Day 81: The Leader’s Knack
If you still remember,at the very beginning of this series of devotion on ” Rebuilding broken walls”, Hughes wrote this:
” As a young man, I was told that whatever career I chose for myself, I would never be able to serve the Lord effectively until I understood the principles set out in the book Nehemiah.” That will bring us back to today’s devotional topic about the 4 management principles of effective leadership where we could apply in our own organisational setting at school or work.
1. Co-ordination
2. Co-operation
3. Commendation
4. Communication
If you’ve been following closely to Hugh’s devotion notes, he had quoted bible verses to expound the first 3 principles (Co-ordination,co-operation and commendation). Henceforth, I believe that the focus today, in particular, is communication.
Communication is nothing new here.But what is so intriguing here is when Hughes mentioned,” It also involves the delegation of authority so that decisions do not need to be constantly referred to the top.” Imagine if everyone had crowd around Nehemiah and is constantly bombarding him with questions like, ” What do I do next?” , ” Tell me what should I do about this?” or ” Should I repair this or repair that?”.Well,you don’t have to be Nehemiah himself to understand this. This really reminds me of a classroom situation I had previously when my instructions to the pupils weren’t clear so I had a handful of impatient pupils flocking over to me, demanding answers to their queries. Needless to say, I had a difficult time attending to each one of them. It’s only I learnt from various senior,experienced teachers who taught me how the art of effective communication used in schools that I am facing less of such chaotic classroom situations.
Again, it just amazes me to see that the secrets in life were actually hidden in the bible which was written nearly 3500 years ago. Who would have imagine that all the principles of life could be found in one single book? Who would have taught that the bible has answers to my work problems?
The next time if your colleague ask you to recommend a book on effective leadership, you could say something like this, ” Dude, turn to the book of Nehemiah. It teaches you all you need to know about successful leadership.”
