I watched Thor: Love and Thunder on a flight to Indonesia recently, and one scene has stayed with me since.
It’s the climax of the movie. Thor has to face the shadow monsters Gorr summoned with the Necrosword. He has no army. All he has is a lightning bolt he got from Zeus and a group of children he just rescued. Frightened kids. Not warriors.
So he does the only thing a leader can do in that moment. He gives them a rousing speech. He tells them this day will go down in history as one of the greatest moments of these young Asgardians. Some of the kids point out that they’re not even Asgardian — they’re from different places, different affiliations. And Thor tells them it doesn’t matter. For today, all of you are Asgardians.
Then comes the line that stuck with me. For everyone willing to fight, everyone with the will to go home — for a limited time only, whoever is worthy — he gives them the power of Thor. He empowers them with Asgardian magic.
Kids with stuffed toys and bunny slippers became a fighting force. They beat those shadow monsters black and blue. Because someone believed in them out loud, gave them a mission, and empowered them for it.
It’s a movie. It’s fun. But watching it in transit, it hit me hard because of the season we’re all leading through right now.
We Are in a Crisis
The economy is down. Corruption has stolen so much money from this country. The war in Iran didn’t do us any good either — it increased the cost of everything and sank the economy to deeper depths. Deals close slower. Budgets are frozen. Every business owner I talk to is feeling it.
I wrote before that down years are building years — and that’s still true. But building years also demand a different kind of leader. A wartime one.
And for most of us leading teams through this, our army is not ideal.
Your team might be young. Inexperienced. Scared. They read the same headlines you do. Many of them have never been through a down cycle before. Like Thor looking at a group of kids, you might look at your team and think — this is not the army I would have picked for this fight.
When David’s city of Ziklag burned and his men turned against him, he didn’t have an ideal army either. I wrote about what David teaches us about down years — and the principle is the same here. He inquired of God, strengthened himself, and led. Not with perfection. With faith.
But that scene carries the lesson every wartime leader eventually learns. It’s not about the army you have. It’s about the heart you awaken in them.
If your people have the will — the desire to succeed, to push through, to get to where they need to be, to carry the vision of their leader — then what they need from you is not perfection. Not a bigger war chest. Not better market conditions.
They need empowerment.
I learned this the hard way early in SEO Hacker. The hardest leadership lesson I ever learned was that trust and empowerment go hand in hand. You can’t build a team that fights for you if you never hand them the power to fight.
They need to see that you have faith in them. That you are strong in your vision. That you want to defeat the obstacles in front of you and accomplish the mission of your company. Teams don’t rise to the level of the crisis. They rise to the level of belief their leader has in them.
You Carry Something Better Than a Lightning Bolt
Here’s where it gets real for me as a Christian leader.
You might not have a magic lightning bolt or the magic of Asgard. But you are empowered by God. He put you there — as the leader of your team, as the leader of your company. That was not an accident.
Scripture says of David: “So he shepherded them according to the integrity of his heart, and guided them with his skillful hands” (Psalm 78:72). A godly heart and a skillful hand. That’s the standard for leaders right now.
And work itself is God’s design. The first command God gave man in the Garden of Eden was to cultivate it. “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it” (Genesis 2:15). He gave us the work. He put us here. And Deuteronomy 8:18 says it is He who gives us the ability to generate wealth.
God gave you the vision. God gave you the mission. The empowerment you pass to your team is not corporate motivation theater. It’s you handing down what God already handed you.
Raise the Battle Flag
This is a critical time. A time for wartime leaders to step up.
Your team is watching you. They read your face in meetings. They’re measuring whether your vision survived the bad quarter. Whether you still believe the mission is achievable. Whether you still believe in them.
So tell them. Out loud. The way Thor told those kids.
For this season — for those of you who want to succeed, who want to finish the mission, who have the will to fight through this market — I give you the power to do that.
You’ll be surprised what an unlikely army can do when their leader empowers them.
Raise the battle flag. This is what wartime leaders are for.