Could Your Organization Benefit from Leadership Coaching? (Part 2)

Your organization can benefit from leadership coaching not just from the management or authority side, but also from the employee side. What principles are you recommending for those you are in charge of and why are they beneficial for them or part of your care for them?

Being a Good Employee

Attitude Toward Your Boss

1. The drudgery of having to earn a living is natural, emanating from the Fall in Genesis 3:17-19. The natural tendency, without intervention, is to complain. Employees are known for griping — workers talk in the lunch room and it spreads like rumors. It’s easier to throw in with it than to be socially rebuffed.

But in Exodus 16:8, we see that such grumblings upward are ultimately against God. Inversely, we are admonished to serve our employers as we would serve the Lord (Eph. 6:5-6; Col. 3:22; 1 Tim. 6:1-2; Titus 2:9; 1 Peter 2:18).

On the other hand, we recognize that they don’t own us, we belong to the Lord (1 Cor. 7:23) and Christ calls us out of ‘the curse’ of Genesis 3 to rest (Matt. 11:28-30).

2. It may sound disheartening, but it explains a lot for employees when they understand that sin has not only a lateral aspect to it, but a vertical one as well. That is, you will see sin, weaknesses, and foolishness in the vertical authority structure above you.

Recognizing that will help you adjust your expectations accordingly, and expectations are often the source of conflict. Recognizing that means you will not be constantly chafing because you know how things ought to be and aren’t. Of course, the ideal model here is Jesus before Pontius Pilate, and the relevant passage to embrace is 1 Peter 2:13-23.

David’s example illustrates this as well — he, under overtly wicked King Saul, recognized that he was the authority that God had placed over him and he refused to raise his hand against ‘the Lord’s anointed” though he had perfect opportunity and was encouraged by others to do so.

He would have been “right.” I think today that would include not just the back-stabbing, political intrigue, end-runs and turf-wrestling of the workplace but the seemingly innocuous verbal vilifying and slander of those over us in our jobs.

Anxiety

A suggestion for employees: Take notes—are you feeling anxiety in your job?

1. Anxiety is a fear response. There are structured ways you can mollify your fears about your job, but they are all enhanced if at their base is a growing trust that God has your future in His hands and that there is, in fact, a redemptive opportunity in your experience.

Journaling and becoming mindful of your fears, your moment of anxiety, and what the triggers are can alert you to respond with secure thoughts like, “I’m good at what I do,” or “ my life doesn’t depend on this,” or “God does not lack for opportunities,” and others.

Another example of a source of anxiety to troubleshoot would be having responsibility for something over which you have no control.

This has many expressions and applications. Fred’s team is responsible to produce a final product as of a deadline of June 6^th, but his team cannot begin their part of the project until Anna’s team completes their part and passes it on to Fred’s team.

Fred and his team are full of anxiety because they have no authority over Anna’s team and have no leverage to get them to deliver the product to them in a timely manner. Anna’s whims or conscientiousness are nice and have always been good in the past, but they intuitively sense they are at her discretion — they have no control to match their responsibility. That needs to be rearranged.

If I am the manager of Department A but am responsible for the photocopying equipment use, expenditures, and maintenance in Department B, over which I have no authority, I will experience anxiety. That needs to be rearranged. I need to point this out to those over me.

2. The idea of taking a Sabbath sounds like a reinstatement of Old Testament laws. But the laws all have their fulfillment, their change-up, their inherent promise revealed in the New Covenant.

Anxiety may be this universal treadmill of labor — a taking on of the fight to survive, possibly to a workaholism. The Sabbath takes you out of that self-dependence to a place of trust.

The Sabbath is so overlooked, but is a magic bullet in dispelling the anxiety of the uninterrupted vigil of working 24/7. Leadership coaching can help you and your organization to apply this truth to the modern work world because again, our natural tendencies are at the root of the problem.

Christian Leadership Coaching

Principles of leadership and authority are all over the Bible. They are wisdom – a bit more than common sense, and it is a great advantage to have the benefit of critique, reminders, prompting to do what is strategic and beneficial rather than the fearful and costly knee-jerk. Contact us if you would like to have leadership coaching for yourself or for the leaders in your organization.