longitudinal leadership. [pt. 1]

Natalie Price

The first time I was called a quitter was by my brother in elementary school. We were playing the board game Sequence, and I had played enough to know I was dead in the water. So I quit. I got up from lying on my stomach, hands holding up my face. I threw my cards down where my elbows had indented the carpet, swiped at the game pieces, and started the short walk to my room. I was invigorated by the feeling of control I had. My brother couldn’t tell me I lost if I never finished.

“You can’t quit! Quitter!” he called after me. Something jolted inside of me. I thought quitting would be fulfilling. Instead, being labeled a quitter affected me. It wasn’t the last time I left him hanging in the middle of a game. It wasn’t the last time I gave up on something. After that day, it actually became easier to throw in the towel. I quit piano lessons, Girl Scouts, and using manners in my tomboy phase, to name a few. But it did leave a core memory. I never wanted to be called a quitter. It upheaved something in me I did not like and had to face. So I started to learn how to be someone who sees things through.

In the twenty-five years since that day in the family room, I’ve kept learning about life and leadership. I’ve become a mother and am still figuring out how to raise strong-willed miniature versions of myself while keeping multiple plates spinning. Over seventeen years, I’ve held two jobs in two states and have worked with a variety of people. In the last ten years, especially, I have had opportunities to lead both in operations and remotely. I’ve followed several leaders, and I’ve been in positions to coach younger leaders. Each has come with changes and challenges.

There is not anything new about leadership I’ve learned; it’s just been new to me. There is nothing I could offer that hasn’t been shared before by stronger leaders, said in a nuanced way or from a different perspective. Leadership can be both relationally complex and strategically simple. Every experience has taught me something valuable, and if I were to write each one down, I believe I could fill a small library of my own fascinations, lessons, and takeaways.

But collectively, three things have been surfacing for me about being a leader. Each idea has formed longitudinally over time. Because the truth is, there have been a lot of times over the last decade I’ve wanted to quit. I’ve wanted to quit my job. Quit relationships. Quit the field I’m in. Quit trying so hard. Quit leadership. Every time I’ve resolved to abandon the situation I find myself in, I can hear the 9-year-old version of my brother say, “But you can’t quit!”

And it stops me in the hallway of my heart again. So I keep learning.

1) A leader’s first job is to know themselves.

My favorite people to work with are the people who say that they are not self-aware, but would like to get better at knowing who they really are. Those people are unicorns and also, ironically, the most self-aware. It’s not as common to meet someone who can be that honest with themselves. I like that they know where their starting point is. I’ve been the person who has prided myself on how well I know who I am, but then am the first person to be blindsided by peer reviews and feedback.

Knowing yourself matters if you’re going to lead. From leading adults to toddlers, this has a tremendous impact. The key to business or building stability within a home is consistency. Whether it’s consistent sales growth or consistent bedtimes, stability stems from cohesive decision-making. A person who does not know themselves inevitably wrestles with inconsistency in their life. They are the first people to pick pleasing others over sharing their honest thoughts. They actually don’t have a choice in the matter. Because sharing honest thoughts requires them to know exactly what they think and why. Merging with what someone else thinks takes no effort and never has to answer the “why” question.

The “why” question helps inform what a leader’s motivation is. Any mom can answer her child with, “Because I said so. That’s why!” And no kid has ever been satisfied with that. Because it’s passive. It’s the same in leadership. A leader who can make a decision and give solid reasoning for it wins with people far more than those who can’t explain themselves clearly. People can at least disagree and live with grounded rationale more than they can accept a vague cop-out.

Knowing yourself requires that you spend time with yourself. It takes intentional energy in a world of autopilot, automatic, and AI-generated responses. Many people aren’t comfortable being alone with their own thoughts and slowly drift from becoming who they could be.

Leaders can absorb a lot of information about their industry or even about leadership, and still miss finding out what they were created for and who they were designed to be. To know yourself is to know the creativity and immeasurable love of God. It’s not pointless; it’s the entire purpose of life. Knowing yourself and knowing things about yourself doesn’t mean agreeing with yourself. I know I interrupt people when they’re speaking regularly. Not okay. I know I am insecure when people do not accept my ideas. And I desperately want to get better at that, too.

Knowing yourself helps you see areas for refinement so that you can ask for help. Asking yourself questions about what you think, what you feel, and what you believe shows you a realistic map of your growth. It helps you see the good work God is doing in your life. It can also reveal how much you’re operating out of your own pride and human limitations. It shows how much or how little you rely on the Lord for insight in your daily interactions.

It also positions you in a greater place to understand the people you lead. None of us has arrived. We all need help. Where would I be if I didn’t learn from leaders who went before me? Who learned the hard way? Who paved a path for people like me to take what they learned and keep going?

I worked for a leader for five years who put in great effort to know himself well. He was sincere, clear, quick to catch and apologize for his shortcomings, interested in others, and curious about what he did not yet know. I haven’t worked for him in several years, but I’ve never forgotten how valuable he made me feel to his organization. I still recall hanging up the phone countless times and feeling lifted by our conversation and the questions he asked me. He has produced more leaders from his company than corporate knows what to do with, and it’s no coincidence.

I had so many spiritual leaders early on who taught me that self-awareness is actually the gift of the Holy Spirit. When we accept Jesus as Lord and Savior of our lives, he gives us a helper. The Holy Spirit. Who guides us, who talks to us across the ticker of our minds, as my dad says, and shows us a better way to live. I watched them model humility to me when they didn’t get things right. They could name why they did what they did. They could admit the self-serving motivation, the why. They could ask for forgiveness without shame because their ultimate source of supply came from the finished work of the cross. They won me over to Jesus Christ with how they led themselves. And it was rooted in knowing their God-designed, purpose-intended selves first.

People can always tell if a person knows themselves or not. Leaders, especially parents, who try to hide their shortcomings, erode their credibility without realizing it. It costs them their influence. But a leader who is in the process of finding out who they are is much more compelling. Their story is relatable because that’s what we all want. To be secure, consistent, confident leaders who can face our imperfections and keep learning.

I’ve been trying to ask myself more often why I do the things I do. I’ve been driving in silence more often, forcing myself to reflect on how I treated people or the reactionary things I said that day. I’ve been asking the Lord to refine the things in me that aren’t helpful to the people I lead, especially my kids. I’m still in process, and I’m not always consistent. But being in process means I at least have momentum.

The leader who knows themself first can model what a self-aware life looks like for others. Consistency can then compound. Self-aware leaders build trust, provide stability, increase creativity, and build a healthy infrastructure that can sustain uncertainty, say “yes!” to opportunity, and encourage human flourishing.

What have you been learning about yourself?
What has God been showing you about yourself lately?

unhurried.

Natalie Price

December has a way of evoking deep emotions. I feel things differently in December than in other months. Maybe it’s because I was born on a Friday afternoon the last week of December, and turning a year older makes me pensive now. Perhaps it’s the expectation of Christmas. As a parent, there’s so much I want my kids to experience and remember about the Advent season. As I’ve been putting my kids to bed each night, though, I realize my intentions have outpaced my energy for the day. Guilt comes easily for not taking them to see the lights like we planned. Anxiety comes from waiting last minute to read our Christmas story excerpt for the day.

So much of my worry can come down to wanting more time. More hours in the day. More space to catch my breath before going onto the next item on my to-do list. I want more time with my kids when my energy is high, and I disappoint myself when I’m distracted and fragmented. It happens often, as I try to juggle house chores with work calls and deadlines. When my kids come home from school, I’m answering a flurry of questions and breaking up arguments. I become rash and untempered. I’m overwhelmed by a strong sense of urgency to eliminate chaos. And when I can’t, or I lack grace in my efforts, I sigh heavily. My shoulders sag.

I’m trying to not have saggy shoulders. Literally, because my mom has always thought it’s unbecoming of me, and metaphorically, because this season is a gift. Celebrating Christmas is full of opportunity and hope for what’s to come. I don’t want to waste it, or rush it, or miss the point of it. I wish life were like a Hallmark movie, though, where everything is serendipitous and nothing is realistic. Perfectly manicured characters can transform from Ebenezer Scrooge to Buddy the Elf in 90 minutes just by decorating sugar cookies and saving a small business in the St. Nick of time.

Instead, life for me is simply a series of choices. How do I want to manage my time? How do I want to respond to unpredictable outcomes? At the end of each day, did I reflect on the miracle of Jesus coming to earth as a baby? Or will I be too worried about how the post office lost my package that was supposed to arrive two weeks ago? Will I get flustered by my kids’ complaints? What perspective will I choose to have about work decisions I didn’t make?

I’ve spent time auditing my life and identifying symptoms, hoping they’d lead me to root causes. I’m hyper aware of how often the negative side effects of decision fatigue win, and I become hurried and reactive. I race against time when no one has asked me to. I become defensive, impatient, and take on a critically rude tone at home. So much of that can be traced back to needing Jesus, yes. But how I manage my time, especially what I give so much of my time to, is also a factor.

Next week, I’ll turn 33 against my will. I can’t turn back the aging process, but I did lay out in my journal what I hope for this coming year. What I want is actually less. Fewer things to manage. Less clutter to declutter again and again. Less self-induced stress, less time spent on my phone, fewer opportunities to waste time.

I can get so distracted shopping online for deals, which turns into buying things we don’t need or won’t need for a long time. Before I make the argument that stocking up on things is actually wisdom at play, let me just say: I sense the Lord challenging me to rely on him for my needs a little more this coming year than my ability to live like the apocalypse may come knocking tomorrow.

I exhaust myself managing all the things I own. I have eight billion cords, but I only know which ones I need for my computer, watch, and phone. The rest make for a tangled-up game of Russian roulette and trying not to act like Clark Griswold when I need to charge anything else. I have 15 book studies sitting on my shelf, when my preferred method for my entire adult life has been to read through the Bible using a yearly plan instead. Whenever I find a pair of pants I like, I buy four pairs the second they go on sale, just to be safe. Safe from what? Not sure. My grandmother was a child of the Great Depression, and I’ve used this to convince myself that my fear of lack is genetic. It’s not.

Checking email takes me forever because I have three accounts. One for junk, one for work, and one for personal. There are two people in life: those who like to see how big a notification number they can get on their inbox icon, and those of us who are more sane and want the email notifications cleared. Either way, I want less to manage. Because whenever I get overwhelmed, I drop everything, ignore everyone, and go organize closets and shelves. It’s cathartic, but it’s also a hamster wheel.

Fewer shoes to trip on, fewer books to display, and fewer distractions. More time with family, more time to focus, more to be grateful for, and more margin. Because when there’s more margin, I’m not in a hurry. More margin gives time for more meaning. I don’t mean to overspiritualize my age, but turning 33 makes me think about Jesus a lot. I think about how he gave himself margin. How he established rhythms. He ensured his time was never wasted. He was unhurried and yet always on time. Unhurried was a posture. It made him approachable. It helped him ask good questions, and it gave lost people the space to ask him questions. Jesus’s ministry was done in the margins of time.

I want to clear space to invite Jesus into the margins of my life. I want even the margins, the quiet corners, to have the opportunity for meaning. I want to exchange managing things for fostering fun. I don’t want my kids to have memories of me answering their questions while my eyes are on my phone. I don’t want them to remember the sounds of my hurried footsteps coming down the hall, scooping up dirty clothes in a huff. They’re five and seven, but before I know it, they won’t be. Less worrying about fleeting time. More savoring every moment.

Christmas is a funny time to arrive at my resolve for less, when there’s so much I want to take in. All the cringeworthy movies and local events. My shopping list for people isn’t finished. Gifts are still unwrapped. But it’s actually the perfect time to slow down and take in the real magic of the Christmas story.

The world thought they needed a powerful king to save them. What they needed was Emmanuel. A baby who in thirty years would grow in wisdom, stature, and favor in the eyes of men. He came quietly and without much. Yet he was everything, the hope of the world. We often don’t recognize the gift of what’s before us. It’s time that helps us appreciate what once was. There were probably plenty of people who missed Jesus then or miss the point of him now.

But Christmas reminds us that Jesus loved us so much that he came to earth to be with us. To reconcile us back to him for all of eternity. He was here for a short time, but the hope of Christmas is that Emmanuel, which means God with us, is the One who was, who is, and is to come. He is forever. My small brain can’t comprehend his version of time, but this I know: Jesus didn’t preach the Sermon on the Mount on 2x speed, and I’m a better version of myself when I’m not hurried by menial tasks.

So often I want things to be deep and the lessons I’m learning to be profound. The simplicity of slowing down this Christmas season isn’t flashy or impressive. I barely know what an unhurried posture actually looks like; I’ve lived on autopilot for so long. But I am practicing standing with my shoulders back.

Wherever you find yourself this Christmas, I pray you’ll be rich in the hope we have that a Savior has been born to us. A king! A redeemer. A friend. Who wants to meet you even in the margins of your life, too.

Take care & take heart,

since we were 18.

Natalie Price

The first time I saw him was a brisk afternoon in March, and I was eighteen. I cautiously drove my first car down the long gravel driveway that led to his grandparents’ house, which had been left to his family after they’d gone. I spotted him through the trees, overlooking the pond, the family dog Baxter at his heel. He was tall and slender in athletic pants, with teenage hair that waved under the rim of his gray hat.

Three months before, I had innocently added him on Facebook, the grandson of church members I’d grown up knowing. When I realized he probably didn’t remember me from so long ago—moving away so young—I messaged him to explain who I was, something I had never done to a virtual stranger. To my surprise, he was moving back to my hometown after graduation before heading off to college like me. It was 2011, and we found a way to keep our conversation going for weeks.

That day in March when he visited, the sun overhead contradicted the wind and cool temperatures, and we drove around town in my gold Dodge Cirrus. His legs stretched out in my passenger seat as I pulled into the park he had gone to as a kid. We laughed as we swung on the swings until our noses ran and bantered easily, just like we’d done online for hours.

By summer, we swore to people we were just friends, but we both knew better. He fell harder first; I was learning to forgive myself after being deeply hurt, the only way hopeful sixteen-year-old girls can be by lost boys. Where I was cautious, Hunter was carefree. The way I felt the weight of the world, he pursued levity and adventure. We thought similarly about what we wanted for our lives, and so different all at once. Learning how to love each other was like getting on a roller coaster: the choice to take a slow incline to the top before the sensation of free-falling around unexpected curves.

When the leaves began to turn, I went off to college with the utmost resolve. Hunter Price was it for me. No one could talk me out of forever and with pure hearts, they tried. I felt so confident in him and yet unsure of myself. I had questions in the back of my mind that would creep in, wondering if I could really be a good wife, if all the worst parts of me would disappoint him. Some days, I wondered if he could handle me, if we were ready for something so serious, if together we had what it would take. My judgment had been wrong before, and that had cost me.

What I did know, what I would bet my life on, though, was that if I were to go through the most devastating things life could throw at me: health crisis, bankruptcy, infertility, loss of a loved one, career failure, betrayal—I somehow knew without a single shred of doubt, Hunter was the person to go through any of that heartbreak with. He is the comic relief to my seriousness. He brings curiosity and possibility when I’m stuck in my ways. He dreams bigger than my meticulous, small-minded plans and helps me dream bigger, too. He is always on time, always ready in unforeseen circumstances, even though he thinks he’s not, always forgiving.

Four years later, on a cold November Saturday, as the last of the autumn trees faded in color, I said “I do” to a lifetime with him. I still had questions about my capacity to unconditionally love someone, but at 22, I felt invincible, like we could figure all of this out. That was ten years ago. And since that day, marriage has humbled me more than I’ve wanted it to in the last decade. Adulthood and hardships have shocked me, and yet, being married has also brought the most adventure to my days.

We moved away from our families to an idyllic town between Madison in Milwaukee the summer after our wedding and thought we were on top of the world. It didn’t take long after changing my last name for me to see the severity of my selfishness, like my inability to see his needs before my own. Making decisions together took longer and unearthed things we didn’t understand about each other yet. Small things like dresser drawers being left open and bed sheets needing to be untucked caught me and my expectations off guard. Seeing him land the coaching job of a lifetime and connect with his players outside the locker room was a surprise in the best way.

Taking on each other’s burdens was messy and uncoordinated. I grew up with a family that never put off transparent conversations; he had grandfathers who were war veterans and dealt with emotions privately, if even at all. I didn’t know how to draw things out of him, and he couldn’t keep me from having an unspoken thought. Handling money together and first-time jobs in an unfamiliar state reinforced our teamwork and revealed our deepest insecurities.

We bought kayaks on a crazy whim and floated along hidden canals to escape the stress of being 23 and inexperienced adults. Instead of taking exotic vacations like our peers, we lived frugally and soaked up the Wisconsin summer sun on Saturdays to feel like we were 18 again. With the latest Luke Bryan hit in the background, I paddled next to Hunter on Lac La Belle. We would laugh about something we watched on Impractical Jokers, and I knew all at once that he had me and I had him. It’s a memory I chase in my mind again and again. We couldn’t make the world stop, but on those Saturdays, for just a few hours, I thought we might.

A year later, on a Sunday in August, we learned we were going to be parents by Spring. Griffin was born on a snowy Wednesday night in April. We were euphoric; he was perfect to us at 9 pounds, 5 ounces. By Thursday night, he was admitted to the NICU for tachypnea, and I was terrified. In an instant, every hope we had for celebrating the birth of our first child evaporated. My eyes brimmed with tears for days, not knowing what emotion to feel first as I watched our son hooked up to so many things. It felt like I couldn’t steady my breath every time they pricked his little feet and he cried in surprised pain. I felt a protective anger like I had never felt, so beside myself.

In the NICU bay, with my hand on Griffin’s little bundled body, glowing under the blue light, I remembered my resolve. If I had to go through the worst things in life, I needed Hunter to be what I couldn’t be. And he was. The nurse practitioner spoke a different language I didn’t understand. The nurses changed shifts every 12 hours and I couldn’t tell them apart. We were told one thing and raised our hopes, only to be told something else and crushed by disappointment.

We overheard hospital staff talk about our son like what he was going through was good for their business. Groups of nurses observed every feeding, touching me, a very modest person, without asking. When I was battling both shock and hysteria, Hunter asked the medical staff the questions I couldn’t think to ask. He was calm and steady. He kept me from saying things I’d regret. He was outwardly hopeful when we were both inwardly fearful that we wouldn’t bring our son home.

When we left the hospital with Griffin four days later in the middle of a blizzard, it was Hunter who made sure we didn’t take parenthood for granted. Where I focused on the traumatic experience I never asked for, he fixated on making memories with Griffin, even as a newborn. Because of how tight money was, I didn’t take the unpaid maternity leave I should have taken to heal mentally. A week after he was born, I sat next to baby Griff while he did his light therapy and resumed my work. I felt like I had no choice. But mostly, I was afraid of being irrelevant in my job if they noticed I was gone.

Over the course of the next twelve months, I walked countless miles. I pushed the stroller and pushed through agonizing, conflicting emotions. Living four hours away made it hard for our working parents to visit as often as I needed them to, and daycare was too expensive. I didn’t want daycare. I wanted the freedom to choose whether or not to stay home, but like marriage, I was afraid I really didn’t have what it would take to be a good mother.

I can see now how much I took that out on Hunter. How much I resented stay-at-home moms then. How I resented my job but knew if I didn’t have it, we wouldn’t have groceries. I did the budget so many times, trying to see if the outcome would be different. I became angry that two college graduates, who worked very hard to become debt-free by 24, couldn’t afford a home, let alone a nursery for their child, while other couples could. I thought about all of this while I stared at our apartment walls, waiting for Hunter to come home to relieve me from my overwhelming day with Griffin.

He wanted to be fed every two hours till he was nearly eight months old. The doctor told me I needed to memorize his breathing patterns and stay diligent. Between that anxiety and his round-the-clock feedings, I didn’t know what sleep was. He cried so much, I was convinced he had colic, only to be told he didn’t. I had so much guilt for working. I had guilt for not enjoying my time with him when I wasn’t working. I felt guilty for not working when I took breaks. I ignored every signal my body gave me to slow down and process all of the change. And my marriage paid for it.

By 2020, we had moved away from that perfect town for Hunter’s new coaching job an hour south, and I was reluctant about it. My boss let me keep my job, which had become mostly remote, and we had our second son, Nolan, two weeks before the entire world shut down. Two boys under two, living in a second-story apartment, in a new town, with no friends during a global pandemic, was the hardest season of our married life.

Our lows during those two years of chaos and uncertainty were dark and cold. It became harder for me to make it to Hunter’s varsity games, knowing the kids had bedtimes, and I didn’t need a mask to feel suffocated by all of the responsibility. We were both battling anxiety and frustration when we bought our first house, thinking that would solve so many of our close-quartered problems. It magnified them with a mortgage. Hunter was gone so much on top of a thirty-minute commute, and I stored up grudges at the world as I raked 40 bags of leaves during unpredictable nap times.

Long gone were the days of kayaks, iced coffee, and watching College Gameday in bed after sleeping in. I didn’t recognize who I was. I fixated on what felt like constant fighting, our vicious cycle of negativity and scorekeeping, my resentment, and challenging children when everyone else seemed to have life easier. The miracle of it all was that I kept up with my Bible reading every day and started journaling more than I had before. Page after page, I talked to God, and each day he answered me back with opportunities to practice surrendering every moment to him.

On a Sunday in January, I was outside shoveling snow when I heard blood-curdling screaming inside. It was so loud, neighbors came outside to see what was happening. Nolan, at 11 months old, had crawled all the way across the house and pulled open the basement door I had left ajar. I hadn’t thought to put a baby gate up since we had recently moved and the door was always shut, but if I had he wouldn’t have fallen down thirteen steps onto a bare concrete floor. Hunter made it in time to see it happen, but too late to stop it. Before I knew it, we were racing to the ER on unshoveled highways.

Again, I was with Hunter in a hospital room with our son, terrified, yet steadied by his presence. Nolan’s CT scan came back clear, but he lost the only baby teeth he had at the time on impact. It was Hunter who called the emergency line for the pediatric dentist. It was Hunter who held Nolan and talked his little mind through everything while the weight of the guilt and the grief pressed on my lungs. I was 18 again, reminded that I chose life with Hunter, come hell or high water.

Nolan was going to be okay and so were we. By 2022, we were more settled in our routine with the basketball season and our roles as working parents. That season, Hunter took the Big Foot Chiefs on the longest playoff run in school history and was honored that fall in the Wisconsin Dells for coaching Division 3 Boys Basketball. I started to feel like I was making progress in my job and began practicing gratitude in more meaningful ways than I had before. The cloud that felt like it was over us for several years began to lift.

Time has a way of showing me all of the ways God was weaving a grander story that I couldn’t see when I was so up close. Hunter and I spent this last week in Tennessee reflecting on the past ten years together. It can be hard for me to reflect on the kind of wife I was in my twenties, so focused on my own expectations. It’s also difficult to give myself grace for the times I did the best I could to love Hunter well with what I had at the time. But what I see now in those first seven years is how we were being fortified together. Tested, refined, yielding to the Holy Spirit without the other one knowing.

Since that season, we have moved back to our family in our hometown. I’ve made it through grad school, and Hunter changed his career. He’s home so much more and the best father to our sons in every way. We get to go on dates, and I don’t have papers due anymore. The Lord has worked on my heart to see that the vocational work he has for me is a calling and an opportunity, and I’m having the most fun in my job I’ve ever had. The days are long, but the blessings that come from contributing to kingdom work both at my computer and raising my kids, I never saw coming.

Everything I daydreamed about when I sat on a cold basement floor trying to work while my toddlers played is my life now. Maybe it’s because we know what hard looks like, raising kids without family around. Maybe it’s because we’re wiser and appreciate the small things so much more. Maybe prayer and fighting for your marriage in a quitting culture produce the kind of gratitude that makes life richer for us. But every day when I drive back home and see Hunter’s car in the driveway, I smile knowing I was right.

Whatever I face in life, what I’ve walked through, what I’m still processing, what is yet to come: Hunter Price is the person I want to do this life with, every time.

Saying yes to forever with someone else, so much my opposite, has been like a roller coaster in every way. It’s not what I expected, but it has been more. I’ve been anchored by the decision I made nearly fifteen years ago at eighteen. And I’m so grateful my stubborn, fixed-mindset back then was good for one thing–the best thing.

To Hunter,

Thank you for ten years of patience and resilience. Thank you for breaking through tough conversations with laughter and levity. Thank you for driving, for asking questions, for thinking of how you can support me when you have so much on your to-do list, too. Thank you for wearing Tennessee Orange and not interrupting my ten-minute rants about fictional characters you can’t even remember the names of. Thank you for being so intentional with our boys and for being the calming presence at the dinner table.

Most of all, thank you for being everything I’m not, but making me believe I can be. Knowing you has been one of the greatest privileges of my life. Seeing your personality show up in our kids is one of my favorite joys. If this has been the first ten years, I’m so thankful to have you for the next fifty.

I love you. And I’d pick you again, Strong Side.

Love,

Left Side