A settler’s mentality is stagnant leadership

About 350 years ago, the story is told, a shipload of travelers landed on the northeast coast of America. The first year they established a townsite. The next year they elected a town government. In the third year, the town government planned to build a road 5 miles westward to the wilderness.

 

In the fourth year, the people tried to impeach their town government because they thought it was a waste of public funds to build a road 5 miles westward into a wilderness. Who needed to go there anyway?

 

Here were people who had the vision to see 3,000 miles across an ocean and overcome great hardships to get there. But in just a few years, they were not able to see even 5 miles out of town. They had lost their pioneering vision.

 

You may be in a place in your leadership where you feel that you are in a rut or have grown stagnant. Would you even know that you have or what that looks like? What are some of the signs that you have a settler’s mentality when it comes to your leadership? Here are five for your consideration.

 

You stand in the way 

of change

 

A leader with a settler’s mentality stands in the way of change. He or she not just longs for the “good ole days” but still has that mindset and to some extent prefers it. While one can certainly appreciate the past one must not live or stay there. 

 

You don’t have a personal growth plan

 

A leader with a settler’s mentality is in many ways a leader who has grown stagnant. In other words, they’ve stopped growing. Your growth and development as a leader have no endpoint where you’ve arrived and you know it all. If you are not learning and growing as a leader then you are settling.

 

When you embrace a growth mindset and have a personal growth plan you can break out of that settler’s mentality. It will invigorate you and it will add value to your team. If you’re not growing you are not moving forward. And as a leader, you can’t afford to settle. With growth comes more growth. Don’t settle for where you are, grow to where you want to go.

 

Others have moved on 

without you

 

Another sure sign that you have a settler’s mentality as a leader is that, well, others have moved on from you. And this is not necessarily because you are not a likable person, but because they’ve outgrown you. They’ve outgrown you not necessarily because they are more talented or gifted, or possess a greater skillset. They’ve moved on because you’ve stopped growing.  

 

You’re afraid to take risks

 

Settlers tend to only move when they know it’s safe. If you are a leader who’s afraid to take risks then you might have been one of the townspeople opposing the road out of town. Life is full of risks and as a leader, you have to be willing to make them.

 

This doesn’t mean that you throw caution to the wind and that you recklessly make decisions, but so long as you never take them, you will always be a settler. Dare to dream, dare to take risks, dare to bet on yourself.

 

You’ve stopped dreaming

 

The by-product of a settler’s mentality in your leadership is evidenced in that you’ve stopped dreaming. When was the last time your dreams kept you up at night? Have you lost the passion that you once knew? When you give up on a dream or when it begins to fade, you begin to settle. 

 

When you stop dreaming, something inside you stops growing. A settler’s mentality has no vision of the future beyond their current surroundings.

 

Are you settling or moving forward?

 

©2022 Doug Dickerson

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