The Proximity Problem

What I Learned About Passion, Presence and Proximity

A few weeks ago, I was sitting at a pastor’s roundtable when Craig Groeschel started talking about something he calls Inspire 10.

The basic idea is that part of a leader’s responsibility is to inspire the people around them to operate at a 10. Not a 7. Not an 8. A 10.

I loved it.

But almost immediately, my mind went somewhere else.

Am I a 10?

I wasn’t thinking about anyone on my team. I wasn’t wondering who was passionate enough or who needed to step it up. I was thinking about me.

If I’m asking the people around me to bring a 10, what am I bringing?

And to be clear, I don’t think everyone’s 10 looks the same. My 7 might look like someone else’s 10. Passion isn’t personality. It isn’t volume. It isn’t walking into every meeting yelling, clapping, and firing everybody up.

But I do believe the passion of the leader establishes something in an organization. It’s hard for an organization to sustain an intensity its leader no longer models. If the leader consistently operates at an 8, it’s difficult to build a culture of 9s and 10s. Eventually, the leader’s level becomes the organization’s ceiling.

So Craig’s question got under my skin. Am I still bringing my 10? And then another question started bothering me even more.

Even if I am passionate, can the people I lead feel it?

Passion Has to Be Perceived

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about something I’m calling perceived passion.

There can be a difference between how passionate I know I am and how much of that passion the people around me actually experience. I can sit at home and think about Victory all day. I can pray about it. Dream about it. Work on budgets. Write sermons. Answer emails. Solve problems. Spend hours thinking about the future.

I know how much I care. But nobody can see what’s happening inside me. And I’m realizing that passion has a transfer problem. If the people around me rarely experience it, how exactly is it supposed to become contagious?

You don’t get organizational credit for passion nobody experiences. That realization has caused me to rethink some things about how I work.

COVID Taught Us We Could Work From Anywhere

In 2020, almost overnight, millions of us went home.

Conference rooms became Zoom rooms. Kitchen tables became offices. We figured out that meetings could happen from almost anywhere.

And here’s the interesting part: a lot of it worked.

In fact, five years later, working from home hasn’t disappeared. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 35 percent of employed Americans did some or all of their work from home on the days they worked in 2025.¹ Among jobs that can be done remotely, Gallup currently finds hybrid work is actually the most common arrangement.²

There’s also good evidence that flexibility can be good for people. One large randomized study of more than 1,600 employees found that working from home two days a week reduced resignations by roughly a third without hurting performance.³

So this isn’t my argument for dragging everybody back into an office five days a week.

I’m not even sure that’s the right answer.

But I am beginning to believe we learned one lesson from 2020 so well that we may have forgotten another one.

Just because I can work from anywhere doesn’t mean I can lead equally well from everywhere.

There’s a difference between productivity and proximity.

And I’m discovering that I need both.

I Accidentally Became a Remote Leader

This wasn’t really intentional for me.

For several years I served as president of The King’s University in addition to leading Victory Church. I had an office there and was around people constantly.

When I left the university, my rhythms changed.

Around the same time, we opened our Grapevine campus. Initially, there weren’t offices there because we were in a set up and tear down environment. Eventually, we added some offices, but there wasn’t really enough room for me to have one.

So I worked from home. And honestly, it worked. And even more honestly, I grew to like it.

I could write from home. Take calls from home. Zoom from home. Prepare from home. Make decisions from home. I could be incredibly productive from home. But lately I’ve realized there was something I couldn’t do nearly as well from home.

Feel the room.

You can get a lot of information through a screen. But I’m not sure you can get the pulse of an organization through one.

Reports tell me what happened, but proximity helps me feel what’s happening.

There’s something about walking through an office and hearing the conversations. Someone sticks their head through your door and says, “Hey, do you have a second...”

You hear somebody celebrating something that worked. You notice somebody who doesn’t quite seem like themselves. You overhear an idea that turns into a five-minute conversation that turns into something really good.

None of that was on a calendar.

And I’m beginning to think some of the most important leadership moments I’ve ever had weren’t scheduled.

Presence Creates Unscheduled Leadership

I love efficiency. Probably too much. If you give me the choice between a 30-minute meeting and a 15-minute meeting, I’m taking 15.

But leadership isn’t always efficient.
People are wonderfully inefficient.
Culture is largely inefficient.
Relationships are definitely inefficient.

Some things happen simply because you were there. That’s what I’ve been missing. Not meetings. Not information.

Moments.

The little conversations between the scheduled conversations. Those moments seem insignificant, but stack enough of them together and you have something we call culture. And I’m realizing I can’t schedule all of those.

Sometimes I just have to be there.

Presence Breeds Passion

Here’s the part I didn’t expect. Initially, I thought about this from the perspective of my team. Maybe they need more proximity to me. But the longer I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve realized something else.

I need more proximity to them.

Being around the people doing the work does something to me.

I hear the stories. I see the problems. I watch somebody solve something. I hear about a win before it gets cleaned up and turned into a report.

The mission gets faces again. And it fuels me. Presence breeds passion, and I’ve discovered it works in both directions.

My passion can affect the room, but the room also affects my passion.

Maybe that’s part of why leadership from a distance can be difficult. You can remain incredibly productive while slowly becoming disconnected from the very people and stories that made you passionate about the work in the first place.

So I’m Moving Back In

Literally.

We’re taking what has basically been a conference room at our Grapevine campus and turning it into an office for me. It’s not really about the office. I don’t need somewhere else to sit. I’ve got plenty of places to sit.

I need proximity.

I want to be closer to the conversations. Closer to the problems. Closer to the wins. Closer to the people carrying the mission every day.

I want to know the pulse.

And I’m not writing this because I’ve figured it out. I’m writing it because Craig asked a question a few weeks ago that made me uncomfortable enough to examine myself.

Am I a 10?

I don’t know.

I’m not even sure a leader should ever confidently answer that question. But I do know this: before I ask the people around me to bring more passion, I need to ask whether I’m putting myself in places where my passion can actually be experienced.

Maybe that’s a question worth asking yourself too.

Have convenience and efficiency accidentally created distance?
Can the people closest to what you lead actually experience your passion?
Are you close enough to your organization to still feel its pulse?

And maybe the hardest one:
Are you asking your organization for an intensity you’re no longer modeling?

I’m still working through my answers.

For now, I’m moving back into the office.

Because passion may start inside a leader.

But it spreads through proximity.

1. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, American Time Use Survey 2025

2. Gallup, Hybrid Work Indicator

3. Nature, “Hybrid working from home improves retention without damaging performance”