Get Up and Walk · Week 2 · Wednesday

The Plain Truth

He has been at the same place for twelve years.

He keeps getting passed over for the kind of promotions other men around him are getting. The reviews are always positive. The reviews are always exactly the same. Solid. Steady. Reliable. And then the line he has been hearing in different words for twelve years: not quite the leadership presence we are looking for in this seat right now.

In the smaller voice. Doesn’t read the room. Doesn’t sell himself. Says what he thinks without softening it.

Says what he thinks without softening it.

He has been carrying that line in his back pocket for over a decade. He has tried to soften himself. He has watched the men who do soften themselves move up. He has half-believed the version of himself that says if I were a better politician, I would be further along by now.

The Tuesday Meeting

Tuesday morning a project is unraveling. The kind of unraveling that everyone in the room can see and nobody is willing to say. The numbers do not line up. The timeline does not line up. The story being told to leadership does not line up with the story being told in the hallway after the meeting.

A senior leader walks into the conference room. Sits down. Looks around the table. Asks one question.

What’s actually wrong with this?

The room goes quiet.

He can feel the same script firing in his own head. Soften it. Hedge it. Play the politics. Don’t be the guy who killed the project. Don’t be the guy who blew up his career in one meeting.

He answers anyway. Four sentences. The plain truth. He names the problem nobody else has been willing to name. He does not flatter the team. He does not soften the numbers. He does not insulate himself from blame.

The senior leader nods once. Says “Thank you.” Twenty minutes later the project is restructured. Two weeks later he is asked to lead the rebuild.

Biblical Backdrop

Ehud gets close enough to King Eglon to deliver Israel from eighteen years of oppression because of one short sentence.

The Hebrew word for “message” here is davar. It is one of the most loaded words in the Old Testament. Davar can mean word, matter, thing, business, decree. It is the same word God uses when his Word goes out and does not return void. It is the word for prophecy. It is the word for truth that has weight.

Eglon’s response in the next half of the verse is the part most of us read past. He arose from his seat. A king got up. For a man with a bound right hand carrying tribute money. Why?

Because there is something about a man saying I have a message from God for you that gets a king out of his chair. Even a corrupt one. Even one being deceived.

Plain truth, said with weight, gets a room to stand up.

What the Twelve Years Were For

Most of his career, he has thought of his plainness as the thing keeping him out of the seat. What if it was the thing God was preparing for the seat?

What if every meeting where he was the only one who would say the obvious thing was God training his voice for the meeting that would matter? What if the twelve years of being passed over were not twelve years of being overlooked but twelve years of being seasoned? What if the thing his last three reviews called a defect was the exact thing one senior leader would walk into a room one Tuesday morning and ask for?

A man who can be trusted to say the plain truth in a room full of softening voices is rarer than a leader who can sell. Both have value. The world is not short on sellers. The world is short on truth-tellers who can hold their seat when the room goes quiet.

The thing they called your defect is the thing God will use.

Sometimes it just takes twelve years.

Tomorrow · Yes, Me Too