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Why You Should Lower Your Expectations for 2021 Starting Now

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By Carey Nieuwhof: You’re so anxious to get 2020 over with. I get it. I feel that too.

it would be amazing if somebody  returned everything to some semblance of normalcy right about now, wouldn’t it?

Sitting here in December 2020 at the end of a long year, it’s tempting to paint 2021 as a relief to all our problems.

Trust me, I feel the urge to do that too. Deeply.

But that would be a mistake.

For some leaders,  it would be a fatal one. Either because it could take you out or your organization down…or both.

Before you dismiss the post or quickly move on to something else more ‘positive’, let me drop some promises in. (Which is actually the point of this post: to help you make it through the end of 2021 and well beyond.)

Lowering your expectations for 2021 now will lead to greater joy, a far more resilient organization, and a much healthier you later.

As they say, the secret to happiness is low expectations. One of the reasons you’re so frustrated and exhausted right now is because you expected things would be better.

Humans do that. Christmas is disappointing because your picture of how your family will behave is different from how they actually behave.

The frustration you feel with your team emerges from the gap between the ideal person you thought you hired and the real person you actually hired.

Lowering your expectations increases both your resilience and your happiness almost every time.

Here are 5 ways that lowering your expectations for 2021 is a really good idea.

Lowering your expectations for 2021 now will lead to greater joy, a far more resilient organization, and a much healthier you later.


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1. The Shut Down Happened Overnight. The Reopening Will Be Far More Gradual and Intermittent.

It’s slowly dawning on most of us that there may not be a reopening ‘day’ or season where everyone floods back in and everything is at it was.

For most organizations, the shut down happened overnight. You were open for business as usual March 9th 2020, and were shut down completely or radically impacted by March 15th.

It’s easy to imagine that the reopening would happen exactly the same way.

There’s incredible news with a vaccine on the way, but both the roll out and its impact on the spread of COVID-19 is going to take a while.

While nobody wants it, we’ll likely have months ahead of the virus surging and retreating, and with that, regulations that move you in and out of degrees of lockdown.

The restrictions themselves will take a while to lift completely.

Government regulations are one thing: human behaviour is quite another.

It might take a while longer for most people to feel comfortable being in crowded public spaces, and some of the pattern changes people have adopted during COVID will likely be permanent.

I think the metaphor of having green light, yellow light and red light people is sound.

Green light people are those who will rush back and be perfectly comfortable.

Yellow light people will be more cautious for months, or maybe longer.

And red light people, made so either by disposition or medical condition, might change how they operate in the public sphere for a much longer time.

Simple realize that this will be a longer, gradual process will help you plan for a longer, gradual re-entry and make you more effective as a result.

For most organizations, the shut down caused by COVID happened overnight. The reopening will be be far more gradual and intermittent.


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2. Normal Is Being Redefined As We Speak

You long for normal. I long for normal.

I also understand every is oh-so-tired of hearing about “the new normal”.

So what can you actually expect?

Emerging out of the pandemic in all likelihood won’t be the return to normal you hope for.

That’s because normal is being redefined as we speak.

Emerging out of the pandemic in all likelihood won’t be the return to normal you hope for. That’s because normal is being redefined as we speak.


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The longer the disruption goes on, the longer temporary habits become permanent ones. And the longer current behavioural norms carry on, the more likely it is that some will become habits.

We will eventually settle into some kind of normalcy, and that’s likely to have a strange and unpredictable mix of familiar and new patterns.

So sure, people will return to live events.  Schools, gyms, restaurant and churches will one day be open without restrictions. (Cheer now).

And to be sure, offices will reopen and traffic jams will happen and people will vacation and airplanes and resorts will operate at capacity again.

But don’t miss the nuance underneath all this.

Will company offices return to exactly where they were pre-pandemic? There is zero indication that’s going to happen. Of course, some offices will reopen as they used to be, but most will change their patterns. As this Harvard survey shows,  remote work will in all likelihood become much more prevalent than it was pre-COVID. Many companies have already downsized and hundreds of thousands (perhaps millions?) of people have already sold their homes and moved to more remote places now where they can easily work from home.

It will be interesting to see what happens with shopping (more home delivery?), school (more home schooling?), fitness (fewer gym memberships now that people bought their own Peleton?) entertainment (are direct-to-home movie releases more of the future after 2021?) Will in-person church attendance take months or years to go back to pre-pandemic levels?

So post-pandemic, whenever we get there, will definitely feel more normal than things to do day. But normal will have shifted. And even a 10-30% variation in patterns is massive disruption, and something every leader needs to plan for starting now.

Post-pandemic will definitely feel more normal than things do today. But normal will have shifted. Even a 10-30% variation in patterns is massive disruption, and something every leader needs to plan for.


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3. The Biggest Certainty Is Unpredictability

Every leader longs for certainty. I do. But even long before the crisis hit, you didn’t really have certainty.

What you had was some form of predictability.  The crisis, of course, took that away.

The unpredictability and uncertainty are like to continue for a while longer. Months for sure. Perhaps longer.

Even long before the crisis hit, you didn’t really have certainty. What you had was some form of predictability. The crisis, of course, took that away.


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A good way to look at 2020 is that it helped build some skills that are essential in unpredictable times: agility, flexibility and the ability to move fast and change again.

Those will likely be even more important in the future.

The last few decades are filled with companies, organizations and churches that died because things changed and they didn’t.

When the post-mortem is done on those organizations, you usually discover they lacked not only the vision to see that change was necessary, but the flexibility and agility needed to change.

You’re developing agility and flexibility as a result of everything you’ve been through. Keep developing them, and don’t let those muscles atrophy.

Organizations that fail lack not only the vision to see that change was necessary, but the flexibility and agility needed to change.


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4. An Unhealthy Rhythm Now Means You Might Not Make It To Then

I recently asked over 75,000 leaders (over email….you can sign up here to join my list) what they’re struggling with. By far, the #1 challenge is exhaustion: their exhaustion and the fatigue of their teams.

The thing I’m most worried about for leaders who see 2021 as a panacea or a finish line of sorts is that they’re not going to make it into 2022. (I explain more on that in Point 5, below.)

Imagining that 2021 is going to give you rest is kind of like thinking you’ll be fine after the tornado, only realizing too late that you now have to rebuild everything.

Yes, things will eventually be better. No, we’re not there yet.

Finding a healthy rhythm during the crisis is essential to being okay after the crisis.

In the same way that so many leaders looked to time off to save them during 2020, only to discover that a week or two off didn’t solve anything, looking to 2021 to save you will just be an exercise in disappointment.

Time off won’t save you from an unsustainable pace when the problem is how you spend your time on.

And if 2021 won’t bring instant relief, it’s critical for you to find a sustainable pace now.

I have a lot of free resources on how to manage your time, energy and priorities to stay healthy, and I have a session in the free 2021 Church Leader Toolkit if you want to learn more (non-church leaders are welcome to the Toolkit as well).

Time off isn’t going to heal this one. How you spend your time on is.

Finding a healthy rhythm during the crisis is essential to being okay after the crisis.


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5. The Greatest Confront the Brutal Facts (But Never Lose Hope)

Let’s finish up by going back to what Jim Collins calls Stockdale Paradox, one of the the principles that a lot of leaders talked about at the early on in the crisis.

As you may remember, Jim Stockdale was an American general captured and imprisoned during the Vietnam war. He was held and tortured for seven years.

Stockdale said the first people to die in captivity were the optimists, who kept thinking things would get better quickly and they’d be released. “They died of a broken heart,” Stockdale said.

Intead, Stockdale argued, the key to survival was to combine realism and hope.  In Stockdale’s words:

“This is a very important lesson. You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end–-which you can never afford to lose–-with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.”

That essentially is your job in crisis leadership.

And sadly for you and me, the crisis and instability will soon drag into their second year.

You will prevail in the end, but there’s some brutal stuff you and I need to get through before things get better.

Crisis leadership falls apart when leaders embrace the extremes: pessimists only see the real, and naive optimists only see the ideal.

When you embrace both, you discover true leadership. You’ll also emerge out of the crisis stronger and into a much stronger tomorrow.

Crisis leadership falls apart when leaders embrace the extremes: pessimists only see the real, and naive optimists only see the ideal. When you embrace both, you discover true leadership.


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Get The Tools You Need In 2021 (A Free Toolkit)

As hard as it might be, what if 2021 could be a year of real growth for you and your church?

You know that in 2020, some organizations grew while others struggled. I’d love to help your church thrive in 2021.

I know, that sounds crazy (especially after a post like this), but like most things, it’s crazy until it’s not.

I believe 2021 can be a great year for you and your team, and I’d love to help you make it happen.

That’s why I created the 2021 Church Leader Toolkit.

Inside, I cover:

How To Produce Content That Actually Gets Read & Watched
5 Keys To Better Digital Preaching
How To Keep You And Your Team Out Of Burnout
7 Strategies To Deepen Digital Engagement
3 Key Pivots For Every Organization In 2021

I’ll be releasing 5 parts of the toolkit throughout December. And it’s free.

You can get access and share these skills with your team here!

What Do You See?

Any thoughts on the challenges you’ll be facing in 2021? How will you battle them?

Scroll down and leave a comment.

You're so anxious to get 2020 over with. With vaccines on the way, it's easy to assume 2021 will be less challenging. Here are 5 reasons that's a mistake.

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