Working for a Difficult Boss: Lessons from the Life of Daniel

By Bill English

In the United States, roughly 158 million people go to work daily. Well over half (70%) report working for a bad boss. At some point, 50% will quit their jobs because of a boss who lacks the skills and ability to manage people well. In addition, according to Barna Research, 25% of American adults are practicing Christians. This means that (roughly) 40 million Christians go to work each day, and thirty million will be working for a bad boss. Twenty million will quit their jobs at some point due to a bad boss. But is quitting the only option? Bill English doesn't think so.

English understands that difficult bosses are everywhere. They exist in business, ministry, churches, politics, sports, and elsewhere. Nearly everyone will have a difficult boss at one time or another and will hate the experience. Frankly, it can be difficult to walk closely with God and feel his presence when you must face a difficult boss each day.

Yet Daniel did exactly this. Daniel worked for very difficult kings, yet he kept his faithfulness to God, produced excellent work products, and was a strong witness for God at the highest levels of Babylon. English believes we can learn from the life of Daniel about how to thrive when we work for difficult bosses by managing ourselves better.

If you have a difficult boss and want to be faithful to God in your job while producing excellent results each day, this book is written for you. In these pages, you will find helpful advice bathed in Christian theology supported by texts in Daniel and other biblical passages.

This book can be read devotionally or in a study group. English will teach his way through this book on his Youtube channel. Consider joining him. Youtube.com/c/bibleandbusiness.

Other books by English include A Christian Theology of Business Ownership: An Introduction for Christian Entrepreneurs on What the Bible Says About Owning a Business; What the Bible Says About Owning a Business, and Biblical Wisdom for Business Leaders: Thirty Sayings from Proverbs. All books are available through Amazon.

English blogs at bibleandbusiness.com. Hashtags include #bibleandbusiness, #christianbusinessowner, and #theologyandbusiness. @biblebusiness.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bible and Business
• Release date: May 27, 2023
• ISBN: 9798887220666

Bill English

Bill English is an experienced entrepreneur, author, speaker and advisor specializing in small business ownership issues.  As a Partner in the Platinum Group, Bill draws on his experience in leading companies to help other business owners. Bill led his own national training company for 12 years. He has also served as an interim CEO for a $2M firearm company and a $23M warehouse/distribution company. He now serves as the CEO for a $24M company. Bill holds two masters degrees – one in Divinity and the other in Counseling Psychology, both from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He holds to post-graduate certificate from Villanova University, one in Strategic Organizational Leadership and the other in Business Process Management. He holds a third post-graduate certificate from the University of Notre Dame in Negotiations. Currently, he is working on his third master’s degree in Management and Leadership at Western Governors University.  Bill has written 14 technical books for publishers like Addison Wesley, Sybex, Osbone McGraw Hill and Microsoft Press. Bill was named a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional for eleven years and is a Minnesota Licensed Psychologist. Bill has appeared weekly on Faith Radio (myfaithradio.com) for seven years as a guest to discuss the integration of faith and business ownership. He is the publisher of Bible and Business and has served as a high school basketball official for over 10 years. Bill is also an NRA firearms instructor. He has been married to Kathy for twenty-seven years. They have two adult children, David and Anna, and live in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where he describes summer as the best eleven days of the year!

Book preview

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Working for a Difficult Boss: Lessons from the Life of Daniel. Copyright © 2023 by William F. English (Bill English), Bible and Business, and English Ventures, LLC.

All rights reserved. You may use brief quotations from this resource in presentations, articles, and books with citations. Otherwise, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or any other—without the prior permission of Bill English, Bible and Business, and English Ventures, LLC. [e-mail].

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023907343

Book Cover Design by Kingdom Covers.

ISBN ebook: 979-8-88722-066-6

ISBN paperback: 979-8-89034-338-3

ISBN hardcover: 979-8-89034-337-6

Bible and Business, Minneapolis, MN, USA

www.bibleandbusiness.com

Scripture quotations marked as (ESV) are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked (NIV) are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com. The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™

Scripture quotations marked (NASB) taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. www.lockman.org

Scripture quotations marked (HCSB) are taken from The Holy Bible: Holman Christian Standard Version. (Nashville: Holman Bible Publishers, 2009).

Scripture quotations marked (LEB) are from the Lexham English Bible. Copyright © 2012 Logos Bible Software. Lexham is a registered trademark of Logos Bible Software.

Scripture quotations marked (RSV) are from The Revised Standard Version (1971). Oak Harbor, WA. Logos Research Systems, Inc.

Scripture quotations marked (ASV) are from the Authorized Standard Version. This Bible is in the public domain in the United States.

Scripture quotations marked (Tanakh) are from the Jewish Publication Society, Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures. (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1985).

Quotations marked (Pentecost, Bible Knowledge Commentary) are taken from Pentecost, J. Dwight. Daniel. In The Bible Knowledge Commentary: An Exposition of the Scriptures, edited by J. F. Walvoord and R. B. Zuck. Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1985.

Quotations marked (Archer, Expositor’s Bible Commentary) are taken from Archer, Gleason L., Jr. Daniel. In The Expositor’s Bible Commentary: Daniel and the Minor Prophets, edited by Frank E. Gaebelein, Vol. 7. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1986.

Quotations marked (Cobern, Commentary on the Old Testament) are taken from Cobern, Camden M. Ezekiel and Daniel. Edited by D. D. Whedon. Vol. VIII. Commentary on the Old Testament. New York; Cincinnati: The Methodist Book Concern, 1901.

Quotations marked (Miller, New American Commentary) are taken from Miller, Stephen R. Daniel. Vol. 18. The New American Commentary. Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1994.

Quotations marked (Carpenter, Cornerstone Biblical Commentary) are taken from Carpenter, Eugene. Daniel. In Cornerstone Biblical Commentary: Ezekiel & Daniel, edited by Philip W. Comfort, Vol. 9. Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2010.

Quotations marked (Calvin, Commentary on Daniel) are taken from Calvin, John, and Thomas Myers. Commentary on the Book of the Prophet Daniel. Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2010.

Quotations marked (Zöckler, Commentary on the Holy Scriptures) are taken from John Peter Lange, Philip Schaff, Otto Zöckler, and James Strong, A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures: Daniel. (Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2008).

Quotations marked (Baldwin, Tyndale) are taken from Baldwin, Joyce G. Daniel: An Introduction and Commentary. Vol. 23. Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1978.

Quotations or references marked (BDB) are taken from Brown, Francis, Samuel Rolles Driver, and Charles Augustus Briggs. Enhanced Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977.

Quotations or references marked (DBL) are taken from Swanson, James. Dictionary of Biblical Languages with Semantic Domains: Hebrew (Old Testament). Oak Harbor: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1997.

Quotations or references marked (English, Thirty Sayings) are taken from English, Bill. Biblical Wisdom for Business Leaders: Thirty Sayings from Proverbs. Minneapolis, MN: Bible and Business, 2022.

Quotations or references marked (HALOT) are taken from Koehler, Ludwig, Walter Baumgartner, M. E. J. Richardson, and Johann Jakob Stamm. The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament: Aramaic. The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament. Leiden; New York: E.J. Brill, 1994–2000.

Quotations and references marked (NIDOTTE) are taken from VanGemeren, Willem, Ed. New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology & Exegesis. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1997.

I extensively used the Logos Bible Software (logos.com). Faithlife Corporation. All uncited Hebrew and Greek word definitions and explanations in the footnotes were sourced from the Logos Bible Software and are sometimes marked as (Logos). Logos 9.2, Platinum Library.

To Kathy, David, and Anna. I love you more than life itself.

Contents

Introduction

Being Placed Under a Difficult Boss

Recognizing God’s Unique Gifting to Individuals

Grounding Our Identity in Christ

Staying Faithful to God

Being Blessed with God’s Favor

Growing in our Fear of the Lord

Offering Solutions to Difficult Problems

Refining Our Gifts into Competence

Living with the Havok Our Difficult Boss Creates for Us

Showing Respect and Tact

Crying Out to God in Prayer

Receiving Insights from God

Giving Credit Where Credit is Due

Being a Straight Shooter

Being Loyal in Success

Losing Our Lives Because We Are Faithful to God

When Belief in Yahweh Threatens the Status Quo

Abandoning Our Lives to God’s Hand

Praying with Boldness and Expectancy

Excursus: Giving Glory to God

Being Restored from Pride

Excursus: Praying the Exultations in Daniel

Avoiding a Love for Money or Power

Honoring the Sacred

Living Above Reproach

Connecting Arrogance to Poor Decisions

Living Without Compromise

Understanding Motivations in Others

Recognizing God’s Protection

Watching Pagans Acknowledge God

Appendix A: When Your Difficult Boss is a Ministry Leader

Appendix B: What if You’re the Difficult Boss?

Endnotes

Sources

Acknowledgments

About Bill English

Other Books By Bill English

Connect Through Social Media

Mistakes and Errata

Introduction

Difficult bosses are everywhere.

They exist in business, ministry, churches, politics, and sports. In her book, My Boss is a Jerk,¹ Kathleen Rao describes a difficult boss as insecure, childish, selfish, dictatorial, and egocentric. In more extreme situations, these bosses can rightly be considered narcissistic.² Among other traits, narcissistic leaders seek power and control, lack empathy for others, demand loyalty that is not mutual, and know how to manipulate others’ weaknesses.³

Difficult bosses violate known rules of civility for their purposes. They often live in a world of damaged relationships. They mistreat others through verbal abuse, anger, intimidation, humiliation, superiority, or exploitation of a weakness in another person’s persona. Difficult bosses can be hyper-controlling, and when they are not in control, they may become anxious and tense because they have an even greater fear of failure.⁴

Difficult bosses stay employed because they are usually gifted individuals with a track record of success. Often, they are good talkers—what some would call schmoozers—and they can turn on the charm when needed.⁵ Regardless, they may leave a wake of hurting or damaged individuals.⁶ Business and ministry leaders often look the other way in quiet tradeoff decisions between the success difficult bosses brings to the organization and the damage these people do to their direct reports.⁷

In churches, these bosses are usually the senior pastor. They are often gifted communicators with exceptional leadership skills. Over time, these pastors build weak boards who don’t hold them accountable. When pressed, they will tell you they are only accountable to God, not men. Their demanding traits are displayed behind closed doors with their staff but rarely in public with their congregation. They take an authoritarian, controlling leadership approach instead of modeling the servant leadership of Jesus. In some ways, these pastors are wolves in sheep’s clothing, but convincing their congregants of that would be hard.

These bosses will be good to work with some days—perhaps most days. But those times when they show their negative traits will overshadow the good times, even if the ratios are 95% good times to 5% bad times. A difficult boss usually is not difficult or demanding most of the time. But when they behave in difficult ways, being on the receiving end of their dysfunction is so negative and hurtful that their brief yet damaging antics overshadow their positive work.

Working for a difficult boss is the most common reason for unhappiness in the workplace⁸ and can be why employees leave their jobs. The conventional wisdom is that most people don’t leave a company; they leave a boss. Some research has shown that people leave good bosses nearly as often as bad bosses. But the difference is that those who leave good bosses are happy quitters and maintain a positive attitude about their former employer. Their positive attitude leads to future collaboration and business opportunities.⁹ Those who leave because of a difficult boss become detractors of their former company and their boss in the marketplace. There is a high but hidden cost to companies that employ difficult bosses.

I’ve noted that these bosses have significant talents and abilities. But their greatest strengths become their greatest derailers,¹⁰ and their unabated derailers make them difficult and demanding. Examples of derailers include:

Self-confidence becomes arrogance that finds fault and deficiencies in others

Insecurities cause them to appear more in charge and aggressive with goals than conditions warrant

Creativity (outside-the-box thinking) results in eccentric and impractical solutions

The ability to see what could be in the future leads to impatience with others who don’t immediately get on board with their new idea or direction because they don’t know how to bring others along with them in their journey to the future

High energy for the mission turns into volatility or irritability when anything or anyone stands in their way

Initial excitement for a new project turns into disappointment and frustration that results in a loss of interest in the new project when work doesn’t go as planned or unseen obstacles slow down progress

They become argumentative, suspicious, and worried when they don’t get the information they want or lose some level of control

Their natural optimism turns into uncertainty at the first sign of trouble

Attention to detail becomes micromanaging

Appropriate directness becomes damaging rudeness and disrespect

When bosses exhibit these (and other) derailing behaviors, they become difficult or demanding, so that is how I will refer to them throughout this book. However, I recognize those words do not fully encapsulate the breadth and depth of dysfunction we find in these individuals. I also acknowledge that there are gradations in the intensity of the above characteristics that describe demanding bosses and that some bosses will not show the same intensity or breadth of descriptors as other bosses.

Why Look at the Life of Daniel?

I chose Daniel as our example of how to manage ourselves as Christians when we work for a difficult boss because he worked for difficult kings, maintained his faithfulness to God, and was effective in his leadership role while producing an excellent work product. He was whom I think we aspire to be. How he handled himself can be instructive for us today if we listen and allow the Spirit to guide us. Each of us can learn from the life of Daniel.

Finding a Covenant Relationship with God

Nothing in the book will matter until you accept Jesus Christ as your Savior and Lord. Until you have done this, you might profitably run a business or product line, but it won’t matter from an eternal perspective.

When we accept Christ as our Savior and Lord by giving our lives to Him, we enter a covenant relationship in which Christ gave His life for us, and we give our lives to Him. It is a two-way street. Christian salvation is a life spent serving and loving God. It’s no longer about ourselves. It is all about God.

To ask Jesus Christ to come into your life means that you A) admit that you have sinned against God, B) believe that He died for your sins and that He rose from the dead to break the power of sin and death in your life, and C) You freely give your will and life to Jesus for whatever remaining days you have on this earth.

Sometimes, those coming to Christ wonder if they are too far gone, too messed up, and too full of sin for Christ to forgive and cleanse. If you feel this, then you’re not alone. We each come to Christ precisely as we are, without pretense or polish: Whoever comes to me, I will never drive away. (John 6.37 NIV)

If you have not consciously brought Jesus Christ into your life and make Him the Lord of your life, then you can do that right now.

There’s no magic formula for the wording of a prayer like this. There is no unique phraseology that would make one prayer better than another. What God looks at, as always, is your heart. God understands what we mean when we pray, even if the basic syntax of our words might mean something else. But if you want to know Jesus Christ personally and enter a covenant relationship with Him, here are some suggested phrases you can use as you pray:

Lord, I have sinned against you, and I need your forgiveness.

I believe you died for my sins.

Jesus, I ask you to come into my life.

I ask you to forgive my sins.

I will give you the rest of my life.

I commit to following you as the Lord of my life.

If you have just done this, I will encourage you to find someone and tell them you accepted Christ as your Savior and Lord. And then I would strongly urge you to become part of a church where the Bible is preached every Sunday so you can grow in your faith and knowledge of Jesus Christ.

Note: If you want to connect with me about your decision to accept Christ as your Savior and Lord, you can email me at [e-mail]. I would love to hear from you.

Overview

This book is not a scholarly commentary on the book of Daniel. Because this book is focused on learning from the life of Daniel how to manage one’s self when working for a difficult boss, I will not deal with the prophetical aspects we find in Daniel.

Each chapter will have leadership, personal, and spiritual applications—actions or decisions we can immediately implement if we choose to do so. As you journey through these lessons, you will discover there are leadership lessons because they will help you better manage up, manage out, and manage down.

These lessons are also personal because they will direct you to focus on managing yourself better, which is the key to surviving in a stressful, complex situation.¹¹ Our boss’s boorish behavior often sets our focus on him¹²—how unjust he is, how out of bounds his behavior is, and so forth. However, our success lies not in pointing out his faults. Our success lies in managing ourselves better.¹³

Psalm 139:23-24 (NIV) reminds us of a helpful truth at this point:

Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.

We don’t ask God to search our demanding boss and know his heart or test him and know his anxious thoughts. No, we ask God to reveal the intimate blind spots in our personas and try us to ensure we are walking the right way. And when we do, God will work in us to fulfill his good purposes:

For it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose. (Philippians 2:13 NIV)

Furthermore, when God does a work in us that only he can do, then we will be able to:

Do everything without grumbling or arguing so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation. Then you will shine among them like stars in the sky as you hold firmly to the word of life. (Philippians 2:14-16 NIV)

Managing ourselves better is the first and necessary step to working for a demanding boss for as long as God calls you to do so.

Finally, these lessons are spiritual because they come from Scripture and point us back to God. Each lesson nibbles on the concept that we are to spend our lives glorifying God and enjoying him forever, despite the trouble that we experience today:

I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world. (John 16:33 NIV)

Demanding bosses are part of living in a fallen world where we will have trouble. But let’s take heart; in Christ, we can live under the direction and power of the one who has overcome the world. As we move through our lessons in this book, we’ll learn about living under the power of Christ in troubled situations and learn to rely on him for our preservation and all that we need.

In this book, we will learn (not an exhaustive list):

That God may call us to work in a difficult situation for a difficult boss

God gifts us for his call on our lives in unique ways

Our gifting helps form our identity

God matures us as we are faithful to him through the trials he sends us

When we are faithful to God, he may give us unusual favor with our demanding boss or others with whom we work

As we grow in Christ, we’ll learn to fear the Lord properly

As Christians, we should offer better solutions to difficult problems than others around us

Working for a difficult boss will create unnecessary problems for us, and we accept this, understanding there is a larger perspective from which we operate

We give our difficult boss respect and tact

Sometimes, God will give us problems that cause us to get on our knees and cry out to him

We give credit where credit is due

We recognize that our belief in God may threaten the status quo sometimes, and this will unsettle everyone

We live with an abandonment that few outside of Christianity will understand

We pray with boldness, give glory to God, and understand that God always opposes pride

We are not about accumulating money or power

We honor the sacred and live our lives above reproach

We do not compromise our beliefs

We submit ourselves to God’s protection

We can have a positive witness with our difficult boss by pointing him to Jesus Christ

Chapter 1

Being Placed Under a Difficult Boss

¹In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came to Jerusalem and besieged it. ²And the Lord delivered Jehoiakim king of Judah into his hand, along with some of the articles from the temple of God. These he carried off to the temple of his god in Babylonia and put in the treasure house of his god.

Daniel 1:1-3 NIV

To appreciate the backdrop of these first three verses (and this entire book), we’ll need to go back a few years and understand the events that led to Daniel and his friends being deported to Babylon. ¹⁴

Let’s start by looking at the kings of Israel and how they form part of the backdrop for the Book of Daniel. The Judean kings are as follows from Manasseh through Jerusalem’s final fall to Nebuchadnezzar in 587 B.C.:

Manasseh, who reigned for fifty-five years and was succeeded by

Amnon, who reigned for two years and was followed by

Josiah, who reigned for thirty-one years and was succeeded by

Jehoahaz, who reigned for three months and was succeeded by

Jehoiakim, who reigned for eleven years and was followed by

Jehoiachin, who reigned for three months and was succeeded by

Zedekiah, who reigned for eleven years, and Judah fully fell to Babylon

This list shows this lineage’s last ~110 years of Israelite rule of the Judean territory. These kings, except for Josiah, are described as kings who did evil in the sight of the Lord. All were vassal kings, in varying degrees, to either Assyria, Egypt, or Babylon.

Manasseh was