Are You Preventing Your Husband's Success?

The following is a guest post by The Joy-Filled Wife and is intended to be an illustration of the reality of what happens in the business world as leaders make selections on who will get top posts in a business, or an opportunity to work with a business. It is not intended to instruct on how to hire an employee, but points out how a wife who may not be supportive of her husband can unknowingly damage his opportunities or advancement. It is life in the real world that although a business is not permitted to discriminate based on a number of legal factors, it may seek the best candidate for a particular role in a business, and some roles may be best suited to those who have a solid family support system. If you are hiring please review this site.

My husband owns a successful company and has up to 150 candidates per month wanting to interview for a chance to work with him. Obviously, that is way too many people to try and see in a month’s time. He has to pair those candidates down to the top ⅓ and then give interview spots to those he feels could potentially add the most value to the team. Because my husband strongly trusts my intuition and knows that I fully grasp his vision for the company’s growth, he often asks me to interview specific candidates in his place to see what I discern. The Lord has been gracious to grant me wisdom in this area and it has saved my husband a lot of frustration and wasted time! It’s important to keep high standards and not bring anyone on who we sense may lower the morale of the team.

As I’m interviewing candidates and asking the Lord for wisdom in selecting the right people to work with, I look beyond what a person is saying and pay closer attention to the fruit in their life. I look at their track record, their long term vision, and, most importantly, their family dynamic. Yes, you read that right. If applicable, we take a candidate’s family and marriage dynamic into consideration. If a candidate makes it to the final stages of our interview process and they are married, we will not consider them further until we have had a chance to sit down with them and their spouse and witness their interaction. We bring up the potential challenges that may arise, the dedication level we are looking for, and how these changes will require adjustments and unwavering support at home. If the candidate is a male, we see if he is the one who “wears the pants” in his marriage or if his wife is allowed to undermine his authority in the home based on her responses to our tough questions. If that is the case {and often it is}, we seriously consider whether or not we want to move forward with him. Why? Because, unless his wife is 100% supportive of his aspirations, she will yield her misplaced authority and almost surely hamper his potential growth with us. Regardless of how capable and ambitious he may be, if he is being cut down and challenged at home, his effectiveness will be reduced and, thus, his performance at work. Even the strongest men become less effective by a nagging, complaining, and hostile wife. I often wonder how many husbands were overlooked for a promotion because their wife was such a bad stain on their “report card”.

My question for all of us wives is, are we unintentionally preventing our husband’s success by the way we behave in our marriage? My husband’s company is not the only one that looks at family and marriage dynamic when considering between several candidates; this is very common practice, especially in large corporations or when considering promoting an employee to a position of greater authority than they currently have. If a man can’t maintain proper order and authority in his home, his employer will question whether he is capable of doing so at work. Don’t think that as long as a wife makes a good impression on the surface that potential employers or business partners will be fooled, either. They check social media outlets, interview people who know the family, witness their interaction in public, and can often see if there are deeper issues just by the husband’s response to challenging scenarios. 

A wife’s disrespect cuts to the very core of a husband and can sabotage him in more ways than you may realize. If, on the other hand, a man is very happily married and has a loving and supportive wife, he is going to stand out in the crowd. Why? A wife is a "crown" to her husband and a visible representation to the world of what kind of a man he is. The question we must ask ourselves as wives is, "Is the crown our husband displays made of brass or is it adorned with precious jewels and gold?"

An excellent wife, who can find? 

For her worth is far above jewels. 

The heart of her husband trusts in her, 

and he will have no lack of gain.

Proverbs 31:10, 11