Leadership means leaning into the hard things.
Hard things are situations, challenges or circumstances that do not have quick or inconsequential solutions that often predicate significant consequence for individuals or organizations.
“Now therefore, do not hold him guiltless, for you are a wise man. You know what you ought to do to him to bring his gray head down to Sheol in blood.”
1 Kings 2:9
The measure a leader’s ability to lead is often revealed in a crisis, under sustained trail or when faced with hard things. Leaders have to lean in during such times to learn what the best course of action is for the organization they lead and the people that follow. Expediency means that a leader will use how it affects themselves individually first. Ability is always measured in a crisis.
Becoming a Futurist: Leaders Must Lean into the Possibilities
Lean into the possibilities. There needs to be a little bit of a futurist in every leader. A futurist is someone who studies the potential future possibilities and project possible scenarios or outcomes. This is more than thinking through the consequences. A futurist is someone using resources to understand possible futures based on factors. Exploring potential futures can help leaders learn how to be better prepared when the hard times or truly difficult decisions arise.
Foresight
There is a portion of a leader’s vision that must contain foresight. Foresight is the ability to asses trends, indicators, and elements that will affect the future. Foresight does not require a leader to predict the future, rather read indicators of what the future may contain.
Transferring Power and the Risks to Leaders
1 Kings Chapter 2 is a fascinating study that involves King David transferring his authority to Solomon while giving him final instructions and commands regarding future threats to Solomon’s position as king. Risk is alway increased at such time.
Twice, David’s own sons, Absalom and Adonijah, had rebelled openly and sought to usurp his authority including starting a civil war to take the crown. Abasalom had died as a result of his treachery, but Adonijah was still alive as David was about to pass. There were also still living certain men who had supported David’s overthrow who would support another claimant over Solomon. Hard situations demand decisive, calculated responses.
Leadership Dispenses Judgment
A king’s duty in those days was to dispense judgment and carry out justice. In the days of an eye-for-an-eye, betrayal was punishable by death. At the end of David’s life there is an absence of his dispensing of judgment and carrying out justice. He assigns that hard and specific task to Solomon. David’s charge to Solomon meant he would have to have at least two long-time, yet no longer trusted leaders in David’s court executed.
Without delay, Solomon sees through Adonijah’s cunning plan involving Solomon’s own mother Bathsheba to steal the crown through the back door as opposed to the front. Adonijah asked for one of David’s wives to be given to him. Bathsheba’s sympathies carried this request to Solomon who immediately saw through the deception as a plot to steal his throne. He assigned Benaiah the task of carrying out the execution, which he did without delay.
Leaders Use Hindsight
Solomon was not a leader ruled (at this point) by his passions. He had no blood lust and judged each case on an individual basis. Instead of executing Abiathar, formerly a high priest, he mercifully banished him to live out his life taking in account his life of hardship and suffering with his father David in their early years. Solomon practices hindsight another aspect of a leader’s vision. Hindsight gives the leader the ability to follow the progression of past events, circumstances and trends to influence the future. Leaders look to the past, but don’t live in the past.
Addressing the Hard Things
Leadership means addressing and correcting the hard things in a measured, meaningful approach. Ignoring hard things gives those things life. When you give a hard thing more life than it needs, you exponentially make your role and the jobs and lives of those around you more difficult. In fact, failing to lean into an issue and learn what is going on, how it got there, and making a decision for the best possible outcome is leadership failure.
Leaders Must Press in, Not Pull Away
Solomon was tested immediately in his leadership and instead of pulling away from difficult things, he pressed into them. When you press in, you pull out or expose what is really there. Leaders have to make judgments. There is no way to escape this. Solomon was faced with some early, weighty decisions that he didn’t ignore or shy away from. He stepped into them with wisdom, certainty and one eye on the future.
The Results
As a result, “Thus the kingdom was firmly established in the hand of Solomon” (1 Kings 2:46). His career could have been shaken early on by ignoring his father’s instructions or shying away from unpleasant, difficult decisions. Instead, he leaned in, did what was right and necessary and solidified his kingdom for decades to come.