Are business growth and your faith opposed? Christian leaders often find themselves at a crossroads, seeking to balance ambition with their faith-based values. The desire to scale operations and achieve greater impact can sometimes feel at odds with the principles of service, integrity, and stewardship that underpin their beliefs.
Yet, scaling a business and adhering to Christian values are not mutually exclusive. In fact, by integrating biblical wisdom with sound business practices, Christian leaders can unlock a path to sustainable growth that aligns with their faith and honors God's purpose for their endeavors.
In an ever-changing world filled with uncertainty, leaders face a critical choice—become a hostage to chaos or a master of clarity. In this insightful article, Oleg Konovalov and Dave Ulrich explore how leaders can navigate volatile times with confidence. Through research-backed strategies, they provide seven actionable steps to transform uncertainty into structured success. If you’re ready to rise above the noise and bring clarity to your leadership, this is a must-read.
What if God was one of us?
Convene Chair Andy Beal recently shared a powerful reflection on leadership, inspired by The Jesus I Never Knew by Philip Yancey.
When we think about Jesus, we don’t see power and prestige—we see humility, approachability, and courage. Isn’t that the kind of leader we all want to follow?
As leaders, we must ask: Are we leading with these same godly qualities, or are we relying on power and position?
Great leadership starts with character worth following.
Loneliness in the workplace is more than just an emotional struggle—it’s a leadership challenge that can impact productivity, employee engagement, and overall company culture. In today’s fast-paced business world, many leaders feel the weight of isolation, and their teams often experience the same sense of disconnection. But the good news is that leaders have the power to create environments where people feel valued, supported, and connected.
At Convene, we are passionate about helping faith-driven business leaders cultivate workplaces where people thrive—both professionally and spiritually. That’s why we’re excited to share an insightful article from our friends at Marketplace Chaplains, an organization dedicated to providing care and support to employees through workplace chaplaincy.
We encourage you to read the full article from Marketplace Chaplains and discover how you can implement these insights into your own leadership journey.
What does it mean to lead a business with a Kingdom-driven vision? More than just profits, Christian leadership is about aligning business practices with God’s design—where employees thrive, purpose is clear, and transformation happens. Inspired by Dr. W. Edwards Deming’s systems-based leadership and biblical principles, this article explores how faith-driven leaders can create a business culture that reflects God’s purpose. Discover how to implement strategies that foster growth, collaboration, and lasting impact.
What if Jesus Returned in 2025? Would You Lead Differently?
Imagine for a moment—what if you knew Jesus was coming back this year? How would it change the way you lead your business? Would you:
Share your faith more boldly?
Invest in your employees’ spiritual growth?
Steward your company differently?
In a powerful new blog post, Convene CEO Greg Leith challenges us to rethink leadership through an eternal lens. What would you do differently if 2025 was the year of His return?
Is joy an underrated asset in your leadership? In our latest article, Matt Rusten explores why joy, much like humor, plays a vital role in building a thriving company culture. From increasing team engagement to fostering resilience, joy can transform workplace dynamics and inspire purpose-driven work. Discover three key ways to cultivate joy in your organization and why it’s essential for leaders who seek both results and fulfillment.
‘Do not worry.’ We’ve read Matthew 6:25-34 in the Sermon on the Mount, but what does that look like on a day-to-day, minute-by-minute basis? God knows our every worry, fear, and concern – and He can handle it. Many thanks to Darrell Passwater, Convene Forum Team leader, for his encouragement to think about how our lives might be different by truly living out this scriptural principle.
Got a quick minute to chat? I’ve been wanting to share something with you as you lead in the midst of the election cycle in the USA or when your political election takes place in your country. When the dust settles on the election and the new country leader is declared, one thing will still be as true as it is right now. You’ll still be the one leading your firm the day after the election. Your team members will still come to work the day after the winner is declared. They’ll still be looking to you for leadership, for a paycheck, for a sense of community at their workplace.
What do they want most that only you can deliver? It’s meaning. That meaning they’re looking for begins with you and your leadership. To be sure, what Washington DC does actually can impact your business significantly, however, the president of the United States or the leader of any country does not lead your firm. You do. It’s an enterprise entrusted to you to lead as a steward. It’s a place where people look to you for answers, where people want to be part of a team that cares about them and where people want to be valued, appreciated, and loved. The next president of the country will not show up this week at your office to encourage your team, fix a broken piece of equipment, hire the next team member, sell a big account, or cast a bold vision about how your team will reach your goals and impact the culture.
Leaders often overestimate how likely others are to share important information with them. My own painful experience illustrates this truth.
When my firstborn (now 24 years old) was in high school, she woke me up at 2am to share something that was intensely personal and important to her. I got irritated at being awakened. I snapped at her to go back to bed– that her issue wasn’t that big a deal. And I promptly fell back to sleep.
I forgot all about this until 4 years later, when she reminded me of the incident and revealed that she counted that as the worst day of her life. She had felt devalued and abandoned. And she stopped believing that I was a safe place to fall.
It grieved me to hear how my carelessness and selfishness was so damaging to our relationship. I had been living for four years under the delusion that if she got in a bind and needed help, she would confide in me. But I had lost the right to be her confidante, because when she courageously revealed her truth years ago, I didn’t give her a soft landing. Instead, I punished her revelation.
Psychological safety is the condition in which members of a team courageously reveal their thinking and are supported in that revelation.
Imagine a high-jumper at a track meet leaping over the bar. She is taking a risk by jumping (analogous to the team member sharing his or her truth). The thick landing pad cushions her fall (analogous to the supportive response from the rest of the team). If there is no landing pad, she falls onto the pavement and incurs pain (at minimum) or serious injury. If the pad is soft, she hustles off the mat, readies herself for the next jump, and risks again.
What does a leap look like? Here are five categories of truths that take courage to reveal:
Uncomfortable chapters in our life stories
Errors, ignorance, failure
Ideas that are zany, risky, even foolish
Performance feedback that will be hard for others to hear
Challenges to sacred cows
What does a soft landing look like? Some ways teams actively support courageous revelation:
Acknowledging (“What stands out to me…”)
Accepting others’ emotions (“It seems like you feel…”)
Curiosity to learn more (“Tell me more about…”)
Thankfulness (“I’m glad you shared that because…”)
What does a hard landing look like? Some ways teams punish revelation:
Hijacking (“That reminds me of a story…”)
Fixing (“So here’s what you need to do…”)
Spinning Positive (“I’m sure it will work out…”)
Apathy (“No questions. Is it my turn?”)
Recent conversations with different CEO clients (who are each working to build psychological safety on their executive teams) have led me to several conclusions:
Trust and psychological safety share a common characteristic: they both take time to build and can be lost in an instant. Take care as you build, and safeguard what you’ve built.
You may not be as safe for others as you think you are. Just as I assumed I was safe for my daughter, there might be incidents that you’ve forgotten (but others haven’t) that are keeping them from taking the leap. There’s a simple way to find out if such incidents have occurred, so that you can start repairing the damage: access your humility and curiosity, then ask each individual on your team.
The team leader can’t create psychological safety on their own– it’s too heavy a lift for one person. Even if you are modeling the behaviors required (revealing, and supporting others’ revelation), it won’t be enough. You personally being supportive (as the team leader) is necessary but not sufficient. Whereas trust is a 1:1 construct, psychological safety is a team construct(thanks to Kate Price for this insight). It requires full group participation.
The bigger the team, the more challenging it is to build psychological safety. With more relationships to manage, each individual has to invest greater energy to reveal, and to support others. Beyond 8 members, it starts getting more difficult.
Creating psychological safety requires active support, not just the absence of punishment. Think of a neutral response to courageous revelation as a 1.5-inch-thick mat. It may be enough to prevent catastrophic injury, but it isn’t enough to make a jumper want to leap again. Creating an expectation (and shared accountability) around desired behaviors builds a thicker landing pad.
This is a journey. I know we have work to do on the Kairos team to build more psychological safety. We’re making progress together, and I’m striving to fully own my part.
More importantly, I’m re-earning the right to hear my daughter’s truth. When she does take a risk, I’m providing her as soft a landing as I can. She has fierce courage. And I’m maturing into deeper levels of safety as her father. It’s a good combination.
There is much work ahead, and I like our trajectory.
Chip Neidigh is Founder and CEO at Kairos, where he and his team help CEOs and their executive teams build new awareness and capabilities to navigate inflection points and enter new chapters of growth.
