Give a bunch of middle managers one promotion to fight over and watch what happens.

I spent a few years working for a large logistics company where climbing the corporate ladder was practically a competitive sport.

Officially, we were a team. We had meetings about teamwork. We talked about supporting each other, working together and achieving our goals as one big happy operation.

Underneath that very thin veneer of “team,” though, everyone knew there were only so many jobs on the next rung of the ladder.

And plenty of people wanted one.

So there was this constant undercurrent of competition. One-upmanship. Politics. People made sure the right people knew about their successes. Mistakes were remembered, especially when they belonged to someone competing for the same opportunity. Relationships became alliances. Information became currency. Being seen to perform could matter almost as much as actually performing.

And then there was the backstabbing.

I watched people who were perfectly friendly to each other in one meeting quietly undermine each other in the next. I saw people take credit for things they hadn’t done and distance themselves remarkably quickly from things that had gone wrong. Everyone smiled and talked about “the team,” while keeping one eye firmly fixed on the next available position.

To be fair, I wasn’t above it all.

I wanted to progress too. I applied for promotions. I wanted more responsibility, more influence and, yes, more money.

There is nothing inherently wrong with ambition.

I saw a few people get completely consumed by it. They wanted that next job so badly that they would suck up to the right people, take a swipe at a rival when they got the chance, and make damn sure their name was attached to anything that went well.

It was all a bit ridiculous when you think about it. We were moving boxes around warehouses, not fighting for control of the Roman Empire.

Most of us, thankfully, stop well short of murdering the competition.

Still, I came away from those years with a lingering suspicion about people who desperately want to be in charge.

Because wanting to lead and wanting power are not necessarily the same thing.

I’ve known plenty of people who ended up in leadership almost reluctantly. Someone asked them to step up, they thought they could help, so they did. Then there are the people who just really want the job, and the status and authority that comes with it.

The difficult part is telling the difference.

Perhaps that is why I’ve become less impressed by ambition as I’ve gotten older. When someone really, really wants power, my first question is no longer whether they have what it takes to get it.

I want to know why they want it so badly.

The Trees Wanted a King

Apparently, people who really, really want the top job have been making everyone nervous for at least three thousand years.

There is a wonderfully strange story about this buried in the Old Testament book of Judges. It begins with a man named Gideon, who had become something of a national hero after leading Israel to victory against an invading army. The people were so impressed that they asked him to rule over them, and then have his son rule after him.

Gideon said no.

His son Abimelech had other ideas.

After Gideon died, Abimelech went to his mother’s relatives in the city of Shechem with a proposition. Gideon had left behind a lot of sons, and Abimelech asked them a simple question: would they rather have all of Gideon’s sons ruling over them, or just one man who happened to be their own flesh and blood?

The people of Shechem backed their man. They gave Abimelech money, which he used to hire a group of violent men to follow him.

Then he dealt with the competition.

Abimelech went to his father’s house and had his brothers killed. Judges says seventy of them were murdered “on one stone.”

One brother managed to escape. His name was Jotham.

With his rivals gone, Abimelech was crowned king by the people of Shechem. When Jotham heard what had happened, he didn’t return with an army or attempt to overthrow his brother. Instead, he climbed to the top of nearby Mount Gerizim, called out to the people below and told them a story.

And this is where an already strange episode becomes even stranger.

Jotham told them about a group of trees that decided they needed a king.

Of Course the Thornbush Said Yes

Jotham’s parable begins with the trees deciding they need someone to rule over them. First, they approach the olive tree and offer it the job. The olive tree declines. It already produces something valuable. Olive oil was a staple of life in the ancient world, used for food, lamps, medicine and religious ceremonies. Why would the olive tree give all that up just to rule over the other trees?

So they ask the fig tree instead.

The fig tree isn’t interested either. It has sweet fruit to produce and sees no reason to abandon that just for the privilege of being in charge.

Next, they approach the grapevine and get essentially the same answer. The vine has wine to produce. It already knows what it is there to do.

By now, the trees have been rejected three times.

So they ask the thornbush.

The thornbush says yes.

In fact, it seems remarkably comfortable with the idea. It tells the other trees that if they genuinely want it as their king, they should come and take refuge in its shade.

There is something almost comical about that offer. A thornbush isn’t a great source of shade. Certainly not compared with the enormous trees that grew in the region. Yet here it is offering itself as a place of shelter and protection.

Then things take a darker turn. The thornbush warns the other trees that if they refuse to accept its rule, fire will come out from it and consume even the mighty cedars of Lebanon.

The olive tree had talked about producing oil. The fig tree talked about its fruit. The vine talked about its wine. The thornbush talked about submission and fire.

And that was Jotham’s story.

Wanting the Job Might Be the Warning Sign

There is something wonderfully cynical about Jotham’s little fable.

The only character who jumps at the chance to be king is the one with the least to offer.

I’m sure Jotham wasn’t trying to give us a foolproof method for choosing leaders. Ambition isn’t automatically a character flaw, and reluctance doesn’t automatically make someone wise. But he does seem to be poking at an assumption we still make today: that really wanting to be in charge is somehow evidence that you should be.

Think about how strange that is.

In politics, we routinely hand enormous amounts of power to people who have spent years trying to get it. They build campaigns around themselves, raise ridiculous amounts of money, fight through primaries and elections, attack their opponents and spend months telling millions of strangers why they, above everyone else, deserve the job.

Then we are surprised when some of them turn out to be rather fond of power.

Churches aren’t immune either. I’ve encountered pastors who seemed far more invested in having the final say than in actually serving people. Questioning a decision became questioning their leadership. Questioning their leadership became questioning their calling. Before long, disagreeing with the bloke holding the microphone was getting dangerously close to disagreeing with God.

The same thing happens in workplaces. I saw enough of it in logistics. The person who wanted the promotion most desperately wasn’t necessarily the person everyone else wanted to work for.

That is the question Jotham’s fable leaves hanging in the air.

When someone really wants power, perhaps our first response shouldn’t be admiration.

Perhaps it should be curiosity.

Why do you want this so badly?

The Leaders Who Could Let Go

History has given us some extraordinary leaders who were remarkably willing to let power go. George Washington could almost certainly have remained president of the United States beyond his two terms, but chose to retire instead, establishing a precedent that lasted until Franklin Roosevelt. Nelson Mandela did something similar after becoming South Africa’s first Black president. After 27 years in prison and an extraordinary rise to political power, he served one term and stepped aside.

There is even an old Roman story about Cincinnatus, who was called from his farm and given emergency powers to rescue Rome from a military crisis. According to the traditional account, he won the battle, surrendered his enormous authority after just sixteen days and went back to farming. Whether every detail happened exactly that way is debated, but Romans kept telling the story because the idea itself was so counter-intuitive: that a great leader could have power and then willingly give it back.

History is also full of the opposite kind. Hitler dismantled the institutions that could constrain him and eliminated his political opponents. Stalin purged anyone he considered a threat. And the instinct is hardly confined to history books. We still see leaders insisting that only they can save the country, demanding personal loyalty, attacking institutions that restrain their power and treating any electoral defeat as something that must have been rigged against them.

Ambition doesn’t automatically make someone dangerous, any more than reluctance automatically makes someone good. But there is something reassuring about a leader who knows they are replaceable, and something deeply unsettling about one who seems unable to imagine a world in which somebody else is in charge.

Someone Still Has to Crown the Thornbush

There is another part of Jotham’s story that is easy to miss.

The thornbush didn’t seize power all by itself. The other trees asked it to become king.

That was Jotham’s accusation against the people of Shechem. They knew Abimelech had murdered his brothers, yet they crowned him anyway. He was one of their own, and apparently that mattered more than what kind of man he had shown himself to be.

Jotham warned them that this arrangement would eventually turn on them. If they had acted honourably, then fine, let Abimelech and Shechem enjoy each other. But if they hadn’t, Jotham said, fire would come from Abimelech and consume the people who had put him there.

Then he ran away.

For a while, nothing happened. Abimelech ruled for three years.

Then everything fell apart.

The people of Shechem turned against him, Abimelech responded with violence, and the whole thing descended into exactly the kind of bloodshed Jotham had warned about. Abimelech eventually destroyed Shechem and burned a tower full of people who had taken refuge inside it.

The thornbush burned the trees that had crowned it.

There is an uncomfortable political lesson in there because terrible leaders rarely arrive from nowhere. Someone votes for them. Someone funds them. Someone makes excuses for them. Someone decides that the cruelty, dishonesty or appetite for power is tolerable because at least this person is on our side.

Sometimes people even know exactly what sort of leader they are choosing.

They just assume the fire will be pointed at somebody else.

Maybe Watch the Person Who Wants It Most

I sometimes think back to those years in logistics and all the energy we spent trying to move one rung higher.

There were people who desperately wanted the next job, and people who quietly got on with theirs. Some were always positioning themselves, making sure they were noticed and keeping track of who stood between them and the next promotion. Others were simply very good at what they did. They helped people, solved problems, knew the operation inside out and somehow managed to do all of that without constantly reminding everyone that they were leadership material.

Looking back, I know which ones I would rather have worked for.

Maybe that is what I like so much about Jotham’s strange little story. Three thousand years later, we are still remarkably impressed by people who tell us how badly they want to lead us.

Perhaps we should pay a little more attention to the ones producing olives, figs and wine.

And be a little more suspicious when the thornbush really, really wants the job.