{"id":15102,"date":"2017-11-09T18:13:59","date_gmt":"2017-11-10T02:13:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=15102"},"modified":"2017-11-09T18:13:59","modified_gmt":"2017-11-10T02:13:59","slug":"the-jesuit-way-of-leadership","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/the-jesuit-way-of-leadership\/","title":{"rendered":"The Jesuit Way of Leadership"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was intrigued when I ordered this book.\u00a0 How can a book on leadership be heroic and what is it about.\u00a0 Turns out the author, Chris Lowney, is a former Jesuit who decided to go into the world of finances for J. P. Morgan and found that the leadership track for that company was woefully inadequate.\u00a0 In fact, his observations of\u00a0 “Raw talent and sheer ambition didn’t always translate into long-term success”[1]<\/span> mirrored what I found while working for sixteen years in the computer industry.\u00a0 I cannot tell you how many people I saw fail in management or leadership positions in that time.\u00a0 Most of them, if you looked at them from the perspective of skill and talent in what they did where smart and talented, but they flamed out miserably in being leaders.\u00a0 So I was very interested in Lowney’s perspective in what makes a great leader.<\/p>\n

The first thing to look at are the four pillars of leadership.\u00a0 These pillars are not some self help guru’s path to being a better leader.\u00a0 I have been in too many sales conferences where they have you chant mantras and say things like, if you aren’t in love with your job, do your company a favor and move on.\u00a0 These types of things, seem to me to be negative in their delivery and ideals.\u00a0 I never saw anyone putting the sales conference materials to use the next Monday.\u00a0 The Jesuit pillars are different though, they are as follows: 1. self awareness, 2. ingenuity, 3. love and 4. heroism.[2]\u00a0First, self awareness, in eighteen years in corporate America, did I ever hear a manager say, you need more self awareness.\u00a0 To take a deep look at ones self as a role in leadership seems to be an obvious exercise, but I was never encouraged to do so.\u00a0 As a pastor, I appreciate the self introspection, but the Jesuits take it a step further.\u00a0 Lowney speaks of the trainees of “plunging into an ice-water bath of painfully frank self-assessment, ‘that I may perceive the dis order in my actions, in order to…amend myself, and put myself in order'”[3]<\/span>\u00a0 The text goes on to describe a roller coaster rider through hell, imagining the actual bodies of sinners burning.\u00a0 I appreciate this idea, of knowing that hell is real, and that we as leaders of the church are fighting the enemy who is trying as best he can to take as many with him as possible.\u00a0 This is not some cartoon ideology but real as scripture tells us.\u00a0 Lowney ends the discussion of the first pillar with the statement “the sometimes painful process of dragging our weaknesses into full light of day by understanding them is the first step toward conquering them.”[4]\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0The second of the pillars, is ingenuity.\u00a0 Lowney describes it as making yourself indifferent.\u00a0 This caught me off guard at first as the last thing I ever want to be in indifferent to the world around me.\u00a0 This pillar is about becoming free from attachment to a course of action or to money as a motivator.\u00a0 It is only at this point a person is free to make the best decision.\u00a0 The best course of action instead of making a decision based on a selfish point of view.\u00a0 This is a good path for ministers to follow, I have known too many pastors who became beholden to a group or an individual because of the money that can be lost if they make that person angry.\u00a0 In fact, it has cost me a position in a church.\u00a0 When we get attached to an idea or a way of doing things, we can also miss out on what God wants of us.\u00a0 In removing the attachment to a certain way of doing things we are freed to be able to make bold moves for God.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The next pillar is Heroism.\u00a0 So here we come to the heroic part of the title our our book.\u00a0 What is heroism in a leader?\u00a0 How does that play out.\u00a0 To be honest, when I think of hero, the only thing I think of is superhero’s which are in rich supply right now in the theatrical world (by the way, these are my favorite for those of you who care).\u00a0 Heroism in the Jesuit sense is tagged by the latin word\u00a0magis<\/em> or “more”[5]\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>Jesuits are taught to make the decision or take the path that is “more” likely to end in success.\u00a0 A drive to be better, a drive to be the best.\u00a0 Again, this is something we as pastors should always strive for.\u00a0 Be more for God.\u00a0 It is to be personal, to be better than we think we can.\u00a0 I help coach my sons in football at their school.\u00a0 One thing I tell the linemen is to always reach down, and find that thing that they do not think they have.\u00a0 To find just a little more want, to find just a little more desire.\u00a0 This is at the heart of more.\u00a0 The last pillar is love.\u00a0 This is probably where the Jesuits would lose most corporate heads.\u00a0 The idea of love as a leadership tool can only stem from a profound understanding of one’s standing with God.\u00a0 The phrase “Fist. Love ought to manifest itself more by deeds than by words.” <\/span>[6]<\/span>, is prevalent\u00a0throughout the discussion of this pillar.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span>It parrots what we are told in scripture.\u00a0 They will know you as my disciples by your love for one another.\u00a0 Love your enemy.\u00a0 God is Love.\u00a0 These are all things we are exhorted to understand in scripture.\u00a0 So, like the Jesuits, we should hang onto this idea.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/span>Janet Fearns, in her discussion of Heroic Leadership, reminds the reader that this book “not a \u2018warm, fuzzy\u2019 piece of pop-psychology. Neither is it meant to be a \u2018spiritual reading book\u2019.”[7]\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0It is a book that will challenge you as a leader to introspection on why you want to lead and how you would be seen as a leader.\u00a0 In fact she goes on to argue that this book, while effective for leaders in the business world, shows one how to live the Gospel more effectively.\u00a0 I love the idea of being able to live out the gospel as a leader and a follower.\u00a0 Robert Bogue in his review reminds us this book is not about working on techniques, but it focuses on principles.\u00a0 I love how he describes it ”\u00a0it\u2019s not a book about with \u201chow to\u201d for other people, it\u2019s a \u201chow to\u201d book for yourself. It\u2019s a guide to the process of discovering yourself and your values. It\u2019s an inside-out approach to leadership.”[8]<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

It is my opinion that this book should be required reading for any person who wants to be a ministry leader, whether clergy or lay person.\u00a0 The ideas contained in this book will be a helpf for anyone who takes it seriously.<\/p>\n

[1]<\/span>Lowney, Chris. 2005. Heroic leadership: best practices from a 450-Year-Old company that changed the world<\/i>. Chicago: Loyola Press. p 2.<\/p>\n

[2]\u00a0\u00a0Ibid p 9.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

[3]<\/span> Ibid p 116.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/span> Ibid p 118.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/span> Ibid p 121.<\/p>\n

[6]<\/span> Ibid p 122.<\/p>\n

[7]<\/span> Fearns, Janet. “Heroic Leadership: Best Practices from a 450-year-old Company that Changed the World.” Thinking Faith: The online journal of the Jesuits in Britain. July 21, 2008. Accessed November 09, 2017. http:\/\/www.thinkingfaith.org\/articles\/book_20080721_1.htm.<\/p>\n

[8]<\/span> Bogue, Robert. 2015. \u201cBook Review-Heroic Leadership: Best Practices from a 450-Year-Old Company That Changed the World.\u201d Thor Projects<\/i>. Robert Bogue \/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Thor-Projects-Invert-Transparent-Logo.png. December 16. https:\/\/www.thorprojects.com\/blog\/archive\/2012\/03\/07\/book-review-heroic-leadership\/.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was intrigued when I ordered this book.\u00a0 How can a book on leadership be heroic and what is it about.\u00a0 Turns out the author, Chris Lowney, is a former Jesuit who decided to go into the world of finances for J. P. Morgan and found that the leadership track for that company was woefully […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":102,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[934],"class_list":["post-15102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-heroic-leadership","cohort-lgp8"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/102"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15102"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15102\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15160,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15102\/revisions\/15160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}