter on my effectiveness? What if it can be the limiter on yours, too?
How’d this all come about?
Let’s take a look at personality profiles. I’m a high D high C on the DISC assessment. I’m an INTJ on Myers-Briggs. Though I am often in hours of meetings and 1:1 calls a week—where engagement is a must—I enjoy staying quiet in many environments. When Courtney and I take walks, it won’t be uncommon for little to be said for large chunks of it. I love sitting by empty seats on planes.
In seminary I sat at a specific table in the cafeteria—like furniture. Everyone knew where to find me. I worked from that table whenever I didn’t have class. Lunch would come and go, and I’d stay in that spot, typing away on the Dell laptop I bought with insurance money when my Ford Escort got totaled. I remember one moment so clearly. I was asked if folks could join me at the table (there was a large group in town visiting the campus). It’s a table for four, so I gladly agreed. I sat quietly at the keyboard working away while they ate their lunch. Thinking back, I go, “I bet they wanted me to talk to them.”
So take that temperament and put it in a church—where the expectation on pastor-types is that they are warm, fuzzy, chummy, or any other word that amounts to “approachable.”
I can be all of those less-fuzzy traits—I have the temperament I have, and it’s gotten me this far—but I miscalculated the job itself and what it required. Pastoring didn’t require being 100% approachable all the time. It required knowing the context and responding based on the needs of the moment.
Everyone who’s employed at a church has at least one day where they are thrust into an environment regardless of their temperament: Sundays. By my math, that day comes every week. I’m not sure what your vocational equivalent is, but you have one. You have an environment that requires a different approach than what your temperament—your “normal”—prefers.
But that seminary habit—the one where I sat quietly and kept to myself—is what I thought I could be 100% of the time unless I was preaching. I wanted to be myself. I wanted the moment to bend to me. But the moment bending to me or people aligning their expectations to my own is not what the job was. Especially on Sundays, the work was the people.
So my boss (yes, churches have bosses), Kevin, sat me down and gave me advice more than a decade ago that I still think about.
“When you’re in the room, you have to be on.” But he didn’t stop there.
“When people see you sitting quietly, they wonder if something is wrong.” To add to that, they might wonder if it is their fault I am quiet. That makes sense. A lot of us have a “How is it my fault?” mindset when someone we know isn’t quite right—or at least not quite like we’d expect.
But he didn’t stop there. He made it okay that engaging in that capacity isn’t always my strength. He wasn’t asking me to change—he was asking for me to be aware and make the right adjustment.
“If you need a moment, go to your office or go backstage. If people don’t see you, they don’t think anything is wrong. They’ll think you’re busy.”
It’s simple advice, but simple often changes us more quickly than the complex.
I want to give you permission to be yourself—even knowing that, at times, “yourself” isn’t good enough. Certain moments require something else. And that’s fine. That’s you, too, even if it feels like a sweater that’s too big for the moment. You can grow into it.
It’s less about what you need or even what you think is right; it is what the person across from you needs.
I laugh because there’s this old story where an angel shows up to this guy named Gideon and calls him a “mighty man of valor.” At that moment Gideon was hiding from his enemies and didn’t believe he had an ounce of valor in him. I feel that way a lot. While there’s more to the story, at the right time, there was valor.
We leave a lot on the table when we write off a behavior as inauthentic. In our clamoring for being true to ourself, we lose out on what’s more important: showing up for the person (or people) who need us.
I bet there’s more to you than meets the eye. Maybe you, like I do, leave too much on the table with a, “Well, that’s just the way I am.” Sure, and that works a lot of the time. But what about when the people around you need more?
How would you suggest someone navigate a situation where one’s normal approach won’t cut it? How would you want to help them?
BONUS: For subscribers, here are a few targets I have for myself to keep forward-facing engagement a part of my job(s).