This course has heavily focused on the leadership around communicating, sharing vision, trusting people, and being self-aware throughout all of this skill development. Implementation though … project management … ensuring the work does get done, takes an entirely new level of leadership. It is the type of leadership that empowers people to self-organize while you, as the leader, prioritize well and keep impediments from blocking work.
Nehemiah is such a good example of this leadership. He took a demoralized people (and yes, we all know those teams in the workplace!), assessed the work situation as somewhat hopeless (sound familiar?), and then set the vision for a new future that required the clear effort of every contributor. Nehemiah 2:17-18 helps us see how people want to work towards something that makes a difference.
Then, implementation. Nehemiah prioritized. Walls get repaired while gates get rebuilt. Nothing else happens until those are done. The people, with such a clear strategy could self-organized around that, and they did. Eliashib and his priests tackled the Sheep Gate. The Hassenaah brothers rebuilt the Fish Gate. Joiada and Meshullam repaired and installed the Jeshanah Gate.
And so on, as we see in Nehemiah 3.
The story of Nehemiah is our example, as managers, on how to prioritize for strategy completion, and trust the employees to do what needs to be done. Yes, guidance was needed. Feedback was critical. Nehemiah did not lay back on his cushions and wait; but nor did he make himself the chokepoint for decisions.
Comments are closed