How to Lead When You're Not in Charge: Leveraging Influence When You Lack Authority

by Clay Scroggins

You have ambition because you were created with the drive to create, contribute, and influence things around you. We saw that killing that ambition or letting it run wild will create negative consequences. • In Genesis, God names the ambition inside you and calls it kabash. To kabash is to bring something under your control so you can make it more effective, beautiful, and useful. • Over time, the kabash God has given you has been co-opted by sin into kibosh. To kibosh is to bring something under your control for your own good through dominant authority. • When your kibosh is passive, it leaves you waiting on authority to lead, abdicating your responsibility as someone created in God’s image. When kibosh is active, though, it manifests as selfish ambition where you are working for self-advancement and the ability to control others for your own purposes.