Page 187 - The Bible On Leadership

Courage 173

Nathan’s response, one of the most courageous accusations a subordi-
nate ever gave a boss, let alone a king: ‘‘You are the man! You struck
down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and took his wife to be your
own.’’ David was guilty of murder and adultery, and only Nathan pos-
sessed the courage to help him see it, risking imprisonment or death to
set his leader and his nation back on the right course. That he was
neither imprisoned nor killed is a testimony to his consummate com-
munication skills and his accurate assessment of David’s likely response
to negative feedback!
Another modern leader who deserves membership in ‘‘The Exalted
Order of the Extended Neck’’ is Jack Stack of Springfield Re. The
division was about to fail. It was losing $300,000 a year on $21 million
in sales. Its 170 workers were demoralized by a backlog of orders and a
shop floor that was in a shambles. Even the parent company refused to
help, seeing Springfield Re as a lost cause.
Stack’s courageous (and perhaps foolhardy) question: Why not buy
the plant ourselves? It was the most highly leveraged buyout in corpo-
rate history, with eighty-nine parts debt to one part equity, and $90,000
a month in interest payments. Courageous? Yes. A gamble? Perhaps.
But Stack had ‘‘set his face like flint.’’ Like so many of the leaders (bibli-
cal and modern) in this chapter, his courage has helped rescue his orga-
nization from ‘‘the valley of the shadow of death’’ and put it back on
the road to prosperity.

BIBLICAL LESSONS ON COURAGE

Courage is not the absence of fear. It is acting despite the
presence of fear.
Acts of courage perpetuate additional acts of courage—by both
leader and followers.