Last week I wrote a blog for the U.S. News and World Report, which got picked up by Yahoo, entitled, “How to Work with a Bad Boss”, (http://money.usnews.com/topics/author/rusty_rueff). I don’t usually carry my blogs from other places that I write into Purposed worKING, but what I wanted to do here is point out that we also have many examples of good bosses sprinkled all throughout the Bible. As we have been exploring Purposed worKING for the past few years, we have seen many of those examples and can marvel in the earthly work that most of the Godly people we read about in the Bible had to do in order to have the credibility and the ability to relate to the people to whom they later ministered. We don’t know about the years that Jesus hung out with other carpenters but if you have ever been on a construction site then you can only guess the characters that he witnessed and interacted with daily. By the time he started sharing his messages to others, I believe he was partly so effective because he could relate to the people and spoke in their language and into their concerns, cares, fears and emotions. At work we often talk about the best leaders being those who came from the shop floor or worked their way up through the ranks. The best bosses and best leaders understand their people at the granular level of who they are. When the Queen of Sheba said to Solomon, “How happy these people must be! What a privilege for your officials to stand here day after day listening to your wisdom”, she was saying what a good boss and leader he was. Let’s start using the examples of good bosses that we can find in the Bible and learning from their traits and characteristics and build our own leadership model based on a learning that comes from them. I know you will find all all you need to be a great boss!

Reference: 2 Chronicles 9:7 (New Living Testament)