This paper examines how leaders — from corporate CEOs to public officials — can draw on faith in God to navigate seemingly hopeless or lose-lose situations. Grounded in Larry Julian's God Is My CEO and supported by biblical examples such as King David, the paper argues that effective leadership requires humility, prayer, and openness to divine guidance. Two modern case studies — Linda Rios Brook's decision about The Jerry Springer Show and Brenda Scott's transformation of a racially divided city — illustrate how placing trust in God can convert crisis into opportunity. The paper also addresses secular objections and concludes that leaders who ignore God tend to fail, while those who seek His wisdom find creative, lasting solutions.
Sometimes in life one is presented only with what seem like lose-lose situations — times when everything appears hopeless, when there seem to be no good solutions, and when it feels as though God has abandoned one to a miserable fate. However, if one sees with the eyes of God, one can recognize that there are really no lose-lose situations; on the contrary, there are only win-win situations, because in all things God's grace shines through, inviting one to grow in ways that beforehand did not even seem possible. Finding the winning idea in a lose-lose or hopeless situation is the essence of what it means to have God as one's personal CEO.
The question is: how does one reach that level of understanding, that place of spiritual insight? This problem is as old as the Psalms themselves, when David first made his lamentations, saying, "My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer…" (Psalm 22:2). This is how many people throughout all of history have felt. It often appears that human solutions to worldly problems are inadequate and ineffective. What it means to trust in God is the lesson that David learned throughout his many trials. It is the lesson that all people need to learn if they are to face the tough tests that life puts before them. This paper argues that to find hope in hopeless times, or to make the right choice in a tough decision, one must turn to God and trust that He will lead in the right direction.
How serious is the problem of not knowing what to do when times get tough? It is serious enough that it affects even the best leaders in the world. Being a great leader is not about getting things done when times are easy. It is about accepting difficult circumstances and finding ways to make things work when workable solutions appear impossible. The solution, as always, is to seek God's wisdom to turn a bad situation into a positive one (Julian, 2002).
Too many leaders forget that they are not actually in control of their situations — God is. Why this truth matters is straightforward: God sends trials to remind people that if they want to succeed, they must turn to Him in trust, just as David did long ago. God is the One who rights the ship, calms the storm, and brings peace in the midst of chaos and turmoil (Firmage, 1995).
This inability to see light in a bad situation affects everyone. It causes people to feel depressed, anxious, and uncertain about what to do. Yet leaders must be able to make good decisions even in the most difficult of times. The toughest circumstances test the mettle of true leaders. Using David as an example, one can see how he consistently turned to God for guidance when his own life was threatened or when his people were in danger (Bosworth, 2011). Even in modern times, faith in God carries people through the worst of circumstances, as the findings of Marks, Dollahite, and Baumgartner (2010) demonstrate.
For CEOs the situation is no different: they must seek wisdom from the highest source — God — if they want to guide their organizations through the hardest situations (Julian, 2002). Julian (2002) argues that instead of trying to avoid difficult issues, leaders should lean into and embrace them. One important lesson he describes involves Linda Rios Brook, President and GM of KLGT-TV in Minneapolis. She faced the question of whether to renew the contract for the station's top-rated program, The Jerry Springer Show. The show was lewd, crude, and offensive, and she wondered whether it was offensive to God. She was uncertain of the answer but knew her role was to maximize profit for the station — and so she renewed the contract, though the moral question continued to trouble her. Finally, after much prayer, she had the idea to place a crawl across the bottom of the screen so that viewers who needed help could call a hotline number and receive assistance. The idea succeeded, and many thousands of people got the help they needed. As Julian (2002, p. 222) observes, "She didn't use God to solve her problems; God used her to create solutions. God is creative, and He sends creative solutions. Linda's role was not to solve this particular problem; her role was to be available and accountable in the midst of the dilemma."
The second example Julian (2002) offers is that of Brenda Scott, who, by walking in the wisdom of God, was able to transform a city divided by racial hatred into one whose government was functioning and whose citizens were at peace. When asked how she accomplished it, she simply answered, "God."
Because too many CEOs fail to walk in the wisdom of God, they flee the challenges before them (Julian, 2002). This suggests that the root cause of the problem — the feeling of being overwhelmed by a lose-lose or hopeless situation — is walking without God. When one walks without God, one is essentially alone; and when alone, one becomes scared and anxious. Everyone needs social support to succeed, and without a social support system, people struggle to cope with various hardships (Kaniasty & Norris, 2000). God represents the ultimate support network (Ladd & McIntosh, 2008).
The repercussions are significant: leaders will either continue to flee challenging situations — allowing organizations, governments, and cities to collapse into ruin — or they will recognize that God is there to restore order, peace, and assurance through whatever agents make themselves available to Him. This is the lesson of successful leaders such as Linda and Brenda, who accepted difficult situations, embraced them, and emerged as winners because they never turned their backs on God.
If leaders continue to neglect God, effective leadership in the world will disappear entirely. Moses was able to lead the Hebrews out of captivity because God chose him for that mission and gave him the strength and grace to carry it out. Moses made himself open to God. He put himself at God's disposal, prayed, and listened. Too few leaders today are doing this, which is why so many problems persist throughout the world, day after day.
"Surrendering to God yields creative leadership solutions"
"Ignoring God and secular objections examined"
Bosworth, D. A. (2011). Faith and resilience: King David's reaction to the death of Bathsheba's firstborn. The Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 73(4), 691–707.
Firmage, E. B. (1995). God: CEO or Master of the Dance? Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, 28(4), 59–64.
Julian, L. (2002). God is my CEO: Following God's principles in a bottom-line world. Simon and Schuster.
Kaniasty, K., & Norris, F. H. (2000). Help-seeking comfort and receiving social support: The role of ethnicity and context of need. American Journal of Community Psychology, 28(4), 545–581.
Ladd, K. L., & McIntosh, D. N. (2008). Meaning, God, and prayer: Physical and metaphysical aspects of social support. Mental Health, Religion and Culture, 11(1), 23–38.
Marks, L. D., Dollahite, D. C., & Baumgartner, J. (2010). In God we trust: Qualitative findings on finances, family, and faith from a diverse sample of US families. Family Relations, 59(4), 439–452.
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