Reflections on Connection-Centered Leadership - Issue No. 35: Eventually, You Have to Cross the Bridge
I like to be prepared. Well, most of the time.
Arguably, I have learned to be flexible and adopted a go-with-the-flow attitude for much of my life. Those who know me well may argue that is an understatement. But at my core, I’m a strategist. I research. I plan. I make lists. I ask questions. I consider contingencies and can quickly and decisively pivot as needed.
There is wisdom in preparation. I believe that. My kids would probably tell you a well-worn phrase from me: You can’t use what you don’t have, as I tell them to take a jacket, bring cash, etc. But I'm also becoming increasingly aware that preparation can become a very respectable hiding place. One more certification. Another revision. Another conversation. A little more information. One more sign that this is definitely the right decision and everything will work the way I hope it will.
At some point, I have to admit that I'm no longer preparing to move. I'm postponing movement until I can eliminate the risk of moving. Life rarely offers that guarantee.
This particular lesson feels timely.
I've spent a considerable amount of time building in this season. Some plans have moved forward. Some have changed. A few disappeared altogether after I had already prepared for them, and that is frustrating and more than a little discouraging.
I can prepare well and still encounter a closed bridge through no fault of my own. Preparation and pattern recognition can do their due diligence, but other people's choices and life's circumstances are outside of my control. I can take the right step and discover that the route changes afterward. I can move faithfully without receiving the result I expected.
The goal was never control.
Apparently, after several weeks, we're still on the metaphorical bridge.
We've explored what allows a bridge to carry extraordinary weight: a firm foundation, connections that allow the individual pieces to carry more together than they ever could alone, the tension a healthy structure must be designed to hold, and enough flexibility to respond when conditions change without losing what keeps it anchored.
There is an obvious reason for building all of that. Eventually, someone needs to cross.
A bridge can be beautifully engineered, securely anchored, connected, and capable of responding to changing conditions. But the bridge wasn't built merely to stand there and theoretically hold the weight. It was built to make movement possible.
There is something about the engineering that makes this even more interesting to me. When a person steps onto a suspension bridge, their weight becomes part of the live load. That weight doesn't simply sit on the roadway. It is transferred through the structure, from the deck through the suspenders and main cables, through the towers and anchorages, into the foundations and ultimately the ground.
The crossing is when all of those components we've spent weeks considering begin doing what they were built to do.
We can approach movement as though being ready means becoming completely self-sufficient first. If I can gather enough knowledge, experience, money, confidence, certainty, influence, or control, maybe I can finally move without needing anything or anyone.
Except that isn't how most of the meaningful crossings in my life have worked.
There have been people whose wisdom carried part of the weight. People who opened doors I couldn't open myself, told me the truth when I needed to hear it, prayed when I couldn't see what came next, or simply stood nearby while I did something I wasn't entirely certain I could do.
There were structures built long before I arrived that made my crossing possible. There was grace I didn't manufacture. Connection didn't eliminate the weight of moving. It gave the weight somewhere to go. But I don't want to romanticize connection either.
Connections are messy because people are messy. We bring our histories, needs, fears, expectations, wounds, strengths, and limitations into every relationship and business endeavor. People can surprise us in beautiful ways, and they can blindside us in ways we never predicted.
People can be a crapshoot.
Connection is never controlled by one person, which means genuine connection always carries some risk. We can do our part well and have absolutely no control over whether another person does theirs.
This is where the architecture becomes important again.
My vertical connection anchors me when outward connections become disorienting. When I know whose I am, I can do the inward work of knowing who I am. That doesn't make me immune to another person's choices or mean those choices can't hurt, disappoint, or change the terrain in front of me. When business deals fall through and sure things become vapor, there is a rock that doesn't move.
Someone else's choices do not get to define me or determine my destination.
I can, however, become paralyzed by spending enormous amounts of energy on what someone else should have done, whether they will change, or how different everything would be if everyone simply behaved according to the plan in my mind, lol.
Sometimes those questions deserve attention. Sometimes we need to pause on the bridge and regroup.
But the middle of the crossing eventually asks a different question:
Given what is true now, what movement still belongs to me?
Maybe this is the time for a 30,000-foot view and an honest assessment of what is within my locus of control and what isn't. I can bring what remains vertically to God, reconnect inwardly with who I am and what I'm called to build, and then decide how to engage outwardly with the reality that actually exists rather than the one I expected.
Then I return to the architecture.
What is still true about my foundation? Which connections remain sound? What tension am I being asked to hold? In what ways does this new reality require flexibility? What step remains available to me?
Perhaps this is what we don't fully understand about crossing until we're actually doing it. We don't build a foundation, establish connections, learn to hold tension, develop flexibility, and then leave those things safely behind us.
We use them during the crossing.
The crossing is where I discover whether I can rely on the foundation when circumstances become uncertain. It's where connections carry weight, tension becomes something I navigate rather than simply understand, and flexibility allows me to adjust my footing or even my route without surrendering the destination.
Forward progress isn't always a straight line. I may stumble backward without returning to where I began. I may have to change the route without abandoning the crossing. I may even discover that the crossing I expected will not be the journey.
None of those things necessarily means the structure has failed.
Still, every element of the bridge can work optimally, and no one else can actually do my crossing for me. There is movement that belongs to me, just as there is movement that belongs to someone else that I cannot make for them.
I can pray for wisdom, but I still have to make the decision. I can prepare for an opportunity and still have to walk into the room. I can write the book, but I still have to release it. I can know a conversation needs to happen and still have to begin it. That's agency. We each get to make our decisions, for better or worse. We learn from them and keep moving.
The question becomes whether additional preparation is strengthening the structure or simply keeping me standing at the edge of something I've already built up to the point where I can cross.
I think that's why this feels like the right place to end our time on bridges. None of the architecture we've explored over these weeks is the destination. The foundation, connections, tension, and flexibility make the crossing possible.
That brings me back to the Integrative Transformation Blueprint™ and the progression I've spent years studying in my own life and work: Awareness → Connection → Movement.
Awareness without movement can leave us extraordinarily informed about why we remain exactly where we are. Connection without movement can give us relationships, resources, insight, and support that never become anything beyond potential.
Eventually, transformation asks us to move.
And perhaps the final measure isn't simply how many bridges we cross ourselves, but whether someone else can cross because of what we helped build. Sometimes we're the ones crossing. Sometimes we're part of the structure. And if we build well, someone coming behind us may cross a chasm without ever knowing there was once no bridge there.
I've spent a lot of time preparing in this season. I've also had enough plans change recently to be reminded that taking the right step doesn't give me control over what happens next. I can only discern the movement that belongs to me and take it, relying on the architecture
I've spent all this time building when the crossing doesn't unfold as planned. There comes a point when the only way to discover what is on the other side is to move.
Eventually, you have to cross the bridge.
Questions I'm Sitting With This Week
Where am I still preparing for something I may already be prepared enough to begin?
Am I focused on someone else's choices in a way that is keeping me from recognizing the movement that still belongs to me?
When a connection becomes disorienting, am I returning to what I know vertically and inwardly before deciding how to respond outwardly?
What am I building now that may someday make someone else's crossing possible?
Comments