What a 1978 leadership idea and one of the oldest leadership stories agree on.
If you lead a team, you've probably had this week. Everyone did their job, the tasks got ticked off, and nothing moved. Nobody flagged the problem they could see coming, and the project that matters most is right where it was on Monday. It's tempting to decide you've got the wrong people. More often, they're doing exactly what was asked because what was asked is all they've been given.
The aide who rebuilt a city's walls
Picture a senior aide to one of the most powerful kings of his day. Visitors from his home city bring bad news: the walls are broken down and the gates have been burned. A city with no walls is a city anyone can walk into.
It wrecks him. He takes the risk of raising it with his boss and asks for leave to go and rebuild. He gets leave, letters for safe travel and an order for timber from the king's own forest.
When he arrives, he waits three days. Then he goes out at night with a few men and inspects the walls himself, before he's told anyone what he came to do.
After that, he gathers the local leaders and puts it plainly. You can see the trouble we're in. The city is in ruins and the gates are burned. Let's rebuild the wall, so we stop living in disgrace. He tells them the king is backing the plan. Their answer comes right away: let's start.
The work is split up by families and trades. Goldsmiths, perfumers, priests and district officials all take a stretch, and many rebuild the section right in front of their own houses.
Officials from the surrounding region mock them, then plot to attack. So he changes how the work gets done. Half the crew builds while the other half stands guard, and the people hauling materials carry a load in one hand and a weapon in the other. He reminds them what they're protecting: their families and their homes.
Through all of it, he holds himself to a different standard. As governor he's entitled to a food allowance paid for by the people, the way the governors before him took it. He turns it down because the people are already carrying enough. He works on the wall himself and buys no land.
The wall is finished in fifty-two days.
What business school calls it
Some leadership runs on a trade. You do the work, you get paid. Every business needs that, but a trade tends to get you what you paid for. When people give more than the job asks, there's usually something else going on. They can see what the work is for. Their leader is carrying the same load they are. And they feel like they matter as people, not as a pair of hands.
James MacGregor Burns put a name to this back in 1978. He called the trade transactional leadership, and the other kind transforming leadership. Bernard Bass built it out in 1985 into what's now taught as transformational leadership, with four parts:
- Idealized influence: the leader is a role model people trust, because they hold themselves to the standard first.
- Inspirational motivation: the leader gives a clear, shared picture of where the team is going and why it matters.
- Intellectual stimulation: the leader gets people thinking and solving problems instead of only following orders.
- Individualized consideration: the leader pays attention to what each person needs and cares about.
Peter Northouse covers it in Leadership: Theory and Practice and notes it's one of the most researched approaches in the field. He also flags its weak spots. It's broad and hard to pin down, and the same ability to move people can be used for selfish ends. Bass drew a line between transformational leaders and pseudotransformational ones, who inspire people mainly to serve the leader.
The turning point in the story is one conversation. He names the problem everyone can already see, ties it to something they care about and says "let's" where most bosses would say "you". Then he backs it up by carrying the load himself.
The leader in that story is Nehemiah, and you'll find it in Nehemiah 1 to 6, written thousands of years earlier.
If you know your Bible, you probably recognized him a few paragraphs ago. Here's how the passages tell it (ESV).
He served the Persian king Artaxerxes ("Now I was cupbearer to the king," 1:11), and the news from home was that "The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates are destroyed by fire" (1:3).
After inspecting the walls at night, he made his case: "You see the trouble we are in, how Jerusalem lies in ruins with its gates burned. Come, let us build the wall of Jerusalem, that we may no longer suffer derision" (2:17). And the answer: "And they said, 'Let us rise up and build.' So they strengthened their hands for the good work" (2:18).
Under pressure, "we built the wall... for the people had a mind to work" (4:6). He never took the governor's allowance, "because the service was too heavy on this people" (5:18). And "the wall was finished on the twenty-fifth day of the month Elul, in fifty-two days" (6:15).
Nehemiah's plan
- Give them the why. "You see the trouble we are in" (2:17). He named the problem everyone could see and made it a shared one.
- Go first. He turned down the governor's food allowance (5:14) and "persevered in the work on this wall" (5:16).
- Make it personal. Many repaired the section "opposite his house" (3:10), and he told them to fight for their families and homes (4:14).
- Solve the problem together. Under threat, half worked and half stood guard (4:16), so the work kept going.
Then and now
| Nehemiah | Business today |
|---|
| "You see the trouble we are in" (2:17) | Name the problem honestly |
|---|
| "Come, let us build" (2:17) | A shared goal, in plain words |
|---|
| Turned down the governor's allowance (5:14) | Hold yourself to the standard first |
|---|
| Repaired "opposite his house" (3:10) | Connect the work to what each person cares about |
|---|
Why we skip the why
Why don't more leaders do this? Mostly because it feels slow. You already know why the project matters, so it's easy to assume everyone else does too. A task list feels like progress. A conversation about purpose can feel soft, especially with a deadline coming.
And going first costs something. Turning down the perk and doing the dull part of the job beside your team take time you'd rather spend elsewhere. But people notice who's carrying the load, and they set their own effort by it.
Try this week
Pick the project that matters most to your team this month. Write two or three sentences on who it helps and what changes if it goes well, and open your next meeting with that, before any task list. Then ask yourself:
- Could each person on the team explain why this project matters, in their own words?
- Is there a part of the work I've left to everyone else that I could do beside them this week?
- What does each person care about that this project could connect to?
Pick one of those and act on it before Friday.
Could your team tell you why this week's work matters?
