"Oh man, that guy is such a gifted teacher."
"Whoa, I just love to hear her sing. She has the most amazing voice."
No doubt, you've heard these identical phrases from people in your circles. Whether they're giving high praise for a worship leader at church or complimenting the capacity of a social media influencer in your office, people love skill.
People don't prefer to be led into worship by the girl who has a heart of gold, but whose voice isn't always on pitch.
And neither do we, right? We prefer the most gifted voice to lead our Sunday morning.
We don't often give promotions to the clumsy kid who can't use Slack or email very well, but who comes to work with the best attitude and the perfect track record of honesty.
And, frankly, we need people to be skilled.
Promoting someone as manager of our coffee shop who cannot manage a calendar is irresponsible. That's bad for them and it's bad for us.
BUT... why are we so willing to promote the *gifted* sales person to lead our sales division even though their character is sometimes a little lacking?
We excuse away the weekly social media rant they put on Facebook and that one time we weren't quite sure if they were being totally honest. Because, we trust them... mostly. And they can sell anything... to anyone.
We live in a world that values skill above all else, including character.
At Founder's Table Network, our team uses Ephesians 4 to help people understand how they are like Jesus.
Are they gifted with people, or amazing at scaling things? Are they incredible at messaging, or do they have more of a gift for teaching and process? All of these things actually come right out of Ephesians 4.
So, when teaching these skills, or capacities, we like to use a tool that shows the importance of both Character and Competency.
Using a chart like the one below, we can see that someone with high skill and low character can actually do an incredible amount of harm.
At the bottom left, where there is no skill and no character, is someone who is essentially useless.
But, the top left shows us that we do, in fact, need skill. Our ability to make an invisible God visible is limited... even with high character... if we are not becoming skilled at what we do.
Our culture naturally prioritizes high capacity people.
Whether it's a church leadership team, a business leadership team, or a high school classroom... the person with the capacity gets the influence.
And, even worse, we remind them constantly of their skills.
I often think of our propensity to give young, talented men or women a lot of opportunities with limited support for building their character.
I'm sure, given no time at all, you could think of at least one young guy or gal who was given a stage, a promotion, or a place of influence simply because they were skilled.
In the church, we do this all the time with worship pastors.
And we tell them over and over "you're so skilled... you're so anointed... you really know how to lead the congregation."
And then we pile on task after task, thing after thing... and then they either turn into a monster (oh no!) OR they burn out.
They were never told to slow down, get more rest, say no to new responsibilities. Spend more time with Jesus. Deal with that marital issue.
They were never taken under someone's wing to help them build the necessary character for all that raw talent.
We have to start prioritizing character for those we're discipling.
As business owners, we're all discipling someone. An employee, a customer, a vendor... we're training people up.
And skill will come. Certainly it takes intention and purposeful effort to become good at something useful. And we should encourage skill building. We should appreciate natural talents, and create space for people's capacity.
But in a world that will inherently hold up the talented few, we have to come with the heart of Jesus to help them tend to their character.
We have to be willing to slow down, take note, and correct.
We have to *teach them* to slow down, take note, and correct.
We have to call them out for character flaws, give them space to address divided parts of their heart, and model for them that people are always more important than producing.
It's our job to notice when their character is shining, and compliment *that* moment. Raise up *that* part of their day.
Otherwise, we'll be surrounded by monsters. Or we'll lose our talent over and over and over.
And then... what a wasted opportunity for God to do something extraordinary.