What It Takes To Get To Traction: How to Manage Responsibilities With Clarity, Presence, and Peace

by Mark Goering and Dave Miller

Everyone wants traction. Everyone wants their commitments to compound. Everyone wants habits that take hold, leadership that stabilizes, and calling that becomes recognizable and fruitful. But traction never forms inside chaos. It grows inside a life that manages responsibilities with clarity, presence, and peace.

Clarity orders your steps.

Presence anchors your responsibilities.

Peace steadies your spirit.

Together they create the internal environment where your commitments can mature, where the Spirit can strengthen your steps, and where momentum can finally take shape. When you live this way, you stop reacting to pressure and start responding to calling. And from that posture, traction becomes possible.

Traction requires four commitments.

1. Commit to a Plan

A plan brings direction to your devotion. Without direction, devotion drains. God designed His kingdom to run on simple obedience in a clear direction. Jesus invited His disciples into a way of life, not a vague spiritual vibe. Paul taught believers to run with intention, not drift in circles. A plan is not legalism. A plan is stewardship. A plan protects you from reactionary living, from emotional drift, and from the chaos of constantly reprioritizing your world based on pressure instead of the Spirit.

Your plan carries your priorities. It redirects your habits into alignment with your calling. It anchors your leadership in purpose instead of impulse. Traction grows when you commit to walk the same direction long enough for spiritual gravity to take over. This is why so much of your calling unfolds in the mundane, because the mundane becomes the training ground where the Word catches traction in your heart.

You don’t create the power.

You create the consistency.

The Spirit brings the power.

2. Commit to a Toolbox

Every craft requires tools. Every leader requires tools. A CoVo life requires tools. When you commit to a toolbox, you choose the practices that shape your formation. You choose the templates that simplify your work. You choose the rhythms that reinforce your identity. You choose the habits that support long obedience in the same direction.

This is why the Church Waffle matters. Why the CFC Scorecard matters. Why values clarification exercises matter. Why discovery Bible study templates matter. Why daily habits matter. Your toolbox gives you structure when your emotions fluctuate. It gives you traction when everything inside you feels like drifting. You don’t need ten thousand tools. You need the right tools, used consistently, with the right heart posture.

Tools create friction.

Friction builds traction.

Traction shapes movement.

3. Commit to a Coach

Traction requires friction, but friction applied alone usually burns you out. Scripture never expects you to grow without guidance. Jesus discipled His people hands on. Paul trained Timothy and Titus with personal investment. Leaders develop faster when they follow someone who has already lived what they are trying to live.

A coach brings clarity.

A coach brings calibration.

A coach brings encouragement when your emotions slump.

A coach holds a mirror to your blind spots.

A coach protects you from self-deception and over-confidence.

A coach helps you keep going when your habits feel small and when the results feel invisible. CoVo leaders thrive when they stop trying to lead themselves in isolation. Accountability, encouragement, correction, and spiritual alignment form the relational engine of traction. Traction grows in humility. Humility grows when you allow someone to shape you.

4. Commit to a Community of Practice

A coach sharpens you.

A community sustains you.

God never builds people in isolation. The Spirit forms disciples in community. The early church grew by devoting themselves to the Word, fellowship, the breaking of bread, and prayers, then overflowing into generosity, worship, awe, signs, wonders, and daily mission. Practicing together creates a culture where movement takes root.

A community of practice gives you real-time models to imitate, peers to struggle with, brothers and sisters who remind you of joy, and companions who refuse to let you forget your identity. You grow faster when the people around you want the same outcome you want. Isolation slows formation. Community accelerates it. Traction grows when you participate with others who are moving in the same direction and living out the same commitments.

5. Commit Long Enough for Traction to Form

Traction never forms when you keep changing the method. It forms when you stay with the same approach long enough for the MAWL process—Model, Assist, Watch, Launch—to mature. Leaders often lose traction not because the plan failed, but because they reset the process every time they tweak or change something. Every tweak becomes a restart. Every new idea resets the skill curve. Every alteration disrupts confidence.

And confidence is one of the two rails that movement runs on.

The priesthood needs both confidence and competence. When leaders constantly change approaches, only the few with strong soft skills can keep up. The work shrinks to the naturally gifted instead of expanding to the willing. But when leaders commit to one way of doing things for three to six months without changing it, everyone grows. Everyone knows what to imitate. Everyone knows what success looks like. Everyone knows how to move forward.

Commitment-Focus-Consistency, not constant adjustment, drives movement. Stay with the plan long enough for consistency to work.

Give your tools time to shape YOU.

Give your community time to form.

Give your coach time to help you calibrate.

Traction grows in leaders who refuse to reset the process and stay faithful until multiplication appears.

The Kingdom Way Brings Traction With a Light Burden

When you live this way, you discover something surprising. Traction does not feel heavy. It feels light.

The kingdom way teaches you to work from rest instead of exhaustion, from peace instead of pressure, from clarity instead of confusion. Jesus gives a yoke that fits, not a burden that crushes. You share the load with others. You walk with the Spirit who strengthens what you cannot. You trust the Father who gives the increase. You live confident that the seed grows even when you sleep, because the kingdom rests on His power, not your strain.

This posture of rest-fueled work and grace-fueled commitment is what makes traction sustainable.

Clarity orders your steps.

Presence anchors your responsibilities.

Peace steadies your spirit.

And God multiplies what you faithfully sow. Traction is not the reward of the frantic. Traction is the fruit of the faithful.