This is the sixth letter in The Mordecai Framework: Leadership Lessons for Chiefs of Staff — a series written as if Mordecai himself were penning personal letters to a trusted friend.
Mordecai speaks:
In our previous letters, we talked about what it means to serve well in a seat few people notice. We talked about discretion, about working without needing your name on it, about staying watchful when the ground keeps shifting, and about remaining in your elevated place so that your counsel carries weight when it is needed most. These are not isolated ideas — they are part of a longer set of disciplines, twelve in all, that I believe form the full picture of this work. This letter takes up the fifth: protect your principal.
There is a story I keep coming back to. Not long ago, a congressman named Tom Kean Jr. quietly disappeared from the House floor for four days — no coverage, no staff explanation, no one standing in the gap. When he finally returned, he told his colleagues that depression had pulled him under. He had done the right thing by stepping away. But had any one around protected him in or before the process? His absence went unmanaged. The narrative went unguarded. And Tom was left exposed at a vulnerable moments of his life.
"Smite the shepherd, and the sheep will scatter."
That is not just a proverb. It is a warning about what happens when the one at the center goes unguarded — and it is the reason your work matters more than most people will ever understand.
The Protection Began Before the Crisis
When Esther first entered the palace, I gave her one instruction: do not reveal your people or your kindred. Esther 2:20 tells us what happened. She kept it — just as I had charged her — even after she became queen, even after everything changed. That was not an accident. It was the fruit of a relationship I had tended carefully, built on trust, consistency, and showing up before the urgent. That foundation is what made everything else possible.
It was from that same grounded place that I was sitting at the king's gate when I overheard two of the king's officers plotting against Ahasuerus. I did not wait. I got word to Esther, she reported it to the king in my name, the threat was ended, and I went quietly back to my seat. The king lived. The mission continued.
Notice where it all began. The consistent reconnaissance from Letter 3 was not something I switched on in a crisis — it was already running, because I had never stopped watching over Esther. Staying in my elevated place, as we discussed in Letter 4, kept me clear-headed enough to act without panic. And the intentional anonymity of Letter 2 meant I had no trouble letting Esther carry the report forward while I returned to my post. Every discipline we have built together points to this one calling: protect your principal.
And there was something quieter still. Every single day, I walked to the front of the palace to learn how Esther was. Not when something seemed wrong. Every day. Esther 2:20 is a picture of what consistent protection produces: a principal who trusts you enough to follow your counsel in the hardest moments because you never let go of them in the easy ones. The assassination plot was a single moment. The daily watch over Esther was every day. And it was the every day that made the single moment possible.
Your principal cannot watch every gate. They are carrying the weight of the decisions, the visibility, the pressure that comes with being at the front. They need you at the gate for them — eyes open, ears open, ready to move the moment something stirs.
So keep your watch, my friend. Show up every day, especially the quiet ones, because the day you stop watching is the day the plot slips through.
Protect the "shepherd". Hold the mission steady. And trust that the One who placed you at this gate knew exactly what He was doing when He put you there.
I am always near.
With deep respect for what you carry,
Mordecai
P.S. — My next letter is about keeping your dignity when the pressure to compromise is loudest. Stay close. It is coming soon.