There is a position in every organization that nobody applies for and a great many people end up in, and it is the hardest place in the building.
Picture the man in it. He supervises eleven people. He came up through that team. He knows what the job actually takes, because he did it for nine years before anybody gave him a clipboard.
And in the last review he was told, in a friendly way, that he needs to be firmer with his team.
That was the word. Firmer. And underneath the word is a specific set of instructions that were not said out loud: push the numbers, stop making allowances, stop covering for the one whose mother is ill, and make it clear that the shortfall is theirs rather than the schedule's.
The shortfall is not theirs. He knows this with total certainty, because he did that job for nine years and the schedule is wrong.
So he is standing between a management that will not move the schedule and eleven people who cannot meet it, and both of those things are permanent, and he is the only part of the arrangement that is flexible.
That is what being in the middle actually means, and it is why the middle is where people break.
And there is one more turn of it. If he refuses to pass the pressure down, he absorbs it. And absorbing it means he is the one who gets the difficult review, and he has a mortgage, and there are only so many of those a person can take before something has to give.
The men who got it from both sides
There is a passage in Exodus that is one of the most accurate descriptions of middle management ever written, and it is about people almost nobody notices in that story.
When the bricks quota goes up and the straw is taken away, there is a group in the middle. They are Israelites, appointed by the Egyptians, responsible for their own people's output.
And the officers of the children of Israel, which Pharaoh's taskmasters had set over them, were beaten, and demanded, Wherefore have ye not fulfilled your task in making brick both yesterday and to day, as heretofore? (Exodus 5:14, King James Version)
They were beaten.
They were beaten for a shortfall that was structurally impossible, caused by a decision made above them, affecting people below them whom they could not protect.
That is in the Bible, and it is described plainly, and nobody in the account tells them to be firmer.
You are standing where Scripture describes people being hit from two directions at once, and Exodus 5 records the officers being beaten for an impossible quota (Exodus 5:14), and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes an ancient description seriously on behalf of somebody with a clipboard.
And notice what those men do next, because it is instructive.
And the officers of the children of Israel did see that they were in evil case, after it was said, Ye shall not minish ought from your bricks of your daily task. (Exodus 5:19)
They saw that they were in evil case. They named their position accurately. They did not conclude that they were failing. They understood that they were in an impossible arrangement, and the text agrees with them.
You are in a genuinely impossible position rather than failing at a possible one, and Exodus 5:19 has them recognizing it and the account confirming it (Exodus 5:19), and the Spirit of God is the one who lets a man name his situation correctly instead of blaming himself for it.
Not so among you
There is a sentence in Matthew about how authority works, and Jesus draws a line between two systems.
But it shall not be so among you: but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister. (Matthew 20:26)
It shall not be so among you.
He has just described how authority normally operates, which is that those in charge exercise it downward. And He says plainly that this is not the arrangement for His people, and He substitutes a word that means servant.
Which means the instinct this man has, the one being described to him as a weakness, is the instinct being described here as the actual shape of leadership.
You have an instinct that Scripture calls the shape of authority rather than a failure of it, and Matthew 20 says it shall not be so among you and names a servant instead (Matthew 20:26), and it is the Holy Spirit who makes that hold in a review meeting where a different word is being used.
You are not weak for refusing to become that, and Matthew 20:26 sets one system against another rather than grading anybody within one (Matthew 20:26), and the Spirit of God is the one who supplies what a man needs to stay in the middle without hardening.
What this is not
Let me be plain, because this could become a license for something unhelpful.
This is not saying he should never hold anybody to anything. Some standards are real, and a supervisor who lets everything slide is not being kind, they are being absent, and the good workers on that team pay for it.
It is also not telling him to refuse the instruction or to take on his management. He has a mortgage and this article knows nothing about his organization.
And it is not saying his managers are cruel. Most of them are also in a middle somewhere, being told the same thing by somebody above them.
And plainly: if being in that position has begun to reach past work, if you cannot get out of bed, or if some part of you wants it all to stop, that is bigger than a schedule. Call or text the 988 crisis line, and say the true version out loud to a doctor or a counselor or a pastor you trust. The person absorbing everything needs somebody too.
You are not being told to abandon a standard, and Matthew 20 substitutes a posture rather than removing any responsibility (Matthew 20:26), and the Holy Spirit is the one who tells the difference between softness and service, which are not remotely the same thing.
So here is the turn, and it is a posture rather than a policy.
You are standing in a described position, and Exodus 5:14 has the officers beaten for a shortfall that was never theirs to fix (Exodus 5:14), and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes an account of men in the middle in Egypt and lays it over a man with eleven people and a schedule that will not move.
Now the counterfeit, and in a supervisor it arrives sounding like professionalism. It says: you are too soft, and that is why the numbers are what they are. Look at the shape of that. It names the man rather than a thing, it opens no door, and its only instruction is to become something he does not want to be, in order to fix a shortfall that was never caused by him. Conviction from the Holy Spirit names one specific thing and always opens a door in the same breath.
You have not caused a shortfall by being decent, and Exodus 5:19 has the officers seeing plainly that they were in an evil case rather than concluding they had failed (Exodus 5:19), and that work belongs to the Spirit of God, who has been on that floor for nine years plus however long the clipboard has been in his hands.
Nothing here promises the schedule moves. It probably does not. What is settled is that being hit from two directions is a described position rather than a personal failure, that a different system of authority was named plainly, and that a man who will not harden toward his own people is not failing at his job.
Declare this over yourself
Say these out loud, in the truck or on the sand at the end of the day. You are in Christ, and that is what makes the authority to speak over your own position delegated rather than invented. God described men in exactly this middle and did not tell them to be firmer, so speak to the pressure you are asked to pass down, and then leave the outcome to Him.
- Pressure I am asked to pass down the line, you are not leadership and I am not required to hand you on. The Word of God says the officers of the children of Israel were beaten for a quota that could not be met.
- Word soft that gets used about me, you are refused in the name of Jesus. Matthew 20 says it shall not be so among you, and names a servant where the world names a taskmaster.
- Father, Exodus 5 says they did see that they were in evil case, and the account agreed with them. I say one name out loud today with a true good thing attached, and I thank You that Your Spirit is on that floor with all eleven of them and with me.
Exodus 5:14
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