Effective Leadership, Part 2: How To Motivate Others

This is the second part of a series on leadership gleaned from a study of the book of Nehemiah from the Bible, with special emphasis as to how these concepts apply to our lives as Christians, as well as athletes and coaches. The book of Nehemiah has been called the first book ever written on leadership, and it has also been called the best book ever written on leadership. Aside from Jesus Christ, there is probably no one in the Bible who more models being an effective leader than this man named Nehemiah, as story after story in his book details. That Nehemiah led the Israelites to rebuild the wall around Jerusalem in just 52 days, is an incredible feat and should cause us to contemplate what made him successful. The reader must remember that the principles comprised in this article are broad and apply to all of us as people because we all are leaders of others at times and in some ways.

The people of Judea had been taken captive to Babylon in 587 BC after the Babylonians had destroyed their temple, their houses, and even torn down the wall around Jerusalem and burned its gates. Next, Cyrus the Great became the king of the Median Empire in 549 BC, and then conquered Babylon without a shot in 539 BC. Upon commencing his rule, he immediately allowed the Israelites who had been taken captive by Babylon to return to Jerusalem, and an Israelite named Zerubbabel first returned with a group in 538 BC to rebuild the temple. Jerusalem’s temple had finally been completed after twenty years, but then the rest of the work of rebuilding the city and the city wall stalled for seventy years. Next, Ezra an Israelite priest returned to Jerusalem in 458-457 BC, and his purpose was to enforce the Jewish law and continue with the rebuilding of the city. A revival began when Ezra learned that many Israelites had broken God’s Law by intermarrying with the people of the land, something specifically forbidden by God, and Ezra admonished them to give back their foreign wives and even the children born by them. But, then the work on the wall and city stalled again.

In 445 BC Nehemiah, the cupbearer to King Artaxerxes I of Persia, heard a report that the people of his heritage, the Israelites, who had returned to Jerusalem from exile in Babylon eighty years earlier to rebuild the temple, the city, and the wall around Jerusalem, were in great distress and reproach, and, that the city wall was still broken down and its gates burned. This news was very disturbing to Nehemiah, and he wept and mourned for days. It may be hard for us to realize how this news could affect a man as it affected Nehemiah, but it has been said that the heart of a true Jew is in Jerusalem. Allan Redpath has also written about how the Israelites felt about the wall around Jerusalem: “Jerusalem’s walls were in ruins and its gates were burned. To a modern city, of course, that means nothing, but God’s purpose for Jerusalem was that its walls should be salvation and its gates should be praise, and the emblems of salvation and praise lay in utter ruin.”

Nehemiah ended up fasting and praying for four months straight for his people in Jerusalem and the work of God to be rebuilt there. For these four months, Nehemiah was praying for the Lord to put it in the heart of the king to allow him to leave to rebuild the wall around the city, but as he prayed he was also planning everything that he would need and what he would do in rebuilding the wall. When the Lord finally opened the king’s heart to allow Nehemiah to return and rebuild the wall around the city, Nehemiah had gained favor from the king and left with a group of Israelites to rebuild the wall. The king even financed the entire work and provided Nehemiah with the official paperwork needed, and a large military escort. In this article, we will discuss Nehemiah as a leader after he returned to Jerusalem with this group. We will analyze how he was used to motivate the Judeans to recommit to rebuilding the wall.

When we think of good leaders the “it factor” is often brought up. A leader is a person whom others follow, and thus he has “it.” This type of thinking has a flaw though. In our world many people don’t realize that being an effective leader is something that you can learn if you have some inclination for it. Leadership isn’t just something that some people are born with, while others are not, and it is an area of our life that all of us need to grow in.

Vince Lombardi, the NFL Hall of Fame football coach who led the Green Bay Packers to several national championships once said, “Leaders are made, they are not born; and they are made just like anything else has ever been made in this country—by hard effort. And that’s the price that we all have to pay to achieve that goal, or any goal. And despite what we say about being born equal, none of us really are born equal, but rather unequal. And yet the talented are no more responsible for their birthright than the underprivileged. And the measure of each should be what each does in a specific situation. It is becoming increasingly difficult to be tolerant of a society which has sympathy only for the misfits, only for the maladjusted, only for the criminal, only for the loser. Have sympathy for them, help them, but I think it’s also time for us to stand up for and cheer for the doer, and the achiever, one who recognizes a problem and does something about it, one who looks for something extra to do for his country, the winner, the leader!” Coach Lombardi did not have a spiritual perspective, but I think there is truth in what he says here regarding leaders being made not born.

H. Ross Perot, who ran for president a couple of elections ago, once said, “People cannot be managed. Inventories can be managed, but people must be led.” Nehemiah was a great leader, so let’s take a look at how he was able to motivate others.

To consider how effective a leader Nehemiah was, it is probably a good thing at this point to take stock of exactly how great of a feat was accomplished through him in leading the Judeans to rebuild the wall around Jerusalem. For three days after his initial arrival in Jerusalem, Nehemiah was secretly riding his horse around the city at night and investigating the current state of the wall. He was “counting the cost” of undertaking this project, trying to ascertain what all it would take to rebuild the wall. He must have realized with each ride the enormity of the task he had undertaken, and how without God’s help and leading there was no way that he would be able to accomplish the task, much less get it done in the short timeframe that he had promised the king.

James Montgomery Boice has written the following about the rebuilding of the wall being an overwhelming task: “Commentators differ over the size of the city at this time and therefore over the length of the wall Nehemiah was to build. But even by the most modest estimates, the circumference of the city was one and a half to two and a half miles. Moreover, the destruction was great, and the stones to be reassembled were massive. This was not a case of a group of workers merely constructing a garden fence, a brick wall, or even a large earthwork fortification. The blocks that had been tumbled down into the valleys below were of great weight, and these had to be exposed and then hauled back up to the site of the wall and reassembled. This required many workers, diverse skills, and even, we may suppose, a certain amount of lifting and moving machinery…Not only was the task itself overwhelming, but it also had been attempted before and had been given up, which meant that he was bucking a history of defeat. The work had actually begun in the second year of King Cyrus in 538 BC, more than ninety years earlier…When Nehemiah arrived, the most recent failure was only thirteen years in the past. Nehemiah faced not only a difficult task but inertia as well…To make matters worse, the only people Nehemiah had to work with were discouraged…But overwhelming tasks are opportunities for great men, which Nehemiah was.”

Nehemiah’s method for motivating the Judeans was unconventional. The way leaders usually try to motivate others is by providing some sort of external rewards for their achievements. Parents tell their children that if they clean their room that they will take them to watch a movie. Bosses offer bonuses for certain achievements, or sometimes they will do things like give the best employee the parking spot right closest to the front door for the month, etc. But, Nehemiah did not use this type of approach.

When a complete assessment had been made for the work that should be carried out to rebuild the wall, Nehemiah was ready to appeal to the people to begin the project, and Nehemiah 2:17-18 records his motivational speech to them: “Then I said to them, “You see the bad situation we are in, that Jerusalem is desolate and its gates burned by fire. Come, let us rebuild the wall of Jerusalem so that we will no longer be a reproach.” I told them how the hand of my God had been favorable to me and also about the king’s words which he had spoken to me. Then they said, “Let us arise and build.” So they put their hands to the good work.”

Nehemiah was a rare but extremely effective leader who was able to motivate people by appealing to their inner motivations of pride, altruism, building character, etc. He didn’t dangle a carrot and promise external rewards, he appealed to and brought out their inner zeal for God and His glory and worship, something that they already possessed as God’s people.

Now, at this time I believe that Nehemiah also presented a detailed construction plan to the Judeans for the rebuilding of the wall, but it was because of the manner in which he presented the information to them and because the good hand of the Lord was with him, that the people of Israel responded to Nehemiah’s appeal with this: ‘Let us arise and build.’ The narrative continues by stating that the people ‘put their hands to the good work.’

Charles Swindoll writes about how Winston Churchill was a man who was able to motivate others by appealing to their inner motivations:

"I have always been impressed with the life of Winston Churchill. In Churchill’s speeches, I cannot find a time in which he ever employed extrinsic [external] motivation. Listen to the words he spoke as England prepared to confront Nazi Germany just three days after Hitler rapidly occupied Belgium, France, and Holland:

I would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined this Government: “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.”

We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask, what is our policy? I can say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.

Long after the bombs fell and it appeared Great Britain would have to stand alone against Hitler, he declared:

We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.

And I will never forget the amazing speech he gave to a very fearful people in Britain when he addressed the House of Commons on December 30, 1941. It included these words:

When I warned [the French] that Britain would fight on alone whatever they did, their generals told their Prime Minister and his divided Cabinet, “In three weeks England will have her neck wrung like a chicken.” Some chicken; some neck.

The Nazis never wrung England’s neck. Somehow Churchill, stubby little creature that he was, could stand in front of a microphone and strengthen Brits by the thousands with intrinsic motivation. He appealed to their inner strength, their sense of right and wrong, and to their zeal.”

Now, there are a multitude of ways that people can be effectively motivated by a leader, and surely knowing well those whom you lead will help you to know the best way to motivate each one of them. This ability to understand people and calculate what is the best motivator for an individual is a key characteristic of an effective leader. We see that Nehemiah knew just what the Judeans needed for motivation.

A friend of mine sent me an email this week in which he shared how in his career as a school teacher that he motivated his students, he writes:

"During my career as a teacher, I felt that my strongest impact could be made by being a "facilitator" for students. Being a facilitator requires giving direction as needed, helping with skill building, giving opportunity, and encouraging. There are many ways to motivate students--fear of failure, rewards--immediate and distant, peer group pressure, fear of punishment, and more--but the best is when you can take a bit of something they've done well and let them see the next possible thing through that lens. That's encouraging. Believing in a student, having specific evidence for that belief, and then expressing both the belief and the evidence. That's how I encouraged others."

I could also tell you what I believe to be some poor means of motivation that I have seen coaches use. A college baseball coach in this area is known for absolutely demoralizing his players as a means to motivate them. For instance, one extremely gifted pitcher his first year on his team threw a very poor game in what I believe was his first outing. After the game was over and all of the guys had headed off, this coach walked with the kid into the outfield. In the outfield, the coach asked the kid, “What do you see here?” The kid shrugged his shoulders. The coach asked him the same question a couple more times. Finally, the player said, “I don’t see anything coach.” The coach replied, “That’s right 'nothing', and this is you, and this is all that you are ever going to be.” Not long after this incident the player quit the team. I believe that after a successful college career playing with another college team that this kid ended up getting drafted into the major leagues. This happened to him not because of this first coach, but in spite of that coach’s poor ability to motivate others. Many players have left this coach’s team after similar experiences, and many very gifted athletes won’t consider playing for him.

I have already written an article about the importance of encouraging others, and mentioned that there may be a time for yelling at a kid you are coaching, but an effective coach must also know how to build up a kid, and kids need to also be complimented when they have done well. Some coaches only know how to tear down kids, not build them up, and thus they can never produce winning programs.

There are a few things that I have seen every time I have observed coaches who tend to yell continually at their players as their form of motivating: a) Their players don’t know when something is “really” important that they are trying to tell them because the coach yells about everything, b) Their players often don’t understand what their coach is telling them because he is yelling, c) Their players tend to tune them out and thus the coach loses his team, d) Their players won’t communicate important things with the coach like when they are injured, when the player knows the coach’s scheme won’t work, when the player knows a better scheme to use than the coach has suggested, etc.

Back to Nehemiah. From this book, we see that Nehemiah was so effective as a leader he was able to motivate just about everyone in Judea to help in the building of the wall, including the people of the city, the officials of Judea, the high priest as well as the rest of the priests, the people living outside of Jerusalem, and even the children in the various families. Growing in leadership skills enables a person to be able to effectively lead lots of people, not just a few.

As an effective leader, Nehemiah used a combination of methods to motivate the Judeans to rebuild the wall, utilizing internal motivating factors more than external ones. Nehemiah knew that the Judeans already had inward zeal for the Lord and thus desired to see the wall of the city rebuilt, they just hadn’t yet had a leader who could draw that out of them so they could follow him and get back to the work. Nehemiah simply said to the Judeans, “See the ruins? We’re in a terrible strait. Let’s rebuild this wall.” And the people said, “Let’s do it.”

Nehemiah was wise in his approach too, for he told all of the people in Judea to rebuild the wall by their own house. This motivated the people to work hard for a number of reasons, including: a) They knew that they would have direct personal benefit for their work on the wall, b) They didn’t have to travel far to work so this helped them both in their productivity as well as in their morale, c) They were able to work together as whole families, and d) They were able to have some control over their work. It’s good to remember that wisdom and discernment are promised by the Lord to those who pray to Him for it, if they pray in faith (James 1:5).

As I see it, we in the church today have mostly been motivated by our leaders in such a way that we serve the Lord for what we may get out of it. This results from the fact that our secular culture has inbred in us that everything is about “me, me, me.” However, the church should never be motivated to do what they do just for what they will get out of it. Likewise in coaching I think that if this is the sole motivator a coach uses that he will not produce team players who always give 100% and do everything for the team, but rather a bunch of selfish, self-centered, and self-serving athletes who have a sense of entitlement that only the creator of all deserves. Oh yeah, I guess this describes in many ways the age in which we live…

Before we end our discussion of how to effectively motivate those whom we lead, using Nehemiah's life as an example, there is one more area I want us to consider, and unlike the rest of these points this one isn’t found in the first couple of chapters of Nehemiah. An effective leader motivates those whom he leads by his own personal example. Nehemiah never asked anyone to do anything that he himself did not do. We read that as he was working alongside those who were rebuilding the wall, he didn't even remove his clothes throughout the entire project, and, he also was an example of vigilance and focus as he never was without his weapon: Nehemiah 4:23, “So neither I, my brothers, my servants, nor the men of the guard who followed me, none of us removed our clothes, each took his weapon even to the water.” You can never underestimate the importance of leading by example. Those who are lazy uncommitted leaders will find that they create lazy uncommitted followers.

Later on in chapter 5, verses 14-18, when Nehemiah had finally been appointed governor of Judea, where he served for 12 years, he writes that during that whole time he did not use the stipend that he was allowed for food and hosting banquets, but that instead he himself served 150 people at his table each night. Not wanting to exact a tax from the already burdened Judeans for this stipend, Nehemiah proved he was a servant leader to the people. What better example could he have been?

So, in conclusions I ask you to consider this today, "Are you are using the best methods for motivating those whom you lead?"