Your Setbacks Aren’t Setbacks at All
Why the trials you’re trying to escape may be the exact classrooms God designed to prepare you for influence.
Every leader knows what it feels like to be blindsided.
The deal falls apart at the last minute. The staff member you trusted quits unexpectedly. The project you poured months into gets shut down. The momentum you thought was building suddenly stalls.
Our natural response is frustration. We treat these moments like detours on the path to our calling. Something went wrong, so now we’re off track. But what if setbacks aren’t detours at all? What if they’re the exact path God designed for your growth?
That’s the reframing James gives us in one of the most counterintuitive passages of Scripture.
Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.
— James 1:1-2 NIV
Joy in trials. Perseverance through testing. Growth through difficulty.
This isn’t the leadership manual most of us signed up for. We want the clarity without the confusion, the success without the challenges, the goals without the setbacks. Yet James insists that trials aren’t interruptions to your development. They are the development.
The Classroom of Perseverance
Think of perseverance like a muscle. It doesn’t grow when life is easy. It grows under tension.
No one builds strength by lifting feathers. You build it by pushing against weight that feels uncomfortable. The same is true in leadership.
Your capacity expands when you carry loads that stretch you beyond comfort.
When James says trials produce perseverance, he’s saying exactly this: the friction you’re feeling is the training your leadership needs.
Failure clarifies what success hides. When everything is working, we rarely stop to examine systems or motives. Failure forces you to.
Disappointment pushes dependence. Success can make us self-sufficient. Disappointment reminds us we need wisdom beyond our own.
Closed doors redirect your focus. What feels like rejection often protects you from a path that would have limited your potential.
Delays grow patience. Waiting seasons don’t waste time. They build character you’ll need for influence later.
Your current frustration might not be a sign that you’re failing. It might be proof that you’re enrolled in the exact class God intends for your growth.
The difference between leaders who burn out and those who break through isn’t their level of talent. It’s their perspective. One group sees trials as proof they’re on the wrong path. The other sees trials as evidence they’re being prepared for something bigger.
That perspective shift changes everything. Instead of asking, “Why is this happening to me?” you start asking, “What is this teaching me?” Instead of scrambling to escape the difficulty, you lean into the lessons it offers.
The situation doesn’t change. But your capacity to lead through it does.
Your Team is Always Learning From Your Actions
Here’s something leaders often forget: your people are always watching you. They’re learning more from how you handle pressure than from what you say about vision.
I say this to parents all the time. Kids learn 100 times more from what you do over what you say.
When you panic in setbacks, you give your team permission to panic. When you treat challenges like classrooms, you invite them to grow.
This is why your response matters so much. The tone you set will either create a culture of fear or a culture of resilience. One collapses under pressure. The other learns how to transform pressure into progress.
Think of the difference in culture:
In one organization, every setback sparks blame. People avoid responsibility, morale plummets, and the team survives at best.
In another, setbacks are acknowledged but also mined for lessons. People collaborate, innovate, and emerge stronger.
Which culture would you rather lead? Which one would you rather be a part of? And here’s the truth, the latter is extremely rare.
The Soil Where Leadership Grows
The imagery James uses is agricultural.
Perseverance doesn’t appear overnight. It’s cultivated in the soil of difficulty.
Like roots pushing against hard ground, your leadership roots deepen when you encounter resistance. It’s the strain that makes them strong enough to withstand future storms.
So the question isn’t whether you’ll face setbacks. You will. The question is whether you’ll let them produce shallow frustration or deep perseverance.
Finding Value in the Problems
Let’s talk a little bit about how you actually put this into practice? It starts with reframing.
Language matters. Perspective matters. Leaders shape both.
Here’s how you can start reframing setbacks as classrooms:
Project Delays = Sustainability Training. Instead of obsessing over the lost time, focus on building systems that will scale and sustain the growth when growth resumes.
Team Failures = Leadership Development. When someone disappoints you, use it as a chance to grow your coaching skills and refine expectations.
Financial Pressure = Innovation Lab. Money challenges will always force you to get creative. What fresh approaches could emerge or new initiatives could be born?
Disrupted Plans = Adaptability Course. When the unexpected interrupts your strategy, use it as practice in flexibility and resilience.
The curriculum is custom-designed for the qualities you most need to develop.
Mistakes Leaders Make in the Classroom
Of course, not every leader learns the lessons that challenges offer. Some repeat the same grade year after year.
Here are the three most common mistakes I see leaders make in seasons of difficulty:
Avoiding the opportunity. Instead of asking what God is developing, you just try to move past the pain as quickly as possible.
Blaming others. Shifting responsibility might make you feel better temporarily, but it keeps you from growing.
Quitting too soon. Many leaders abandon the process just before perseverance is about to produce fruit.
Growth requires staying in the classroom long enough to pass the test.
Think of your organization as a laboratory where your setbacks can become your greatest opportunities for growth.
Missed goals can reveal broken systems that need reworking.
Lost opportunities can expose weak assumptions you relied on.
Relational conflict can highlight blind spots in your culture.
In each case, the problem is also the opportunity. If you have the courage to name the lesson, you’ll come out stronger.
And when you model that posture for your people, you don’t just grow yourself. You create a multiplying culture of growth.
How to Lead Through Setbacks
If setbacks are classrooms, here’s how to graduate well:
1. Pause Before Reacting
The leaders who derail most in setbacks aren’t undone by the setback itself but by their reaction to it. You’ve seen it: someone gets blindsided and immediately fires off emails, cancels projects, or lashes out at their team. The initial problem is rarely what causes lasting damage, it’s the unmeasured reaction.
Instead, practice the discipline of pause. This doesn’t mean ignoring urgency. It means slowing your spirit enough to avoid making emotional decisions that sabotage long-term health. In practice, this could look like:
Setting a 24-hour rule before responding to major criticism or bad news.
Taking ten minutes for silence and prayer before a meeting about the problem.
Writing out your raw thoughts privately before addressing them publicly.
Pausing creates space for wisdom to catch up with your emotions. Proverbs 19:11 reminds us, “A person’s wisdom yields patience; it is to one’s glory to overlook an offense.” Pausing gives wisdom a chance to lead.
2. Ask Growth-Oriented Questions
Questions are how you reframe the moment. If you keep asking, “Why is this happening to me?” you’ll always end up stuck in frustration. But when you shift your questions, you shift your leadership posture.
Here are questions that open doors instead of close them:
What is God forming in me through this situation?
Which blind spots is this revealing that I couldn’t see before?
How can this strengthen my team rather than weaken it?
What habits or systems will this trial force me to develop that will serve us in the future?
Notice these questions don’t minimize the pain. They mine the pain. They take the weight of difficulty and press it into leadership maturity.
This shift is more than psychology. In fact, I think it’s deeply theological. James isn’t telling us to enjoy suffering for its own sake. He’s telling us that suffering is fertile soil for growth when we ask the right questions and let God’s Spirit shape our answers.
3. Translate Lessons Into Action
It’s one thing to see the lesson. It’s another thing to implement it. Many leaders stop at recognition. They can articulate what the setback taught them, but they don’t change anything. And when nothing changes, the same trial often reappears.
This is where intentional action matters. Take one concrete step after every major setback. For example:
If a team failure revealed weak communication rhythms, implement weekly alignment check-ins.
If a delayed project showed poor time estimation, create a margin buffer in future timelines.
If conflict exposed relational fragility, invest in trust-building exercises with your team.
Ask yourself: What one small action would prevent me from repeating this same mistake? Then commit to it.
James 1:4 reminds us that perseverance finishes its work so we become mature and complete. But maturity doesn’t come from knowledge alone. It comes from acting on what the trial revealed.
4. Communicate With Your Team
Your people don’t need a leader who pretends setbacks don’t exist. They need a leader who can acknowledge the reality of pain while pointing to the possibility of growth.
This doesn’t mean oversharing or dumping your fears on the team. It means creating transparent communication that acknowledges the difficulty, affirms your commitment, and names the lessons you’re extracting.
Example:
“This project didn’t go the way we hoped. But here’s what it taught us, and here’s how we’ll be stronger because of it.”
“This quarter exposed a gap in our systems. I take responsibility for that, and together we’re going to implement changes that make us better.”
When you share your processing with your team, you model resilience. They see that setbacks don’t disqualify them, they develop them. This creates a culture where people stop hiding mistakes and start learning from them.
5. Anchor in Scripture
When trials hit, leaders often reach for quick fixes or motivational slogans. But your ultimate anchor isn’t “catchy words”, it’s eternal truth. James 1:2–3 gives a framework for seeing setbacks as growth, but Scripture is full of anchors for perseverance.
Romans 5:3–4: “We also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.”
2 Corinthians 4:17: “For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.”
Galatians 6:9: “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.”
Anchoring yourself and your team in these truths reminds you that trials are part of the process. They don’t mean failure. They signal it’s time to grow.
Make this practical: open every meeting during a tough season with a brief word of Scripture.
Share what it means for your situation. Let God’s Word shape the perspective of your people. This turns Scripture from Sunday inspiration into weekday strategy.
Graduate From Your Trial
If you’re in a setback right now, stop asking when it will end. Start asking what it’s meant to teach you.
James wasn’t romanticizing pain. He was showing us how God uses trials as tools for transformation. The perseverance you develop here is what will carry you in the seasons of influence ahead.
So embrace the classroom. Lean into the lesson. Graduate ready.
Because the trial that frustrates you today may be the exact training that prepares you for the opportunity tomorrow.
So I know times will get tough…
But just keep growing, leader!
— Jared
I’d love to hear your story about how a setback shaped you into a better leader. Leave it below in the comments.