Leadership as Presence, Not Control

“The greatest among you will be your servant.” — Matthew 23:11

I began my professional career at a very young age. When I was sixteen, a university in Rio de Janeiro (Universidade da Cidade) hired me to serve as the IT manager for one of its satellite campuses. The university was expanding rapidly, and the Chief Technology Officer had the bold idea of hiring high school students to manage the IT needs at each new site. On my campus, I was the youngest employee by at least a decade. My job was to make sure administrative computers functioned well, servers were backed up, and pay system ran without issues. For a sixteen-year-old, that was a very big deal. 

Looking back, I can see how that season became an unexpected classroom for learning about responsibility and leadership. At the time, I thought leadership meant having answers and keeping things under control. But in that role, surrounded by people older and more experienced than I was, control was rarely an option. What mattered more was presence. That means, showing up, listening, learning, helping others succeed, and growing to trust those around me. I couldn’t articulate it then, but I was learning that true leadership is not about asserting control; it’s about cultivating trust.

Author Joseph Myers describes this tension in The Search to Belong where he challenges what he calls the leadership “master-plan mentality.” That phrase names our instinct to manage and measure everything, to treat people and ministries as systems we can engineer to produce predictable outcomes. Myers reminds us that authentic community grows organically, not by rigid design. True leaders don’t coerce; they cultivate. They trust that the Spirit is already at work in ways we cannot always see, manage, or truly imagine.

Leadership shaped by presence is slower, but it’s also truer. This work begins with listening, really listening, to God and to people. It values discernment over directives, curiosity over certainty, and relationships over results. This is the kind of leadership Jesus modeled. He didn’t build an organization; He formed a community. He asked questions, shared meals, touched the untouchable, and empowered others to carry His ministry forward.

Such leadership can feel risky. It invites us to trade control for collaboration and outcomes for openness. Yet the Church flourishes when leaders act less like architects and more like gardeners: tending, pruning, and waiting for growth that belongs to God alone.

Whether we lead as pastors, parents, teachers, or mentors, our authority rests not in title but in trust. People may forget our strategies, but they never forget how we made them feel heard, valued, included, and loved. Presence is the soil where transformation begins.

So, where might God be inviting you to lead more through presence than through control? What helps you trust the Spirit’s slower, quieter work in the people around you?