7 Massive Misconceptions About Bosses (and God)

Well, hello, everybody out there! It’s early in the morning, I’ve got my coffee, and this is Faithful on the Clock, the podcast where every dog chases the ball to get your faith and work aligned. I’m pretty sure we’ve all been misunderstood at some point, right? Maybe somebody thought you were some crazy cat lady and you’re, like, the biggest dog lover ever or something. But hopefully that makes today’s show pretty relatable. We’re talking about the biggest misconceptions about bosses, including, by the way, God. Let’s hit it.

Let’s start today by just recognizing that God is the boss, all right? And I bring that up right away because I want you to understand that God is sovereign in everything. There’s nothing He doesn’t understand or control. And that includes the businesses of the world. In Luke 19, where you can read the parable of the ten minas, Jesus tells the story of a nobleman who gives some of his servants money. And what does the nobleman say? He says, “Put this money to work.” So, Jesus understands things like growing your money, and he used that illustration because even back in His time people saw business as a good thing. There was trade and people bought and made and sold things. And one of the best verses I think you can remember through your career is Deuteronomy 8:18, which says, “But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your ancestors, as it is today.” And then another verse I like that’s pretty popular that you can relate to business and all the work we do with strategy is Proverbs 16:9, which says, “In their hearts humans plan their course, but the Lord establishes their steps.” So, to that point, there’s a good book I’ll recommend by Larry Julian called God Is My CEO. And it’s essentially about a lot of what we talk about on this show, which is how to bring Biblical principles into the workplace.

But as a boss, just like bosses here on this planet, God has been wildly misunderstood. And one of the biggest misconceptions people have is that He’s angry. That He’s all fire and brimstone. And people usually think that first because they’re seeing a lot of the Old Testament in isolation, not seeing the entire context of the entire story of the Bible, and mistaking discipline for indiscriminate punishment. They think that secondly because of the experiences they’ve had with other people. If all you’ve experienced is pain, it’s hard to imagine a God who can give you anything else, that He’s different from those who have hurt you. But I’m here today to tell you that God is a god of joy. Your entire purpose is to give that back to Him, OK? The whole reason He sent Jesus was to ensure that He could love on you for eternity, which to me, is a pretty big deal.

But the second misconception people have about God is that He just doesn’t care. Because they see all of this stuff that’s in the world like war and famine and trauma and greed and they don’t understand how God can allow all of the pain we go through. And they look at the story of Job in particular and wonder if God isn’t teaching everybody something. They say, “Maybe I suffer because God’s testing me.” And quite honestly, I hate that. Because the word test, if you look it up, it means you’re checking to see if something is the quality it needs to be. And God doesn’t need to do that. He already fully knows exactly what our quality is at any given time. So, I really don’t think God doesn’t test us. But He absolutely develops and refines us into what He intended us to be, and He’s able to turn around anything this world can dish out for that purpose. That doesn’t mean He’s the source of the suffering. It just means He’s bigger than the suffering and can get us through it. And so, if there was testing going on, it wasn’t God doing it. It was the Devil. Because it was the Devil who didn’t know where Job was at. The Devil thought he knew, right? And he throws his misunderstanding in God’s face. He basically taunts God with it and says, “Well, Job would turn on you if you didn’t protect him and give him everything all the time.” And so even though God wasn’t the one testing, He let the Devil do it because the Devil needed to be put in His place. He was giving the Devil proof that God knew the outcome that would happen better than the Devil did, and by doing that, refusing to give the Devil an inch of ground. Do you see? He was demonstrating to the Devil that His sovereignty can’t be shaken and that, because the good servants of God will hold the line even when God doesn’t hedge them, the Devil can’t win. And there’s a parallel between Job and Jesus, because neither guy had done anything to deserve the suffering they went through, right? And I was even on BibleGateway reading in Matthew 4:1-11, when Jesus goes into the desert and is tempted by the Devil, and they had this footnote that said that, in the Greek, the word tempted can also mean tested. But the reason with Jesus was the same as with Job — the Devil needed to be shown He wasn’t gonna get anywhere. And God allowed the suffering and testing to ensure the Devil understood who was right and went back the way He came. And so I hope it’s clear that God didn’t allow Job and Jesus to suffer just because. It wasn’t like God was some narcissist looking down at them and getting a kick out of their pain. You know, a war general doesn’t sit up and celebrate when a soldier’s wounded in battle. It’s just that God was defending the line between good and evil and fighting a foe bigger than us.

So, with those two big points about God clarified, I just want to quickly go over five big misconceptions workers tend to have about their worldly bosses. And the first of those is that bosses don’t have imposter syndrome. That they always feel confident and like they can do their job. And so there was an article in Harvard Business Review where they interviewed a bunch of CEOs, and two out of three CEOs — 68 percent — acknowledged that, in hindsight, they weren’t prepared for their job. 50 percent said driving culture change was more difficult than they’d anticipated. 48 percent said that finding time for themselves and for self-reflection was harder than expected. And 47 percent said that developing their senior leadership team was surprisingly challenging. So, you know, just like any worker, they struggle. They get into the job and they get hit with this wall of stuff that’s not like they thought it would be, and they’ve gotta figure it all out. And when you’ve got so many people expecting you to get it right, I mean, that’s pressure. That’s stressful. And a lot of bosses try to act confident not because they are, but because they think that’s what other people need them to be. And they’re not completely wrong. Workers do take solace and get inspired when they know the person driving isn’t gonna crash.

And secondly, workers tend to think that bosses aren’t concerned with their workers. That they don’t care about them. And I think this comes from the fact that there’s often so much distance between the worker and the boss. Like, in traditional companies, you know, the boss is busy. You might not see them every day. And the boss might not have the opportunity to really see exactly what you’re experiencing out on the floor. They might not even realize just how hard you’re working or what the pain points are. So, you can get this perception like they’re indifferent at best, or at worst, that they care about the company more than you. GoodHire posted a stat that 32 percent of all American workers surveyed believe that management really cares about their career progression — only 32 percent. Gallup research from 2022 showed that, while people really felt like their organizations cared during the pandemic response, that perception quickly reverted. And now, Fewer than one in four U.S. employees feel strongly that their organization cares about their wellbeing. That’s the lowest percentage in nearly a decade. And of course there are not-so-great bosses out there. But most bosses, they do understand how important it is to be empathetic. They wanna be connecting with their teams and serving them. I mean, you can find people signing up for workshops on that every day. Just go in on LinkedIn and look. They just can’t be everywhere, and you know, even when they see what workers want or need, you can have shareholders or the board of directors telling them no. They can lack the resources to deliver and run into all kinds of snags, and a lot of that, again, it’s hard to ensure that people don’t get caught up in the rumor mill or mess up the communication as it travels. So, I think it’s really important that workers kind of zoom out and see their boss in a larger context so they understand that a lot of it can be a problem with the entire way we do business, like the infrastructure and multi-industry expectations around work, rather than a compassion problem.

Thirdly, people tend to believe that if people leave, it’s the boss’ fault. And I think we’ve all heard that saying, right, that people don’t leave jobs, they leave bad bosses. Now, there is a lot of truth to the fact that people will quit if the boss is a problem. But especially today, people have a lot going on. There’s not the sense of loyalty to a business that people used to have. And people are trying to figure out what they want and to advance faster. And I think what happens a lot of the time is that, especially with prices being so high on everything right now, people get into a job just to pay the bills. It’s not their passion. And the boss, you know, they might be absolutely fantastic. But if that job doesn’t satisfy what the worker really would love to do, eventually, that worker’s gonna move on. And like I mentioned in the last point, sometimes, it’s not the direct manager, it’s the person above them. Or the board. Or whatever. So, again, when you look at retention rates, you have to zoom out to that big picture of how work fits into people’s lives, and the boss is only part of that.

Then, a fourth myth is that good bosses don’t manipulate you. And I might get some pushback on this one, but the idea is that there is such a thing as positive manipulation. And that’s the manipulation a person does not for their own gain, but so that the person being manipulated can benefit. And I think good bosses do that all the time. It’s like when a kid doesn’t wanna eat their broccoli and the parent gets them to do it by telling them all the good things broccoli’s got or, you know, just giving them a choice between the broccoli and some other food. Or, therapists, they do positive manipulation, too, but they’re doing it to get you healthy or thinking better. So, the intent is critical, OK? But good bosses are doing all kinds of things to motivate you and direct you where you can thrive. I think the issue is just that we don’t like the idea that somebody can have that control over us. You know, it violates our sense of autonomy and independence. And we don’t really trust that someone else could be making really good decisions for us. And that ties to this idea that nobody knows you like you know yourself, right? And I think that lack of trust is especially strong for workers who maybe haven’t had the best relationships or who have a history of trauma and that kind of thing. And then, too, we don’t like that we’re not always able to see how the boss is making it all work. That violates our sense of intelligence. But really, organizational psychologists, they’re really helpful in that they work with good bosses to help them understand how to interpret what’s happening with people and what’s gonna serve them best. And good bosses are paying attention and they’re willing to try to understand how to pull the right strings at the right time for the right reasons. You know, they’re trying to get to know each person on their team so they can respond in the proper way, and in the Christian context, they do that as a way to really be loving to other people. But again, it’s about the way the boss is communicating. They’re probably not going to come right out and be direct about it and say, “Oh, I’m manipulating you so you can succeed.” You know, it’s just like, God didn’t tell Jonah, “Hey, I’m gonna have this whale swallow you, but don’t worry, he’s a friendly whale, and he’s just your ride over to where you need to be.” But just like God did in Jeremiah 29:11, a boss might try to be really clear that they want good things for you. And the demeanor they have with you says a lot.

The fifth and final big misconception I think people have around bosses is that they’re always experts. So, like, they’re there because they’ve worked their way up, right? But sometimes, politics does come into play. I think we all know that. People who are not qualified get into roles because of who they’re connected to. They really haven’t earned it, and plenty of other people would be better at the job. So, that’s the first thing. But then, to go back to that first point around imposter syndrome and confidence, a lot of people get into leadership roles because those roles are kind of thrust on them. You know, maybe the company did some restructuring or their own supervisor decides to leave. And people can grow into those roles, and studies actually show people can do really well even when they’re what we’ll call unintentional leaders, but there’s often a pretty big learning curve. But to the idea that you still can be successful even if you didn’t plan to be a boss, I want to be clear that leadership is much more about discernment and decision-making around other people’s expertise than it is knowing everything yourself. It’s about the ability to see what other people understand or can do and then positively manipulate them all to work together for a good result. You just have to be able to see what’s necessary in the grand scheme of things to execute. The experts you hire, they can handle the actual execution. That’s why you hire them, right? So, like, most companies, they’ve got their different departments. They’ve got IT or marketing or finance. The leader of the business, they might not have degrees or certifications in a lot of those areas. They might not be able to write the code or put together a marketing video or whatever. But what they can do is understand the fundamental components or pieces. And they can take those pieces and grasp where those pieces belong in the bigger strategy. That’s their skill or where they excel, that they can get everything moving and motivate people to do their part. So while continuing to learn, asking questions, it’s all a great thing, don’t feel pressured to drill down to the nth degree on everything, because that’s not really what the business needs from you.

So, before this episode gets any longer, let’s close out with a prayer.

Lord, I pray today that this show will help people see You and the role of leadership a little differently. Let it close the gaps in perceptions that people have. Because misconceptions about other people, those can divide. They can cause so much pain. So, please, God, please help people seek to really see the truth about each other so that they can be more genuine and loving and have greater peace as they work for You. In Jesus’ name, I pray. Amen.

I will leave you today with two invitations. The first is to go to faithfulontheclock.captivate.fm and sign up to be a member of the show. There are different tier plans to fit your budget, but your support really is important for ensuring this content can get released in a high-quality, consistent way. When you’re done signing up there, check out our sister site, faithfulontheclock.com. You can choose tiers there, too, but there’s just a ton of additional content that I hope you’ll find really encouraging as you try to grow your relationship with God. In our next episode, I’m gonna be giving you my top recommendations for essential Christian business books and other podcasts that can build your business or career and your faith at the same time. I’ll see you in two weeks for that, everybody. Be blessed.