In a series of posts, I want to discuss what we can learn about leadership from Joshua ben Nun, of the tribe of Ephraim, which would become known as the most militaristic of the tribes of Israel through Joshua's campaigns. If this is the first post in the series you have read, please do a quick review of the March 30, 2009 blog titled “Joshua's lessons on leadership - Intro”; that post highlights why I am looking into Joshua’s life.
In the last entry, I discussed the reality that “Results Matter”. In this post, Joshua reminds us “Leaders Eat Last”.
The setting for this lesson comes after Joshua has led Israel through many victories. Tradition has it that he is close to 100 years old when he completes the battles that returned a people group to a land they had left 400 years earlier. By this time Joshua had rolled up a pretty good record, 31& 0, decent results for a wandering people who had just crossed the Jordan. Although Joshua did not obtain a total victory over the territory (he did not defeat the Philistines and others inhabiting the seacoast, and he did not capture the northern lands between Mt. Hermon and the Euphrates River, which would not be totally captured for another 300 years) he completed enough to shift from warrior to administrator.
After the victories, Joshua led an effort to divide the land between the various tribes that had wandered with Moses and fought with Joshua. We read that, “Joshua took the entire land and he gave it as an inheritance to Israel according to their tribal divisions. Then the land had rest from war”. It is in the act of dividing the land that Joshua sets an expectation of leadership. After all of the land had been divided, we find out that “when they had finished dividing the land into its allotted portions, the Israelites gave Joshua son of Nun an inheritance. They gave him the town he asked for - Timnath Serah in the hill country of Ephraim. And he built up the town and settled there”.
Let me get this straight; Joshua leads an army in a multi-year battle with 31 different kings, gives all the land away and then merely asks for a city to live in? Was Joshua a Marine? Forgive a little literary license. I know Joshua was not a Marine, but I can see the Marine code in the way that Joshua led. The code includes, in order:
- Accomplish the mission
- Look after the welfare of your people
- Look after your own needs
With this code in mind, Marines take care of Marines first. This is where one of the more well known aspects of the Marines gets its’ origin…when Marines eat, the lowest ranking eat first, the highest ranking eat last. It is an action observable by all, which occurs each day and is a visible sign of the culture of the organization.
I just finished reading a book I highly recommend called “The Unforgiving Minute” by Craig Mullaney. Craig grew up in a blue-collar, Irish-Catholic family and went to the U.S. Military Academy. He graduated West Point in 2000 and was commissioned in the United States Army. After completing Ranger School, Craig continued to the University of Oxford on a Rhodes scholarship. In 2003, Craig led an infantry rifle platoon along the hostile border between Afghanistan and Pakistan with the 10th Mountain Division as part of Operation Enduring Freedom.
Here is what General David Petraeus said about Craig’s book, “The Unforgiving Minute is a wonderful, beautifully written story of the education and development of a young soldier-scholar, the coming of age of an infantry officer, and the exercise of a small unit leader's responsibilities in a tough, complex, and frustrating situation in Afghanistan. It captures particularly eloquently and movingly the relationships among those who walk point for our nation as part of that most elite of fraternities, the brotherhood of the close fight.”
What does the Unforgiving Minute have to do with Joshua? During Ranger training Craig writes, “There is a chain of command, but there also is a chain of influence…I had to lead by example. If I wanted them to march faster, I had to march twice as fast with a smile on my face. If I wanted them to extend their threshold of pain, I had to push myself even harder and under no circumstance could I afford to whine. The only way to gain my squad’s loyalty was to show loyalty to them. I served them, not the other way around.”
At one point Craig is standing on Omaha beach in Normandy with a Lieutenant Colonel who is a combat veteran and a Ranger. Craig asks the Colonel, “How do you know you’ll handle combat?” The Colonel replies, “You don’t, you’ll never know until you are there. What you will know for certain is that it will be chaotic and loud, and you’ll be ready to piss in your own boots. You’ll be more scared of letting your men down than anything the enemy is going to do to you. And then you’ll lead from instinct and judgment. That is the price of a salute”
The price of a salute. Leaders are human, there is a tendency at least for me to say in my mind, “I have done this for 25 years, I deserve a little (fill in the blank – glory, luxury, rest, stuff, nice hotel room, bigger seat on the airplane).” Basically saying, “What are the rewards of a salute?” Joshua divides the land and gives it away first. He gets his inheritance after the people he has led. Joshua reminds us to eat last. To show others through action the level at which you care about their welfare. To serve and not to take. To wake up in the morning and think,"What will I do for my team today?" not "What will my team do for me today?"
The price of a salute? Eat last.
