The Leadership ChallengeSample

  

Challenge 26

NEHEMIAH: ENCOURAGING COLLABORATION

READ: Nehemiah 3:1–5

At first glance the list of names in our text appears to be a routine historical listing of those who worked on Nehemiah’s wall-building project. A closer look reveals an important aspect of effective team leadership. Successful leaders are skilled at encouraging collaboration among team members. Nehemiah’s culture had little social mobility. It was an age of rank consciousness and social stratification, but he is able to pull together people from very different walks of life and social levels around a common goal. Guided by Nehemiah’s thorough planning and the compelling vision he casts, everyone from the high priest down to ordinary workers, labors side by side to rebuild Jerusalem’s walls.

One of the greatest military leaders of the Second World War never led men and women in direct combat. General of the Army Dwight David Eisenhower spent most of his career in staff positions in a peacetime army. This was sometimes used as a source of criticism by subordinate commanders who felt more qualified to be Supreme Commander of the Allied armies. Nevertheless, it is doubtful that any other Allied general could have managed the complex task of encouraging collaboration among such a culturally diverse team, some with animosities and competing goals that stretched back for centuries.

What evidence do we find in the text that this collaborative spirit was not total? What other lessons about effective leadership can you find in our text?