As leaders, we face a fundamental question that determines every decision we make, every priority we set, and every response we choose: who's really in charge? Not just of your team or department, but of the mental processes that drive your leadership style. When pressure mounts and competing voices demand your attention, which one gets the final say?
This isn't just about external authority—it's about the internal stewardship of your most valuable resource: your mind. Because whoever or whatever occupies the throne of your decision-making determines not just your professional trajectory, but the impact you have on everyone around you.
Picture this: you're facing a difficult decision at work. Your boss has asked you to do something that feels ethically questionable. Multiple voices immediately start competing for your attention.
"Just do it. Don't rock the boat. You need this job."
"Stand up for what's right. Integrity matters more than comfort."
"What will people think if you refuse? What if you get fired?"
"Remember your values. What would honour your deepest convictions in this situation?"
The question isn't whether these voices exist—they do, in every human mind. The question is: which voice gets the final say? Who's really in charge of your mental spaceship?
The Battle for Ultimate Authority
In The Insiders, this battle for ultimate authority plays out through the complex dynamics aboard The ALEx. Captain Higgs represents your prefrontal cortex—the brain's executive decision-making centre that neuroscientists call the CEO of your mind. But even the most capable captain can only make decisions based on the information she receives from her crew, the stress levels on her ship, and the values that guide her command.
Throughout the story, Captain Higgs faces the constant challenge of making decisions whilst managing competing voices from her crew. Each department has legitimate concerns, valid perspectives, and urgent needs. Her job isn't to silence these voices but to steward them wisely.
This perfectly mirrors how your brain's executive centre actually functions. Your prefrontal cortex doesn't operate in isolation—it receives constant input from emotional centres, memory systems, sensory processors, and survival mechanisms. Every decision you make is influenced by:
Current stress levels: When cortisol floods your system, your decision-making narrows dramatically. What seems impossible under stress becomes manageable when you're calm.
Physical condition: Hunger, fatigue, illness, and other bodily states directly affect your brain's executive function.
Stored experiences: Your hippocampus constantly compares current situations to past experiences, influencing how you interpret and respond to challenges.
Personal needs: Where you are in meeting fundamental needs for safety, belonging, and significance affects every choice you make.
Core values: What sits on the throne of your heart determines how all other information gets prioritised and processed.
The Throne Room Mystery
Deep within The ALEx lies a sacred space that neuroscience hasn't fully mapped yet—the Throne Room. This isn't a brain region you can point to on an MRI scan. It's something deeper, more fundamental: the spiritual core where your ultimate values reside, where your deepest allegiances are formed, where the question "What matters most?" gets answered.
In the story, the Throne Room contains two magnificent trees: the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, behind a golden throne that determines the ship's ultimate direction. The question that haunts every crew member is simple yet profound: who sits on that throne?
This isn't just fictional imagery—it's the most practical question you'll ever face as a leader. Because whoever or whatever occupies the throne of your heart determines every other decision you make. Your prefrontal cortex might be the captain, but the throne determines the mission.
Jesus understood this perfectly. In Matthew 6:21, He taught: "For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also" (NIV). What you value most deeply—what sits on your throne—shapes every choice, every priority, every response to leadership challenges.
When Pride Takes the Throne
In The Insiders, there's a devastating period when Sera, representing self-satisfaction and pride, occupies the throne illegally. Her presence seems harmless at first—who doesn't want to feel good about their leadership abilities? But as she settles into power, everything begins to shift.
Systems throughout The ALEx begin malfunctioning. What started as healthy confidence transforms into something darker: pride that demands everything serve its glory rather than the ship's mission.
This mirrors what happens in real leadership when pride occupies the throne of our hearts. Proverbs 16:18 warns: "Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall" (NIV). When our own glory becomes the ultimate value, every decision gets filtered through the question "How does this make me look?" rather than "How does this serve the mission and the people I lead?"
The neuroscience is fascinating. When pride-based thinking dominates, the brain's reward centres become addicted to validation, recognition, and superiority. The very chemicals meant to motivate healthy achievement become hijacked by an insatiable hunger for more praise, more status, more proof of our own importance.
Pride-driven leadership is inherently unstable because it requires constant feeding, constant validation, constant proof that we're better than others. It turns team relationships into competitions, challenges into threats to our image, and team members into either admirers or enemies.
The Stewardship Alternative
But there's another way. When serving others becomes the throne-occupying value, everything changes. Not because it's a harsh ruler demanding self-sacrifice, but because it's the perfect stewardship model that transforms every aspect of leadership into an opportunity for positive impact.
In 1 Corinthians 10:31, Paul writes: "So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God" (NIV). This isn't religious obligation—it's liberation. When serving something greater than yourself becomes your ultimate value, every decision gets filtered through the question "How can this serve the greater good?" rather than "How does this serve me?"
Captain Higgs discovers this truth as the story unfolds. Her most effective leadership doesn't come from asserting her authority but from faithful stewardship of those entrusted to her care. When she stops trying to prove she deserves command and starts focusing on serving her crew's genuine needs, her leadership becomes unshakeable.
The neuroscience supports this principle. Studies show that when people engage in activities focused on serving others rather than advancing themselves, their brains produce chemicals that combat depression and anxiety more effectively than self-focused pursuits. Serving others literally rewires your neural networks for greater resilience, deeper satisfaction, and improved mental health.
The Information War
Of course, effective leadership doesn't happen in a vacuum. Every decision you make is influenced by the information flowing from various sources, and in our modern world, this becomes a literal battle for your attention and response.
Your prefrontal cortex faces the same challenge as Captain Higgs. The quality of your leadership decisions depends on:
Stress management: When stress hormones flood your system, your decision-making narrows dramatically. Learning to recognise and manage stress becomes crucial for maintaining strategic thinking.
Physical stewardship: Your brain's executive function operates differently depending on your body's condition. Sleep, nutrition, exercise, and recovery directly impact leadership capacity.
Experience integration: How you process and learn from past experiences influences how you interpret current challenges and opportunities.
Values clarity: What's sitting on your throne determines how all other information gets prioritised and how decisions align with your deeper purpose.
In Proverbs 4:23, Solomon writes: "Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it" (NIV). Your heart—that throne room where ultimate values reside—is the command centre that determines how every other piece of information gets processed and how every leadership decision gets made.
The Choice That Changes Everything
Here's what makes leadership development more than just skill acquisition: you have genuine choice in this process. Not whether various pressures and voices will compete for your attention—they will, because that's the nature of leadership. But you can choose what happens after you receive competing input.
You can acknowledge urgent concerns whilst maintaining strategic perspective. You can honour immediate pressures whilst choosing responses that serve your actual values rather than your immediate fears or ego needs.
This is stewardship in action: taking conscious responsibility for the mental and emotional resources you've been given, the team members serving under your leadership, and the ultimate direction of your organisation's journey.
When leaders learn this lesson, everything changes. They stop being victims of their circumstances and become stewards of their responses. They can't control what happens to their organisation, but they can choose how they respond to what happens.
Your Leadership Transformation
Understanding your mental processes isn't just fascinating neuroscience—it's practical leadership development. When you recognise which voices are speaking in high-pressure situations, you can make more intentional choices about which ones deserve your trust and which ones need to be acknowledged but not followed.
The Insiders explores these questions through the adventures of a crew that might feel surprisingly familiar. Because they're not just fictional characters—they're the voices you live with every day, the competing priorities you manage, the values you either serve or abandon in moments of pressure.
When your inner voices start taking sides—when caution clashes with boldness, when fear battles with faith, when pride wrestles with service—which voice will you trust? More importantly: who's sitting on the throne of your heart, determining which voices get heard and which get ignored?
These concepts come alive in The Insiders—the only sci-fi story that makes neuroscience accessible through biblical wisdom, layered and formational like Jesus's parables to help you navigate the complexities of choice, change, and personal growth in leadership and life.
The story launches next month. Your mental spaceship awaits its steward.
Pre-order The Insiders now with early bird discount: https://books2read.com/theinsiders/
What's one leadership decision where you've learned to pause between competing voices and choose based on your deeper values?
