Latest / Prayer Before Work / When Your Company Culture Runs on Fear - Prayer Before Work
Transcript
- Sean Graver: Does it feel like everyone around you is bracing for something? Like fear of a bad year-end review, fear of being next on the list, maybe upper management keeps adding more to the plates of the frontline leaders while expecting results that just don't seem realistic given the resources. Somebody called it trust and inspire once in a meeting, and it kind of landed like a joke because what it actually feels like day-to-day is command and control. Constant scrutiny and very little grace for anyone. Well, my name is Sean. Welcome back to Prayer Before Work. The Apostle Paul writes something to Timothy that speaks directly into a culture like this. In 2 Timothy 1, verse 7. For God gave us a spirit not of fear, but of power and love and self-control. Now, Paul wrote that to someone feeling Real pressure, real danger, not abstract workplace stress. So it's not just a simple platitude. He's naming something specific, fear. It's a spirit you can be operating under without fully realizing it, and it's not the one God intends for you to carry. You may not be able to change your organization's culture from where you sit. That's that's a bigger fight than one person usually wins alone. But you can pay attention to whether fear has become your default operating mode, and you can choose day by day to lead the people under you differently than you're being led. Power isn't dominance, it's being steady under pressure. And love isn't weakness. It's actually caring about the people on your team instead of just protecting yourself. And self control is. Means you don't pass the fear downhill just because it was handed to you. If you're in a leadership seat, even a small one, you get to decide what climate you create in your own corner of it. So let's pray. God, this environment is heavy and it's hard not to operate out of fear when that's the atmosphere all around us. But remind us that fear isn't the spirit you gave us, even in a culture built on it. Give us the steadiness, love, self-control to lead differently than we're being led, and protect our hearts from growing hard or anxious, and help us to be a source of calm for the people who report to us even when no one above us is offering that to us. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Go make today count.