Leading without a Team or an Office: The Illusion of the Org Chart
Is opportunity that matters most - not the organizational chart.
In my last post, I shared a comment that really forced me to stop in my tracks: “Oh. It must be hard not being a leader anymore.”
It was a backhanded perspective delivered simply because my current role did not have an office or a team of direct reports - things often associated with positional leadership (rather than personal leadership). It was an “ouch” moment that God quickly turned into an “aha” through a reminder that true leadership comes from our sufficiency in the Father, not our reliance on a crowd.
But that interaction left me wrestling with a deeper question: Why do we automatically equate leadership with teams, positions, or perks?
In our culture—and unfortunately, within many of our ministries—we are deeply conditioned to measure a leader’s worth by the width of their organizational chart. We look at the person with dozens of direct reports, a packed calendar of performance reviews, and a sprawling executive suite, and we say, “Now there is a leader.”
But let’s be honest: if your leadership completely vanishes the moment you no longer sign someone’s paycheck, dictate their task list, or approve their PTO, you were not actually leading people. You were just managing a hierarchy.
Position is the lowest level of leadership. True leadership isn’t about position, title, or headcount. As John Maxwell famously noted, leadership is influence—nothing more, nothing less.
Influence doesn’t care about a corporate grid or flow chart. You can influence others from the bottom of an organization, from the side of it, or from an empty office with no direct reports. When we buy into the headcount trap, we reduce kingdom impact to a numbers game and completely miss the weight of our actual assignment.
The Titus Blueprint
As I’ve been dwelling on this, I keep coming back to a piece of Scripture that has completely reframed how I view my current role. In Titus 1:5, Paul writes to his young protégé:
“For this reason I left you in Crete, that you should set in order the things that are lacking, and appoint elders in every city as I commanded you...”
When Paul dropped Titus off on the island of Crete, Titus did not inherit a thriving corporate infrastructure. He did not have an administrative assistant, a marketing team, or a middle-management layer to delegate to. He was, for all intents and purposes, entirely a single-person team in a chaotic, hostile culture. Later on, we see Paul write that Cretans even mention they they are all liars - talk about a challenge!
Yet, look at his mandate. His job was twofold: build structures (“set in order the things that are lacking”) and build people (“appoint elders”).
Titus was a leader not because he had a massive team reporting to him on day one, but because he was an organizational architect. He was creating something out of nothing. He was laying a foundation so that others could eventually step into those structures, grow, and thrive.
Redefining the Advancement Role
That last statement describes exactly my current role in a small school environment. Because this position has not traditionally existed here in this capacity, I get the opportunity to create things from scratch. Like Titus in Crete, my job is to build the communication models, the community networks, and the strategic partnerships that will sustain this institution long after I am gone.
Does my day-to-day work lead to the development of other people? Absolutely. When you secure a major donor, re-engage alumni to come back, inform the board for a decisions, or inspire a community of parents to buy into a vision, you are leading.
But looking at the Titus blueprint has also brought a heavy dose of conviction. I’ve realized something critical: I need to be much more intentional about how I develop people, rather than just allowing it to happen indirectly.
I don’t need to sign someone’s paycheck to mentor them, cast vision, or call out their gifts. If leadership theology teaches us that leadership is spiritual influence for God’s glory, then my empty office—or lack thereof—is no barrier to building people.
Do you need an impressive headcount to leave a massive kingdom footprint? No! You just need to look at the space God has given you, roll up your sleeves, and start building so that He alone gets the credit (Matthew 5:16).