Yitro: advice for the workaholic

[cellio]

In this week's portion Yitro joins the Israelites in the wilderness and immediately sees Moshe straining under the load. Moshe is doing everything himself, suggesting that he may have some combination of control issues and workaholism. And we can see how that happens -- he is the only one of the people in direct contact with God, and it's not like he's had the chance to learn any management skills. He's doing the only thing he can see to do, which is to be the person everybody comes to for answers about what God wants.

This is no good, as Yitro sees immediately. And left unchecked it will get a lot worse in a month or two when God gives the torah on Sinai (not that anybody knows that yet). If the people think there's a lot to keep track of now, well, they haven't seen anything yet.

It's hard for an outsider to come into a community and immediately set about trying to change things, and if he does we usually don't thank him for it. So what compels Yitro to try? Why is he speaking up when none of the Israelites have? One possible explanation is to remember who Yitro is: he is Moshe's father-in-law, or, put another way, the father of Moshe's wife.

Why is that important? There is a midrash about the incident where Miriam and Aharon speak against Moshe and Miriam (only) is punished with tzara'at (let's call it leprosy). The rabbis ask what happened -- what did she say? The midrash tells us that when the 70 elders went up on the mountain with Moshe and then Eldad and Meidad started prophesying in the camp, Miriam said to those around her "oh, their poor wives!". She knew first-hand that a man who attends to divine matters and public administration "from morning to night" is not paying attention to his wife and children. This is clearly not going to seem fair to the family of the prophet.

I think Yitro has the same complaint. After he supported a fugitive from Egypt joining his family and marrying his daughter, I think it's natural for him to be unhappy seeing his daughter being neglected, even if Yitro has just accepted God's superiority. He can agree about the majesty of God while still regreting what is happening to his family, his child.

Yitro has the same complaint that Miriam does, but he pursues it differently. First, he addresses Moshe directly, presumably in private. He doesn't gossip about him, nor does he ignore the problem. He knows that somebody has to bring it up and that the alternative would be worse -- if Moshe's leadership breaks down, people will take matters into their own hands, each in his own way, and this people needs a leader, not anarchy.

Second, Yitro makes it about Moshe and the people, not about Tzipporah -- he tells Moshe that "you" and "this people" can't handle the current situation. He might have another motive, but he doesn't just make it about his personal family interest, a concern that would be easier for an over-stressed workaholic to dismiss. We would hope that Moshe would also be concerned about the effect of his behavior on his family (an idea that underlies every intervention), and given time to think it through I believe he would, but Yitro brings up the concerns that are most likely to get Moshe's attention in his current, stress-filled mental state.

And third, Yitro doesn't just come to Moshe with a complaint but also with an idea for a solution. Now I personally hate the management quip that says "don't bring me your problem without a solution", because I think it's important for people to be able to go to their leaders when they don't know what to do about a problem, but it's certainly easier to get the discussion going when you can put an idea out there of how to proceed. It doesn't need to be the best idea; it just needs to start the conversation. Yitro suggests a good way for Moshe to delegate the routine work; this allows Moshe to focus on the most important problems (and on personal and family needs), and it also empowers the people under him. Instead of being all about Moshe, an unsustainable situation even without matan torah coming, this structure lets it be all about this people working together. And for bonus points, Moshe need not lose face when implementing Yitro's suggestion.

We can learn a lot from Yitro that applies in our communities and families and work-places today. Leaders can take on too much without realizing it, damaging themselves and the community in the process -- many of us aren't much better at delegation than Moshe was, after all ("no one else will do as good a job!", we say), and we need to share the work. When we see this problem in others we have a few choices. We can do nothing, which means the problem continues and probably gets worse. We can grumble about it to our friends, which feels good but accomplishes nothing and perhaps does damage to the community, depending on who hears our grumbling. We can rise up and try to take control (a la Korach), which descends into chaos when we should be building better systems. Or we can do as Yitro did: express our concern directly to the leader in question, do it in a way that the leader will be able to hear, come prepared to talk about solutions, and allow the leader to take action himself, strengthening the community instead of tearing people down.

It is impossible to live in community without encountering leadership problems from time to time. When we do encounter them, let us approach them like Yitro, strengthening the community and its leaders.

Comments

[nickjong.livejournal.com]

Sigh, this is something I could probably learn from. Thank you.

[richardf8]

Nice. The Rabbi at my Conservative Shul would definitely love it - he's very interested in Moshe's relationship with his wife and sons.

I did a D'var there this saturday, BTW. It can be found at http://reformbaaltshuvah.blogspot.com/2011/01/dvar-yitro-5771-rich-furman-last-week.html

[cellio]

Thanks for the link. Good stuff. (I left you a comment over there.)

I don't see an RSS link there. Is there one?