{"id":4697,"date":"2015-04-22T13:22:08","date_gmt":"2015-04-22T20:22:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=4697"},"modified":"2015-04-22T13:22:08","modified_gmt":"2015-04-22T20:22:08","slug":"elegant-kenosis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/elegant-kenosis\/","title":{"rendered":"Elegant Kenosis"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Leadership<\/a><\/p>\n

With silver hair and a voice that wavered, Sister Margaret seemed really old to me as a young college graduate. \u00a0It’s only been all these years later, many since she passed away, that I now recognize how her age didn’t take away from the value of her faithful presence as a leader in the community. \u00a0In fact, her age enhanced her ability to minister. She wasn’t really a “sister;” the neighborhood kids, prostitutes and pimps, the drug dealers, and gang members called her that. \u00a0She committed her life to them, offering VBS in the afternoons, bible studies for the teenage moms, as well as home visits for the single parents who were trying to figure out how to keep their kids in school. \u00a0At her memorial service, the amount of people and the diversity of the attendees reflected her incredible impact. She knew the art of leadership.<\/p>\n

Max De Pree has a similar legacy of commitment represented by his \u201cfaithful presence\u201d in leadership, impacting numerous people of diverse backgrounds. Considered one of the giants in organizational leadership along with Robert Greenleaf, Warren Bennis, Barry Posner, his influence crosses business boundaries by offering a fresh perspective of what it means to lead as one who considers the message of Jesus Christ \u2013 living as a servant leader whereby “the first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between the two, the leader must become a servant and a debtor. That sums up the progress of an artful leader.”[1]<\/a><\/p>\n

Offered as a dialogue about his years as CEO of Herman Miller, De Pree\u2019s Leadership is an Art <\/em>illustrates the ideas, practices, and hard earned lessons he discovered from his experiences. Practicing his core values of integrity and mentoring, he expresses himself like someone I would converse with while sharing over a cup of coffee. In my experiences interacting with Sister Margaret, I didn’t always understand where she was going when I served alongside her for that summer break, but she seemed to know, and I trusted her in the process. \u00a0DePree operates comparably by his random writing of business principles, but he eventually reveals his genius by connecting the business world to words unfamiliar in that kind of setting: respect, wisdom, forgiveness, meaningful work, know your value system, body language. Depree recognizes that leadership is as much about the person as it is about the skills and tools they effectively use.<\/p>\n

Towards the end of the book, Depree uses the word \u201celegant\u201d to describe the types of leaders who need to \u201cfree the people they lead to do the same.\u201d[2]<\/a> Referencing the ability to look at the whole system whether in a person or organization, Depree points out how the need to operate out of a perspective of completeness, or what I would characterize as integration, rather than only in parts of the picture. He goes on to name elements of an \u201celegant leader\u201d with a cursory list of qualities: seeking covenants not contracts in relationships, wisdom and education, use of time and involvement, hierarchy and equality, forgiveness and freedom to name a few.[3]<\/a><\/p>\n

What\u2019s interesting to note is that the qualities all hold a certain tension. That type of elegance requires a willingness to hold the paradoxes as a way to integrate how to lead others, as suggested in his list. He speaks, as a businessman who stereotypically would compartmentalize the character of a person from the institution, to the intentionality \u201cto keep \u2018becoming\u2019 as individuals \u2013 we would be better off as persons, as corporations, and as institutions.\u201d[4]<\/a> He recognizes that to get something accomplished requires the completeness\/integration of the tension of both the person\u2019s ability to do something as well as to be something.<\/p>\n

As I\u2019ve been working on my academic essay for this semester, exploring my potential dissertation topic, I\u2019ve landed on a term I\u2019ve created called \u201cElegant Kenosis\u201d for the process by which someone becomes old gracefully. Kenosis, a theological word, defines the emptying of one\u2019s self, imitating the act of Jesus by letting go of his own will to follow God\u2019s will. It involves a choice to make oneself \u201cnothing.\u201d[5]<\/a> In the act of aging by \u201creturn[ing] to the ground\u2026for you are dust, and to dust you shall return,\u201d[6]<\/a> we can intentionally live into giving ourselves away. The use of elegance references the definition of not just beauty and graceful, but also simplicity. Putting the two together indicates that one can choose with grace and simplicity how to divest of oneself that is life-giving not only for the individual, but also for those around him\/her.<\/p>\n

With De Pree\u2019s use of \u201celegant,\u201d I see an additional meaning now for my coined phrase. Leadership influences; elegant leadership influences others through a particular way of operating. It requires the wisdom of holding more than a formula; it requires living a life that seeks to understand the art of \u201cknowing who we intend to be [that] always determines what we will do with our lives,\u201d[7]<\/a> In that reflective discovery, we can make the choices that determine how we give our lives away. Both Max De Pree and Sister Margaret made a choice to offer themselves to others. As a result, their leadership impacts us not as a step-by-step process to influence others but as a way of life, integrating reality with creativity. In that elegant kenosis, art remains of a life well-lived.<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Max De Pree, Leadership Is an Art<\/em> (New York: Crown Business, 2004), 11.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Ibid, 142.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Ibid, 144-145.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Ibid, 144.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> Philippians 2:7<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> Genesis 3:19<\/p>\n

[7]<\/a> Depree, xii.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With silver hair and a voice that wavered, Sister Margaret seemed really old to me as a young college graduate. \u00a0It’s only been all these years later, many since she passed away, that I now recognize how her age didn’t take away from the value of her faithful presence as a leader in the community. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"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":[626],"class_list":["post-4697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-de-pree","cohort-lgp5"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4697","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\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4697"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4697\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4699,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4697\/revisions\/4699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}