What Is Your Organization and Your Leadership Rooted In?
- Kim Levings
- 2 days ago
- 5 min read
A few weeks ago, I spent an afternoon doing the hardest and probably most hated gardening - weeding. Not the easy kind — pulling a few stray blades of grass from a flower bed — but the real fight. Dandelions in the lawn. Clover threading through the landscape rocks, invisible until you look closely, and by then it's everywhere.
If you've ever tried to remove a mature dandelion, you know the problem isn't what you see above the soil. It's what's below it. The taproot can run twelve inches deep or more. Snap it off at the surface and within days the plant is back, sending up new growth from the root you left behind. The longer a weed goes unchecked, the deeper and stronger that root becomes — and the harder the removal.
As I worked, root by root, I found myself thinking about leadership. Leadership of organizations. Leadership of people. Leadership of self.
Colossians 2:6-10 (NIV) is a great example of what healthy rootedness looks like:
"So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness. See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ. For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and in Christ you have been brought to fullness. He is the head over every power and authority."
Paul isn't writing to individuals in isolation here — he's writing to a community, a body, an organization of believers navigating real external pressure. And his warning is specific: watch for hollow and deceptive philosophy. High-sounding nonsense that sounds wise but isn't rooted in Christ at all.
What causes weeds to take root in an organization?
The first is neglect. In most climates, a weed left alone for one season becomes a much harder problem the next. The same is true in leadership. When we stop bringing our real challenges to the Lord — when prayer becomes a formality rather than where we actually process our hardest decisions — something else moves in to fill that space. Usually it's whatever the market is shouting about that quarter.
There is another important lesson about neglect. Nature abhors a vacuum. Leave an emptiness anywhere in your life, and it will soon be filled. With what? That’s where your choices and intentions become critical. Intentionality is the opposite of neglect. I would challenge you to identify what areas of your life you have neglected.
The second is a lack of discernment. We fall for the world's promises because we haven't taken the time to test them against truth. And here's the uncomfortable question worth sitting with this week: what new trends, frameworks, or "high-sounding nonsense" are you currently chasing in how you run your business?
We're remarkably good at finding time to research the latest leadership methodology, the newest platform, the trending organizational structure. We'll read the book, attend the webinar, implement the framework. But do we make that same time to bring our actual challenges — the ones keeping us up at night — to Jesus first? Or does He get consulted only after the trend has already failed us?
Sidebar: In my life alignment coaching, I liken the four parts of ourselves (spiritual, emotional, intellectual, physical) to the four wheels of a car. To live a fruitful life, it would be important to have all four wheels in good order, in balance, aligned. Unfortunately, many of us – especially entrepreneurs and executives – live life as 3-wheelers, with the spiritual self being the spare wheel in the boot – to be taken out only in emergencies.
That's not a condemnation. It's just weeds. And weeds are honestly very normal — the question is whether we're willing to see them and pull them out before they take deep root.
Uprooting what shouldn't be there
Removing a weed properly takes more than a quick tug. It takes three deliberate steps, and I think leadership requires the same three:
Step 1: See it. This is confession, plain and simple — the willingness to say "I have weeds." This is why in Alcoholics Anonymous, individuals introduce themselves by including the statement – I am an alcoholic. You can’t fix what hasn’t been named and owned.Before you can lead your organization out of a false dependency — on a trend, a technology, a metric that's replaced mission — you have to be honest that it's there.
Denial doesn't stop a weed from spreading; it just delays the reckoning.
Step 2: Confront it. This is where you replace the lie with truth. "I no longer believe this belongs in how I lead, no matter what the market has told me is necessary." This is a leadership decision as much as a spiritual one — a conscious choice to root your strategy, your culture, and your decisions back in Christ rather than in whatever philosophy currently has cultural momentum.
Step 3: Remove it. This is repentance in action — not just clipping the visible growth, but going after the root. If you only address the surface symptom (the trend itself) without dealing with the deeper issue (why you turned to it instead of Christ in the first place), the weed will simply grow back. Maybe in a different form, but from the same root.
Here's the encouraging part: Paul doesn't leave us with a warning and nothing else. He reminds us that in Christ you have been brought to fullness. You are not leading from a place of emptiness – a vacuum left from removing a weed, and maybe scrambling for the next philosophy to fill the gap. You already lead from fullness — from a Head who holds every power and authority above every trend your industry will ever produce.
Christ fills us completely when we surrender. Every weed you allow in your life will usurp a piece of internal territory within you and take it away from His presence.
This week, take an intentional, searching walk through your own leadership and organizational “landscape” the way I walked the garden that day. Look closely at the rocks, not just the open lawn — the places where weeds hide in plain sight because no one's looking closely. Ask what's actually rooted there. And if you find something that shouldn't be, don't just clip it. Go after the root.
If you need help weeding your landscape - don't do it alone. Consider being a part of the LeaderPrint Community. An EXPLORE event is just a couple of weeks away. 💥
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