Artaxerxes I of Persia, from his Tomb at Persepolis.
In part 1 of this series, I talked about having the ability to notice the people you manage. In this instalment, we will discuss how a manager should be a considerate person, able to agree on matters that are dear to his people’s heart.
Let us study Nehemiah 2:6 where it says, “The king, with the queen sitting beside him, asked, ‘How long will you be gone? When will you return?’ After I told him how long I would be gone, the king agreed to my request.”
There will always come a time when the employees that we manage will ask you to let them go…
There will always come a time when the employees that we manage will ask you to let them go for a specific amount of time. In this story, when King Artaxerxes asked Nehemiah how long he will be gone, and Nehemiah replied with a number, he agreed!
I should mention that as Chief Cupbearer, he had a critical position in the empire. Nehemiah ensured the safety of the king by sampling the wine being served to the royalty. This is a trusted position and its hard to let go of people you trust. King Artaxerxes made a gamble. Also, an iimportant point is that God had a hand in this matter. God gave Nehemiah favor in the sight of the king. We do not know how God influenced King Artaxerxes but He did!
Of course, there are times when a manager cannot and should not allow an employee to be gone especially during times when the workload is heavy and needs all the help he can get. These are time when employees need to also be considerate of their manager. If they can get someone to fill in for them then well and good, but this effort falls on the lap of the employee not as much as the manager.
Being a considerate manager also means that you are a trusting manager. We need to communicate this clearly to the people we manage. In any decision that involves you and your staff, there should be trust. For example, when you assign work to your staff, there should be a way for an employee to express his or her views and should be considered by the manager. A manager does not have a monopoly of good ideas, strategies or solutions. You get to be a manager because someone also became considerate with you and trusted you to a job well. If a manager does not consider the inputs of his staff then this is formula for discouragement, low morale and reduced productivity.
We’ll finish this series in Part 3.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: Who was King Artaxerxexes? He died a long, long time ago. Check in on him here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artaxerxes_I_of_Persia
