“i3 Thinking” is a series of mental barriers that paralyze people from using their God given resources to invest in the people around them. The first “i” is “inferiority.” Today I want to examine the second “i” – “inadequacy.”
Inadequacy is a first cousin to inferiority. While inferiority makes the measure of success too high, inadequacy makes the assessment of one’s self too low. Inferiority says, “They’re too good for me.” Inadequacy says, “I’m too bad for them.” Rather than focusing on the few strengths that we can contribute to others’ growth, we lose perspective and stare at what feels like a mountain of weaknesses. We tell ourselves lies like, “I don’t have what it takes to coach someone,” “My resource pool is to shallow to allocate anything meaningful to somebody else’s growth,” or “My network of relationships could never add value to somebody else.” While inferiority focuses on everybody else’s superiority, inadequacy focuses on my insufficiency.
Questions: How does inadequacy show up in the life of a leader? How can a person overcome inadequacy in their thinking and make a meaningful investment in others?
