Themes from “Nailing It”: Why Successful Leadership Demands Suffering & Surrender

Summary

Exclusive sneak peak into our Women, Work, & Calling 2025 keynote speaker's talk: Reverend Dr. Nicole Massey-Martin COO at Christianity Today. Dr. Martin joins us today to discuss her journey as a leader, and calls us to to crucify our ministry idols and nail our outdated leadership practices to the cross. As she shares the inspiration for her new book, Nailing It: Why Successful Leadership Demands Suffering and Surrender, Dr. Martin emphasizes the need for cruciform leadership, which and highlights the vital role women play in leadership and the workplace. Nicole shares insights on overcoming barriers, the significance of relationships in leadership, and the necessity of empowering women to lead effectively. 

 

Wherever you’re listening—Spotify, Apple, or YouTube—subscribing, rating, and reviewing the show helps others discover what we’re doing here. It’s a small way to support the mission—and it means a lot to us. 

Highlights

On Surrendered Leadership
 
"Someone said to me recently, leadership is 59 % about what you know and 51 % about who you know. And while that may be true, I would suggest that it is 100 % about who knows you, you are known by the Father and also 100 % dependent upon a God who knows it all. The moment I get to leadership and I think I've got this worked out is the moment I stop depending on God. But to me, cruciform leadership says, God, I do not know what to do, but my eyes are on you, says Hezekiah. God, I don't know how to shape this path, but I need you to show us how to shape it."
 
On Crucifying Perfection 

"What am I seeing most frequently repeated in my life and in the lives of other leaders around me? It is definitely crucifying perfection, a sense of perfectionism. I am still an overcoming perfectionist and the issue with perfectionism isn't excellence. It's not that. We want to pursue excellence, perfectionism is at its core a form of idolatry toward a God that does not exist. It is a worship of a standard that does not exist. And it is a sin for leaders and a problem and a stumbling block that needs to overcome, needs to be overcome because leaders who have an ideal of perfection, not only worship it themselves, but they train their teams to worship this fictitious idea of perfection as well. The way that we are perfect is by dotting every I and crossing every T... So the question can't be, what does it look like for us to perfectly meet our mission? The question has to be, how can we be perfectly connected to each other, to the team, to our stakeholders, to the people that we serve, so that what comes out of that exceeds what we ever imagined? This is the joy of releasing and surrendering perfection. When I release what I think is perfect, I get to embrace what God says."

Resources

Women, Work, & Calling annual event

Join a dynamic community of women who are passionate about loving God and serving others through their work. At WWC25, you’ll gain fresh insight, practical tools, and gospel-centered encouragement for every stage of your professional journey. At WWC25, we invite you to embrace the “AND” as you lean into God, his purposes in the world, and who he made you to be. Join a global community of women passionate about stewarding their influence in public life, for God’s glory AND others’ good.
register

Nicole's book

Liked what you heard in this episode? Learn more about surrendered leadership in Nicole Massey Martin's new book: Nailing It. In this transformative resource for leaders of all ages, Nicole Massie Martin inspires us to crucify our ministry idols and nail our outdated leadership practices to the cross. Sharing leadership principles and case studies wrapped in biblical precepts and pastoral wisdom, she leads us through seven areas of traditional leadership that need to be reframed: Power | Ego | Speed | Performance | Perfection | Loyalty | Scale.
purchase

Share