Shrinking the Integrity Gap

Between What Leaders Preach and Live

Jeff Mattson, Terra A. Mattson

• Publisher: David C Cook
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781434712646
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Church

Every leader values integrity, but far too few live it out. The founders of Living Wholehearted, Jeff and Terra Mattson, find that most high-capacity leaders have experienced childhood trauma and use leadership as a way to cope. In Shrinking the Integrity Gap, the Mattsons remind readers that integrity is a way of being and not a one-time event. Providing long-term solutions rooted in grace, they explore the following:

• The symptoms and systemic impact of the integrity gap
• How a leader's unresolved story impacts their influence
• Ways to overcome the loneliness and effects of leadership
• Healthy leadership habits for wholehearted leadership

Integrating biblical truth, clinical research, relational wisdom, and real stories, Shrinking the Integrity Gap equips readers to become the kind of leader anyone would want to follow.

Part I

UNDERSTANDING LEADERSHIP AND INTEGRITY GAPS

Chapter 1

FOUNDATIONS OF LEADING

All a person’s ways seem pure to them, but motives are weighed by the LORD.

—Proverbs 16:2

In our offices as counselors and executive coaches, we encounter the leaders behind the masks. Stories that would shock most no longer faze us, as we have become accustomed to the human impulse to live a divided life. Sadly, addiction and betrayal are more normal than not among high-level leaders both inside and outside the church. Years ago, a successful Christian businessman landed himself in jail one night after he was caught in a police sting of men soliciting prostitutes. The next morning, people woke to the news that the beloved husband, father, grandfather, boss, Christian leader, and generous philanthropist wasn’t who they had known him to be. He was living a divided life. The fallout was massive and affected hundreds of lives directly and indirectly. It took years before people would begin to trust him again, as he worked to shrink his integrity gap through repentance, professional help, and letting others walk with him along the road of healing. He had to face the reality of the pit he had dug and fallen into, taking those he loved with him. With God’s help and by His grace, he eventually began to climb out.

This story and similar ones belong to hundreds of our clients. A well-known lawyer and Christian leader is accused in a serial sex-abuse case within his church community. In denial and leveraging a carefully cultivated reputation, this sex offender is left to lead in the church while the survivors are not believed and are accused of mental illness, bitterness, and a lack of forgiveness. A wife shares how lonely and belittled she feels by her well-loved and adored husband, who leads many in the church they founded as young believers. The community sees him as a pillar of wisdom, and she wonders who will believe her when she can no longer watch him neglect their marriage for the sake of the greater good—a family sacrificed on the altar of ministry. A nonprofit leader finds herself burning the candle at both ends and abusing prescription drugs to get through her days. Substance abuse was never on her list of vices as she was growing up in youth group, but she cannot seem to shake the need for the pills in order to get through her days with all the demands of her to-do list.

These stories are unfortunately more common than many realize. When individuals are exposed, people often say things such as “How can this be? He was so nice!” “She was a Sunday school teacher for twenty years!” “He has such a great family!” “We all loved her.” We are tired of seeing people shrug their shoulders with incredulous indifference. It is time for change. No one gets to these significant moments overnight. Instead, the constant drip of a leaking faucet is ignored until the whole house is flooded. We see early warning signs, but we have become accustomed to ignoring them until there’s a full-blown disaster.

DEFINING INTEGRITY

Living a life of integrity begins with valuing character over riches and power, recognizing that as God’s creation all people are on a level playing field, and foreseeing danger with humility and a healthy fear of the Lord. When we know who we are and to whom we belong (God), then we pay better attention to the leaking faucets. Proverbs provides wisdom for those of us who want to grow in awareness:

Choose a good reputation over great riches;

being held in high esteem is better than silver or gold.

The rich and poor have this in common:

The LORD made them both.

A prudent person foresees danger and takes precautions.

The simpleton goes blindly on and suffers the consequences.

True humility and fear of the LORD

lead to riches, honor, and long life.

Corrupt people walk a thorny, treacherous road;

whoever values life will avoid it. (22:1–5 NLT)

Let’s consider some key questions. Why would people live hidden lives that are completely at odds with who others think they are? Why would they desperately try to get away with it? Why is it that so many leaders in every sphere (education, business, government, the church, medicine, sports and entertainment, etc.) fall into the pattern of success followed by moral failure and catastrophic fallout, followed by years of denial, blame, and little repair? Why would young men and women want to be people of influence when the news cycle every day features leaders getting caught cheating, lying, stealing, preying on vulnerable populations, covering their tracks, hoarding wealth, and bragging about it? Can we choose integrity? Is it possible to attain, let alone preserve?

So many of these leaders causing wounds and pain are professed followers of Jesus and sit in positions of authority as lead pastors, elders, and C-suite executives. They are likely respected and unaware of how they are affecting others. In Matthew 12:25 Jesus “knew their thoughts and said to them, ‘Every kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and every city or household divided against itself will not stand.’” A leader divided cannot stand, and we have continually found those words to be true. The wounds and pain can come quickly, but the healing does not.

A way to look at integrity is as every part of your life—mind, heart, soul, actions, and relationships—moving in the same direction (hopefully a God-designed direction). Parker Palmer said integrity is “much more than adherence to a moral code.” It means “‘the state or quality of being entire, complete, and unbroken,’ as in integer or integral. Deeper still, integrity refers to something … in its ‘unimpaired, unadulterated, or genuine state, corresponding to its original condition.’ When we understand integrity for what it is, we stop obsessing over codes of conduct and embark on the more demanding journey toward being whole.”1

Who is a leader? To boil it down, a leader is anyone with a following. Leadership is a relationship word. Merriam-Webster says the word lead means “to guide on a way especially by going in advance.”2 Of course, if you are leading a corporation, you have hundreds (maybe thousands) of people following you. But what if you are a single parent with two kids in diapers? We would argue that you are leading one of the most important organizations on the planet … the family unit.

UNCOVERING THE INTEGRITY GAP

How you live and lead matters, whether you’re the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, a manager at Trader Joe’s, the youth pastor at a local church, or the pope himself! An integrity gap is the distance between the values we preach (what we say about ourselves and want others to believe about us) and the values we actually live out (in front of people or when no one sees). When leaders of all types live and lead with integrity, everyone in their wake benefits; when an integrity gap exists, everyone in their wake pays … it’s just a matter of time. Living as Wholehearted Leaders—whose character and inner life match external life—directly benefits everyone.

Whose leadership wake have you been in, and how did this person’s leadership and integrity (or lack thereof) impact you? For some, a name and face immediately came into focus. Perhaps this leader influenced you in numerous positive ways, inspiring you to grow to your potential. But perhaps you survived abuse from this person (a family member or a previously trusted pastor, coach, or teacher). Perhaps you thought everything was pretty great in your life until you got news from your parents that you would soon be a divorce statistic. Perhaps you had a boss who always got his or her way, belittled you in front of your colleagues, or told you to compromise your standards or else. Maybe it’s the pastor you serve alongside who talks poorly of others but then does an about-face when in public.

There are no shortcuts to developing character and integrity—a wholehearted life.

It may take time to identify the leaders in your life who really affected you and may still be affecting you. If you’ve spent years (even decades) trying to block out the past, chances are you may have forgotten a few details and will need more than a few days to recall them. If you feel the question is not worth evaluating because the main issue is not really about how anyone has affected you (as if someone could) but about how you’re affecting others, then this book is for you too.

There are no shortcuts to developing character and integrity—a wholehearted life. It takes real guts and grit to jump into the deep end and stay there to uncover where our pain, fears, false beliefs, and unhealthy coping strategies were birthed. But the deep end is also where healing, integrity, character, and healthy leadership emerge. In The Road to Character, David Brooks included this passage from an email he received: “The heart cannot be taught in a classroom intellectually, to students mechanically taking notes. … Good, wise hearts are obtained through lifetimes of diligent effort to dig deeply within and heal lifetimes of scars. … You can’t teach it or email it or tweet it. It has to be discovered within the depths of one’s own heart when a person is finally ready to go looking for it, and not before.”3

EMERGING LEADERS

We recognize that many reading this book are young and emerging leaders. You have not yet reached your greatest level of influence in terms of status, money, and power because of your stage of life. Nothing would give us greater joy than for high school and undergraduate students to read this clinical, biblical, and relational wisdom and apply it to their lives right now! We are rooting for you. You can have a greater impact on your life and career (from a time and resource standpoint) if you work now to get your baggage down to carry-on size. You will lead from a more authentic place, knowing that the road ahead is not easy nor pain-proof. Time is on your side when you put away money early and let it grow. Similar to the power of compound interest, the more you invest now in being a Wholehearted Leader, the less catching up and correcting you’ll have to do later. “The advantages are even greater for someone making regular contributions to the investment.”4 Integrating this wisdom into your young life is worth your investment now.

In 1 Timothy 4:12, the apostle Paul told a younger pastor he was mentoring, “Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith and in purity.” Paul was edifying this younger man, whom many say may have been in his early thirties, to teach and serve through modeling integrity. Age did not matter. Paul encouraged him to lead by example with his words, actions, love, faith, and purity. We are saying to you, emerging leaders, it is possible to learn from those who have gone before us. Slow down and examine your “why” and your “ways” in order to set a trajectory that will take you to the finish line.

(Jeff) When we were newly married and in our early twenties, Terra had a personal goal to run a marathon. Me—not so much. As a track runner in my early years, I had been there and done that. But I was committed to helping her finish the race well.

One of the lessons Terra learned was that her training made all the difference in how she ran her race and how she felt days later. She was committed to doing the hard work a whole year in advance. By the time she ran her first (and only) marathon, she enjoyed the entire race and did not have the same fatigue other runners experienced. Her commitment to working hard on the front end paid dividends on the back end. Similar to Terra, emerging leaders who want to lead well will follow a training regimen in order to run the race well.

You may have a passion to change from the way things were done in your family, to create a different kind of legacy. You may have survived a journey made difficult by a leader or leaders with large integrity gaps. You’ve been waiting for someone who loves Jesus and the church to say that something is wrong … that there’s a systemic problem with way too many leaders in ministry and with leaders in general. We hope this book will be like a breath of fresh air.

You may have vast wealth, influence, and power. Some of you (not all) in this category may be feeling uncomfortable with what you have read so far because you know you have a wider integrity gap than most know. You might struggle with ambivalence because you like things about your gap and at the same time you don’t like it. This is a common place to be as a leader.

Maybe you’re a high-profile pastor of a megachurch or a Christian entertainer who’s successfully grown a following from the tens to the tens of thousands. You’ve got all the pressure of the CEO of a publicly traded Fortune 500 company. You’re also a publicly known Christian and may feel the weight of maintaining the reputation of God, which is only His to uphold. That is an enormous amount of pressure that no one talks about until after the fall.

Some of you are still enjoying the climb up the ladder, while others have become depressed, disillusioned, and weary of being lonely at the top—even with King Solomon–like wealth, influence, and power. We’re glad you have felt some dissonance inside as you’ve read to this point. The good news is that you can still do something about the gap that feels so wide right now.

Shame is a powerful tool of the Enemy to keep us hiding, clawing, and drowning in our own narratives.

The longer you put off change, the more people in your wake are being negatively affected whether you see it or not. Shame is a powerful tool of the Enemy to keep us hiding, clawing, and drowning in our own narratives. Jesus said the truth will set us free (see John 8:32). Facing the truth of who we are, what we have done, and how we impact others is hard work, but you and those you lead are worth it! To the Christian pastor, elder, artist, or CEO, the good news remains that only Jesus saves, and His reputation remains in His hands, not in yours or mine.

SEASONED LEADERS

Finally, some of you reading this book are seasoned leaders who are thriving and are already working on closing your gaps. We hope you will utilize this text in your mentoring relationships. We also want to acknowledge those of you who had status, power, wealth, and more and lost it all, whether through moral failure or burnout. You somehow survived but barely. We feel for you too. You may have tremendous remorse for the choices you made and the consequences you put others through. You’ve come to the place (or ar...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface: A Note about the Core Values Index
• Introduction
• Part I: Understanding Leadership and Integrity Gaps
• Part II: Symptoms of Integrity Gaps
• Acknowledgments
• Appendix A: Family Genogram sample
• Appendix B: Concentric Circles Exercise
• Notes