4 Leadership Principles from Nehemiah
The Book of Nehemiah is one of the clearest pictures of kingdom leadership. Nehemiah was settled in the comfort of the king’s palace, but one simple question disrupted his ease: “How are things back home?”
The answer shattered him.
The people were barely surviving. The walls were broken. The gates were burned.
Before Nehemiah ever touched a tool or stepped onto a construction site, he received a report that wrecked his comfort. Jerusalem was in ruins, and though he was far away, his heart was still tied to that place.
The broken walls meant vulnerability.
The burned gates meant no protection.
The people were exposed, ashamed, and defenseless.
Most of us would respond with, “That’s sad,” or “I’ll pray about it,” or “Someone should do something.” But for Nehemiah, the news became a burden he couldn’t ignore.
Nehemiah 1:1–3 reminds us of a hard truth:
Sometimes God reveals your assignment through a report that disturbs your comfort.
Lets explore some principles from Nehemiah that we can integrate within our lives and careers.
Cast A Collective Vision:
Before we get into any work we need to inspect the work. Know that you are human so you may not have all the details but give yourself permission to inspect what you can and have access to.
When we brought our home we scheduled a tour and of course the tour was amazing and things are in the right place and nice and neat and during the day when all is quiet and calm in the neighborhood but my husband took it a step farther, each home we went to tour during the day we also went to inspect the neighborhood at night to see what the environment was like as well. Nehemiah went to inspect the work; he went to see the totality of the damage of the wall. It’s important for us to inspect the work and then cast the vision – casting the vision without inspecting the work can become costly. When I worked in retail – it was during the holiday season and we would have to stay up late in the store, the team was tired, and the store was a mess from customers messing up the clothes. This night I was a closing manager along with another manager, I saw that the team was tired and we were running against the time before we hit overtime, I encouraged the team to do what they can and we will work to get out before overtime. The other manager was determined to get the store cleaned so she was willing to stay until however long. So, when we were talking about leaving, I didn’t count the cost of the work, and my colleague didn’t count the cost of the fact that our team was becoming demotivated. The leader and I didn’t get together to cast a vision to see what next steps would be, so you can imagine how tired, exhausted and frustrated the team was. We must count the cost before deciding to cast a vision.
Resource Allocation: Nehemiah positioned people in strategic places.
Know that these are not random assignments, these were strategic assignments.
This is important I see it plenty of times in different organizations and places where people are positioned in a place that doesn’t align with their skill set or gifting and in some circumstances, you may have to build up to that place or some places are literally transactional. Each person had a benefit of being strategically placed.
Resilience Under Pressure: Nehemiah had things and people that sought to distract him from the rebuilding of the wall. He had some many chances to stop yet he didn’t he continued to persevere and stay focused on the goal at hand. He wasn’t persuaded people who didn’t matter, in fact Nehemiah told them that they had no jurisdiction (in assessing the cost, he also understood who were the rightful owners and heirs of the land)
Ethical Leadership: Advocating for those that are oppressed and being done wrong.
