Why the Best Leader in Your Organization Probably Isn't in Your Leadership Meeting
There is a selection bias that costs organizations their strongest leaders and the biblical pattern that reveals them.
I’m writing this post from an airport lounge today. I am currently flying back to Virginia from New York City after taking my daughter, Zoe, to her new home in the fall, St. John’s University. As I sit here, I am glancing around at the multitudes of people and personalities sitting around this room.
To select the most successful leader in the room would immediately lead someone to look at the optics of those sitting there and determine who looks the most “successful”. This was the situation the prophet Samuel found himself in.
Samuel walked into Jesse’s house with one job. Anoint the next king of Israel.
He saw the oldest son first. Tall. Strong. Looked every bit the part.
God said no.
Seven sons walked in front of Samuel that day. Seven times, God said no. And Samuel was confused, because he had just run out of candidates standing in the room.
So he asked a question that changed history:
“Are these all the sons you have?”
Jesse almost didn’t mention David. He was the youngest. The one out in the field with the sheep. So overlooked by his own family that nobody thought to invite him inside when a prophet showed up at the door.
But God’s response when David finally walked in was clear:
“Rise and anoint him. This is the one.”
1 Samuel 16:12 NIV
The kid nobody invited to the meeting became the greatest king Israel ever had.
And here’s the hard part. That moment in Jesse’s house wasn’t a one-time event. It’s a pattern. A pattern that keeps repeating itself in offices, boardrooms, ministry teams, family businesses, and leadership pipelines right now.
We keep overlooking our best people because they don’t look how we want them to look.
The Selection Bias We Don’t Talk About
We say we value character over talent. We claim we want heart over resume. We talk about potential over optics.
Then we walk into a room and gravitate toward the person with the biggest platform.
I’ve done this myself. I’ve made assumptions based on appearance. Based on credentials. Based on how polished someone seemed in a room full of polished people. And I missed what was happening in the quiet person standing in the corner.
The principle God gave Samuel in 1 Samuel 16:7 cuts right through that blind spot:
“People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”
1 Samuel 16:7 NIV
Read that again and let it land. Because this isn’t a verse about spiritual sentimentals. It’s a verse about talent identification.
We scan for experience. God scans for faithfulness.
Notice what God doesn’t ask Samuel to evaluate. He doesn’t ask about public speaking ability. He doesn’t ask about charisma in a crowd. He doesn’t ask whose name carries weight at the town gate.
He asks Samuel to see what nobody else was seeing. A man who had something none of the others had.
And if we’re honest about how most of our organizations actually make promotion decisions, we’re not operating by 1 Samuel 16:7. We’re operating by whatever the opposite of it is.
The Preparation Ground Nobody Values
Look at where David was when Samuel arrived. He wasn’t in a leadership meeting. He wasn’t interning under the priests. He wasn’t shadowing a general.
He was in a field. With sheep. Doing work that his own family apparently didn’t think was worth interrupting for a prophetic visit.
But watch what was happening in that field.
David was learning to protect what had been entrusted to him. He was developing courage facing lions and bears when nobody was watching. He was cultivating faithfulness in a role that offered no recognition and no advancement.
Those weren’t wasted years. Those were the exact qualifications required to lead a nation.
The quality of your work when nobody is watching becomes the qualification for work when everyone is watching.
There’s a person on your team right now who shows up early to set up chairs without being asked. There’s a team member who handles the unglamorous project with the same excellence as the high-visibility one. There’s someone serving faithfully in a small role while the louder, more polished voices position themselves for bigger platforms.
Those are your David candidates.
The problem is the talent identification system in most organizations wasn’t built to find them. Your system is built to reward the people who perform well in interviews. The people who present confidently in meetings. The people who already look like leaders.
And while your system does its job, the person doing excellent work in the field keeps getting missed.
When Lack of Credentials Becomes the Actual Advantage
Let me pull up another figure nobody would have drafted. Amos might be the most underqualified leader in the entire Bible. And he owned it. I’d love to do an entire book just on him alone.
When the establishment confronted him about his credentials, watch how he answered:
“I was neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet, but I was a shepherd, and I also took care of sycamore-fig trees.”
Amos 7:14 NIV
No seminary. No lineage. No training. No mentor who passed a torch down to him.
Just a guy tending animals and trees who God pulled out of obscurity and said, “Go speak to my people.”
And the assignment God gave him wasn’t small.
Confront the wealthy. Challenge the religious establishment. Call out injustice at the highest levels of society.
A fig farmer walking into the power structure of an entire nation. That was the assignment.
That is a casting decision that only makes sense when you understand one thing: Amos’s authority didn’t come from his resume. It came from the One who sent him.
I think about that passage whenever a leader tells me they need one more certification before they step into what they’re called to do. One more degree. One more year of experience. One more round of validation from people who might never give it.
Amos had dirt under his fingernails and a word from God in his mouth.
That was enough.
The Proximity Problem
Here’s something that should make every leader uncomfortable. David’s own family failed to consider him as a candidate for kingship.
The people who knew him best were the least likely to recognize his potential.
Read that again slowly. The people who ate with him. The people who grew up alongside him. The people who had the most insight on his daily life. They looked right past him.
I’ve watched this exact dynamic play out in businesses where the most capable next-generation leader gets overlooked because “we’ve always known them.”
I’ve seen it in churches where the person with genuine pastoral gifting gets passed over for the more “polished” speaker or leader.
I’ve seen it in executive teams where the person doing the heaviest lifting gets written off because they don’t fit the mental picture of what a leader is supposed to look like.
This is important understand. Proximity can breed blindness to potential that’s right in front of you.
So here’s a question worth sitting with.
Who in your organization are you too familiar with to see clearly?
What Obscurity Is Actually Developing
Let’s keep going back to 1 Samuel 16, because the passage has more to say than we usually give it credit for.
David wasn’t killing time in the field. Something was being formed in him that could not be taught in a leadership course.
He was learning to protect what was entrusted to him. Developing courage in situations nobody was going to post about. Cultivating faithfulness in a role that gave him zero recognition and zero public advancement.
Those weren’t irrelevant experiences waiting for the real work to start. They were the real work. They were the training ground.
Competence in overlooked responsibilities tells you more about someone’s leadership capacity than their visible performance in a prestigious setting ever will.
The person who handles the small, invisible tasks with excellence is already telling you how they’ll handle bigger responsibility.
You just have to be paying attention.
The Recognition Gap In Your System
Most organizations I’ve worked with have sophisticated talent development programs. Structured succession planning. Leadership pipelines with stages and mile markers and named tiers. We have those too and love them.
But so many organizations are still missing the right people.
Because formal processes tend to surface people who fit existing patterns. They identify candidates who look like previous successful leaders. They promote people who are visible, vocal, and already operating inside recognized leadership contexts. I’m not saying that’s bad, I’m just saying it’s limiting.
And here’s what gets overlooked far too oftern
The person doing faithful work without seeking recognition.
The individual with real capacity who doesn’t self-promote.
The leader who serves effectively without needing a title.
Your organization needs something your formal process was never built to do. You need a way to surface overlooked talent.
And that mechanism is you.
The Power of Prophetic Recognition
God sent Samuel to find the kid in the field. Sometimes God sends you to do the same thing for someone in your own circle.
This isn’t about generic affirmation. It’s about specific, observed recognition of what you’ve actually seen.
Not, “Great job on that project.”
But, “The way you handled that conflict last week showed real wisdom. You stayed calm, you listened well, and you found a solution that honored everyone involved. That’s leadership.”
Not, “Thanks for your service.”
But, “I’ve noticed you show up early every single week to set up, and you stay late to clean up. You do excellent work when no one is watching. That tells me something important about your character.”
Meaningful recognition requires attention, observation, and intentionality.
It means you have to actually see people. Not just their role. Not just their title. Not just their position on the org chart. You have to see what they’re doing when they think nobody is paying attention.
And most leaders are not slowing down long enough to do that.
Your Practical Challenge This Week
Think about the people in your life right now. Your team. Your church. Your family. Your community.
Who’s the person nobody is paying attention to while they absolutely outperform the masses.
The quiet one doing faithful work while louder voices get the recognition. The one who shows up every single time but never gets asked for their opinion. The one who serves behind the scenes while others lead from the stage.
Here are three progressive steps to take before the end of the week:
Step 1. Identify them by name. Not a category. Not a role. An actual person. Write the name down. If you can’t name anyone, that’s your first signal that you’ve stopped looking.
Step 2. Observe something specific. Pay attention to what they do when nobody’s watching. How they treat people with nothing to offer them. How they handle an assignment that won’t get them credit. How they show up when they’re tired.
Step 3. Tell them what you see. And be specific. Name the behavior. Name the pattern. Name the character you’ve watched them display. Don’t hand them a compliment. Hand them a mirror that shows them what you’ve already been noticing.
Something like:
“I noticed that you always follow through on what you commit to. That’s rare and it’s valuable.”
“The way you treated that difficult person with respect showed real maturity.”
“You’ve been faithful in this role for years without recognition. I see that, and it matters.”
You might be the Samuel moment in someone’s life. The voice that calls forth potential others have overlooked. The person who sees what their own family has missed.
If You’re The One In The Field
Before we close, a word for the reader who’s been passed over.
If you’ve ever felt looked through, left off the invite list, or kept out of the room where decisions are made, you might be exactly where David was when Samuel came looking.
In the field. Doing faithful work nobody sees. Waiting for a moment that nobody around you is expecting.
Your obscurity isn’t evidence of being passed over. It might be evidence of being prepared.
Keep doing excellent work when nobody’s watching. Keep serving faithfully without the recognition. Keep developing character in the quiet places. Keep tending the sheep and the fig trees. It matters to what God will do next.
God’s pattern hasn’t changed. He’s still looking at hearts while everyone else is still scanning resumes.
The question isn’t whether you have the right credentials. The question is whether you’re being faithful with what’s in front of you right now.
That shepherd kid became king. That fig farmer confronted a nation. Your current role might be preparing you for something nobody around you expects.
Stay faithful, leader. Your moment is coming. As long as you have the right posture. Not gifts. Not talent. But the character God’s looking for.
— Jared