I’ve been reading, over the past few weeks, ideas and thoughts from a wonderful book on leadership. The book is concerned with a strong Jewish leader (no, not Jesus—yes, I know it’s Holy Week and Maundy Thursday, but nope, not about Jesus). This leader and the book is a great explanation about how to accomplish goals and hard tasks.
At one point, the leader finds himself facing opponents. In an attempt to have him waste time from the project, they attempted to get him focused on other things like meeting them. Now, I don’t know about you, but I can really be trapped by a desire to make everyone happy, to make sure communication never shuts down. Because of this, I will often expend more time than most in replying to communication or seeking to have communication, especially with those who are my opponents.
Look, though, at what this leader said about it: I am carrying on a great project and cannot go down. Why should the work stop while I leave it and go down to you?
Wow–no sugar-coating it or trying to make them feel good about it. We are told that, at least in this one period of time, they tried 4 different moments to get our leader to drop his work in order to meet with them. Each time he simply said “can’t…too busy.” With the 4th effort, his opponents threatened him with a possible rumor-mill campaign to undermine his authority and possibly get our leader’s boss to step in and remove him from the work.
Rather than being cowed, though, our bold leader shot back with a short and clear response: You know you are lying. There is no truth in any part of your story.” Wow….such clarity, such direct words. Well, he knew what they were up to, reporting to us his opinion of these people, saying “They were just trying to intimidate us, imagining that they could break our resolve and stop the work.”
What about you? In your efforts to defend yourself, do you rush from the assigned task? Do you expend too much energy in trying to communicate when what you perhaps should do is merely brush off the efforts? I often err because I think I can convince my opponents with logic; more than likely, just like this leader, most of these people have already made up their minds that the work I want to accomplish is crazy, so no amount of logic will really get through to them. Worse, if you have a clear vision of what you should be accomplishing, then expending energy to try and convince these people will simply slow you down.
Jesus knew this (okay, you are right…it is Holy Week and He was a great leader). He spends all of Holy Week in a running debate with the leaders of the Jews, but even as they joust verbally, he is not misled from his task. As Thursday wound down, he knew what needed to happen as Passover began. He didn’t feel any need to try and find out where his opponents were meeting to try and reason with them. Much like our other leader, he just said a few direct words and moved on with his task.
His task was to come and die for God’s people. He was going to be arrested and tried in the Temple in Jerusalem. Then, later, he would be taken outside of the city, beyond the walls, to be crucified by the Romans. I wonder as he passed through the gates leaving the city if he possibly thought about the man who led the task of building the walls.
That man was Nehemiah…a wonderful study of leadership under pressure. This man arrived from Persia and in 52 days, he led the Jewish people living in and around Jerusalem to join him in rebuilding the walls of the city. He faced opposition. He felt little need to expend energy in trying to defend himself to those who wanted to slow him down.
He’s a useful model. Go do good work. Keep focused on the task. Don’t get distracted. Finish well….just like Nehemiah, and like Jesus.