In humor, as every really funny person knows, timing is everything. A punch line badly timed ruins the joke, while a line rightly timed makes it.
In a list of leadership skills, timing may not quite be everything, as it is in comedy, but it is important.
Nehemiah seems to have been aware of this fact. Nehemiah’s timing is the second step in his amazing success in managing and motivating his subordinates. We see it in several ways.
On the one hand, we see it in his three-day time-out after his arrival in Jerusalem. If he had acted too quickly, without gathering the necessary facts, his ideas would have been dismissed as the uninformed and impractical daydreams of a novice.
On the other hand, we see it in the prompt presentation of his plan to the people on the fourth day. If he had delayed longer, he would have lost the initiative that his prestige as the newly appointed governor gave him. By the end of the three days, his presence had aroused considerable curiosity. It was the moment to tell why he had left Susa for the fifteen-hundred-mile trip to Jerusalem.
The third step in Nehemiah’s plan was a direct challenge to the citizens. Nehemiah addressed the Jews, the priests, the nobles, officials. He must have addressed them all, which he could have done only by calling a large convocation. The advantage of this was that he had an opportunity to speak to each one directly. Each one got to hear him and make up his or her own mind about the challenge. No one had an opportunity to interpret (or misinterpret) his words to the others.
Dale Carnegie tells of a mill manager whose men were not producing. The owner, whose name was Charles Schwab, asked why. The manager had no idea.
“I’ve coaxed the men; I’ve pushed them; I’ve sworn and cussed; I’ve threatened them with damnation and being fired. But nothing works. They just won’t produce.”
“How many heats did your shift make today?” Schwab asked.
“Six.”
Without saying another word, Schwab picked up a piece of chalk and wrote a big figure 6 on the floor. Then he walked away.
When the night shift came in, they saw the 6 and asked what it meant.
“The big boss was here today,” someone said. “He asked how many heats the day shift made, and we told him six. He chalked it on the floor.”
The next morning Schwab walked through the mill again. The night shift had rubbed out the 6 and replaced it with an even bigger 7.
When the day shift reported the next day, they saw the 7. So the night shift thought it was better than the day shift, did it? They would show them. They pitched in furiously, and before they had left that evening they had rubbed out the 7 and replaced it with a 10. It was a 66 percent increase in just twenty-four hours, and all because of Schwab’s challenge.
Carnegie concludes, “If you want to win spirited men to your way of thinking, throw down a challenge.”
The fourth secret of Nehemiah’s success in getting the people of Jerusalem to support his plan was his identification with them in the task.
Even though we have only a brief record of what Nehemiah said on this occasion, his identification with the people in the effort is striking. Notice the personal pronouns “we” and “us.”
“You see the trouble ‘we’ are in: Jerusalem lies in ruins, and its gates have been burned with fire. Come, let ‘us’ rebuild the wall of Jerusalem, and ‘we’ will no longer be in disgrace.”
If he had said, “You see what trouble ‘you’ are in; ‘you’ need to rebuild the wall,” he would have gotten nowhere.
It is amazing what the equal participation of a leader can do to build morale.
John R. Noe, president of IMH Systems in Indianapolis, a mountain climber and a popular public speaker, tells of his first attempt to climb the Matterhorn on the Swiss-Italian border. He had prepared carefully, practicing on other mountains. Nevertheless, when he got to Zermatt, where the Matterhorn climb would commence, he had to pass the inspection of his hired Swiss guide and was nervous about it.
The guide took him up the Riffelhorn, the qualifying peak for the Matterhorn. They climbed all day, going up and down this lesser mountain. Finally, in the late afternoon, the guide called a halt, loosened the rope from Noe’s waist, and said slowly:
“Well, John, it’s going to be difficult for you, but I think we can make it together.”
It was that “we” and doing it “together” that inspired confidence.
Maranatha!
(mar-uh-nath-uh – “Our Lord Comes”)
Pastor Steve can be reached at PastorSteve@MaranathaBibleChurch.org