On Leadership, Stress and Maintaining Vision

Posted on April 10, 2013 by Leonard Doohan

Maintaining Vision

The profound and rapid changes in modern life challenge leaders to constantly change and be creative in responding to the complexities of life. Leaders often find that followers’ unwillingness to change or the fact that they have a different value system can be stressful.

If leaders are tempted to set unrealistic goals for themselves or develop a perfectionist tendency stress results.

Leadership challenges are often intensified by constant need to meet deadlines, by lack of financial resources, and by changes that demand new skills from the leader. And this can cause major stress!

From Stress to Distress

When the stresses of life become so great that a leader can no longer cope with them, they lead to distress. When the stresses result from pressures of interaction with people, they can lead to the possible development of burnout.

This phenomenon does not necessarily result from overwork.

In fact, the workaholic is not a candidate for burnout, since he or she uses work as an escape from people. It is when people in certain professions, like spiritual leaders, find themselves immersed in people-problems that burnout begins.

3 Stages of Burnout

Burnout develops in three stages.

First

Leaders become dissatisfied at work, feel a lack of appreciation from others, and begin to isolate themselves.

This stage does not affect the quality of work and leadership, and others often do not even notice it, since the symptoms are no different than other temporary stressful situations.

Second

A time of self-questioning leads to feelings of helplessness and frustration. This can become so great that job performance and leadership begin to suffer.

Third

Terminal burnout is present when leaders begin to mechanically perform their tasks without any real interest or quality involvement. At this stage, leaders feel intense loneliness, can become sour on life, and often manifest an open rebellion that completely disrupts their leadership.

This last stage ends with individuals hating the very situation that they believe causes the stress, their own vocation in leadership.

Symptoms of Burnout

The symptoms of burnout are similar to those of general stress:

  • Headaches
  • Insomnia
  • Loss of appetite
  • Irritability
  • Fatigue
  • Chest pains
  • Lack of energy

A leader with burnout loses desire to go to his or her place of work or to associate with followers.

Such a potential burnout victim becomes constantly discouraged, angry, and overly sensitive to other people’s remarks.

At first, the natural tendency is to increase one’s commitment at work to prove to oneself and others that there is really no problem. Once the burnout cycle begins it is very difficult to stop it, so prevention is critical, so that quality leaders do not suffer in this way.

Develop Strategies Against Excessive Stress

Among the practices that a leader can develop to insure a lifestyle that avoids burnout are the following. Leaders should admit the seriousness of stress in leadership, then give adequate time to reflection, friendship, leisure, and broad interests outside of one’s working environment.

A leader should provide himself or herself with suitable educational opportunities to keep one’s mind alert and appreciate the depths and limits of leadership as a call to be, more than to do.

Also, make sure you have a support system that constantly gives you encouragement and feedback.

Improve the quality of your working environment. Redefine success in leadership so as to benefit from job satisfaction. Maintain deep relationships that provide intimacy and love.

Also extremely important is to take care of yourself physically with proper nutrition, regular exercise, and sufficient sleep.

Visioneering: Seeing The Road Ahead

It is important that leaders take care to prevent burnout.

After all, burnout only affects the very best.

Burnout is not associated with workaholics whose work is an escapism from people. Burnout results only in those people who give themselves in service to others and take others’ burdens upon themselves.

It is often found in those who spend their lives in the helping professions. Since spiritual leaders give themselves in service to others they can readily become candidates for burnout. It is a hazard of spiritual leaders and they must be prudent enough to take steps to prevent it.

So, do you or someone you know show signs of burnout? What are the symptoms you are seeing? How can you take steps to yourself or another move beyond their present stressful circumstances and on to a better, healthier path toward the future? I would love to hear your thoughts!

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——————–
Dr. Leonard Doohand

Dr. Leonard Doohan  is an author and workshop presenter
He focuses on issues of spiritual leadership
Email | LinkedIn | Web | Blog

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Spiritual Leadership: Do No Harm

Posted on February 12, 2013 by Leonard Doohan

Do No Harm

Do no harm as a leader.

We have seen many positive components of leadership and spiritual leadership in blogs posted on this L2L blog.

But there is more to leadership than just the positive we can do and grow in as leaders. There is also the darker side that needs to be understood and minimized. It is something to NOT do: Harm.

Removing the Problem

Before all efforts at growth and development in leadership, dedicated leaders ought to consider removing any harm they might be inflicting on organizations. We have all met pseudo-leaders and have thought that the best thing they could do for their organization would be to leave it.

After witnessing the failures and mess of “leaders” in the last decade, it is more important than ever that good leaders aspire to do no harm.

Beginnings of Leadership—Do No Harm

Do No HarmWe all know that physicians take an oath to do no harm, and this precedes all their efforts to bring healing to their patients. As we have seen the recent disastrous harm done by people in leadership positions, we can only wish that leaders, too, would take the oath to do no harm.

Unfortunately, we have seen so many bad leadership decisions that it has been common to consider that many people in leadership positions in our generation have done more harm than good. Only people with the vision and dedication of spiritual leaders can reverse this trend and stop this decay.

As a spiritual leader, it is a critical component of call that you DO NOT:

  • Cause Harm
  • Let others responsible to you do harm
  • Allow your organization do harm
  • Allow your products and services do no harm

Leadership is an attitude of service, and it begins by pledging to do no harm.

Remove Personal Defects that Harm Others

On a personal level, a spiritual leader must remove from his or her life all negative influences, the slow erosion of values, and the corrupting influence of power that do harm to others.

He or she must remove arrogance, deceit, and any harmful trait.

A leader avoids hiding in creative ignorance, checks his or her addictions, and makes conscious those areas of personal life that need healing. All these personal defects can harm others.

Healing Relationships with Others

Great leaders have system skills, the ability to see how every person fits into an organization and has an important role to play. They can provide healing relationships with others.

So, a spiritual leader never belittles others and their contributions, ends destructive and confrontational positions, as well as neglect of workers, turf wars, coercion of followers, harassment, and using people.

He or she stops the harmful effects of a whole list of leadership parasites like:

  • Disharmony
  • Confusing Expectations
  • Excessive Internal Competition
  • Infighting
  • Unhealthy Comparisons
  • Petty Jealousies
  • Mutual Blame
  • Compromising Integrity
  • Unethical Practices
  • Lack of Mutual Love

He or she makes sure there is no stunting of others’ development and no one is enslaved to any aspect of organizational life. When a leader removes harm from other people’s lives he or she achieves a lot.

Removing Harm Done by Organizations

A spiritual leader checks any controlling and harmful influences within the organization. He or she removes the dysfunctional aspects of the organization like:

  • Restricting Communication
  • Misusing Power
  • Unjust Salary Scales
  • Careerism

A spiritual leader will be on the lookout for those controlling influences in organizations, large or small, that do harm whether one wants it or not. Often memories harm when individuals remember how they were badly treated.

These unhealed hurts delete a sense of hope among workers.

Sometimes a spiritual leader sees harm and cannot respond when it comes from others. However, in such cases a spiritual leader will not participate so as not to encourage such behavior.

Removing Harm Proactively

Doing no harm is a first step for a leader who must remove harm while appreciating potential harm is best dealt with proactively by creating a healthy atmosphere between leaders and workers—listening, maintaining high values, respect, admiration, total acceptance of others with their strengths and weaknesses.

Many challenges lie ahead for you as a spiritual leader but quality leadership begins with a serious dedication to do no harm.

As we look back over the last few years we do not immediately think of great leadership. Rather, we just wish many of our so-called leaders had not done so much harm.

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——————–
Dr. Leonard Doohand

Dr. Leonard Doohan  is an author and workshop presenter
He focuses on issues of spiritual leadership
Email | LinkedIn | Web | Blog

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Leadership: Seeing and Looking at Things in Different Ways

Posted on December 10, 2012 by Leonard Doohan

Leadership Eye Chart

Spiritual leaders must train themselves to see and to look at things in a different way.

If we don’t then we can certainly expect the same problems to keep coming back to haunt us.

Seeing Things Differently

We are surrounded with leaders who cannot come up with new answers to every more complicated issues. They give the same old responses over and over again.

We need leaders of greater perception who can see what others do not see because they have trained themselves to look at things in different ways than has been common.

One of the important qualities of a spiritual leader is to see things that no one else does. It often means such a leader can analyze situations and see connections that no one else does, or maybe set out a vision that responds to people’s needs even when the people did not establish the vision themselves.

Seeing People on the Inside

Often a spiritual leader sees into workers’ reactions, good or bad, and perceives why they react in a given way. Such a leader identifies goodness or potential negativity where others do not.

Then again, a spiritual leader appreciates common elements imbedded in disparate data.

This ability to see things no one else does comes from years of preparation, when he or she who aspires to be a good leader deliberately looked at things in a different way.

Seeing Things Skillfully

When you look at something—a difficult situation, a relationship, a community problem, and so on—and look at it carefully and intensely, you glimpse aspects of a situation not appreciated at first glance.

Looking skillfully at any situation or decision that needs to be made, you learn to assess potential negative side effects to the good and potentialities for good in the negative.

If you give adequate time to analyzing an issue—a decision, a project, a mission statement, and so on—you can discern the best possible outcome, but this process takes time and skill.

Seeing Points of View

In a world where many leaders try to force us to their point of view, a spiritual leader learns to appreciate how everyone’s point of view can contribute to a shared vision.

In a world characterized by the blame-game, a spiritual leader constantly strives to distinguish between an issue to be criticized and a good person involved in it.

This is part of the wisdom of a spiritual leader.

He or she strives to look at the big picture, all sides of an issue, making effort to relate it to a future of hope. When this is done, seeing and looking at things in a different way is a preparation for visioning.

Seeing the Answer

As a person who is interested in preparing to see and look at things differently you can engage in a series of practices that facilitate this acquired skill.

You will need four preliminary qualities:

  • Stillness
  • Inspiration
  • Concentration
  • Silent Appreciation

Spiritual perception does not emerge out of a cluttered life. So a leader needs to know how to be still with a decision or problem, be inspired by its potential for good, concentrate on available options, and silently appreciate the potential transformation that can result.

Seeing With Your Ears

Part of seeing what no one else sees is to listen like no one else listens, so practice listening intently to any conversation, to a piece of music, to the sounds of nature.

Then try to look at something in a way you never have before, paying attention to some ordinary scene or event or interaction of people until you see something you have never seen before.

A further aid to seeing and looking differently is simply to sit still, do nothing, and totally relax, looking at and savoring every aspect of an experience.

Then the leader to be needs to concentrate on a situation carefully, affirming what is good and equally carefully seeing the negative in need of transformation.

With calmness, aided by breathing exercises a leader prepares for spiritual perception that brings a special dimension of wisdom to all he or she strives to do.

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——————–
Dr. Leonard Doohand

Dr. Leonard Doohan  is an author and workshop presenter
He focuses on issues of spiritual leadership
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Articles of Faith: Are You a Spiritual Leader?

Posted on October 27, 2012 by Leonard Doohan

When we look at spiritual leaders we find that they impact their organizations with their vision and values. Below are a few signs that help us recognize that an organization is led by a spiritual leader.

The Humble Leader

The leadership style of an organization directed by a spiritual leader would be collegial government in which a leader discovers his or her true self in the group or community with which he or she works.

This requires the humility to realize a leader does not have all the answers, and the awareness that genuine organizational direction percolates up to the leader from followers.

On Mission and Values

The organization is led by mission and values not by organizational goals and objectives. It is shared mission, values, and vision that enthuse and motivate the organization.

However, these underlying core values and sense of shared destiny develop, and yes change, with the input and experiences of all members.

Mission, values, and vision do not tell us about the organization’s origins, but how it sees itself today and tomorrow.

Collaborative Environment

In this kind of an organization with collegiality as the governmental model the administration is collaborative at all levels in the structure.

Collaboration takes place on three different levels:

  • intellectual
  • organizational
  • personal

It includes an appreciation of how each person contributes to the common goals of the organization.

In this kind of organization decisions are made at the lowest level in the structure. This commitment to subsidiarity pushes authority down and refuses to allow gifted members to remain empty and feel less valued while decision-making is reserved to executives who do not need to be involved.

These organizations are self-generating, healing, and liberating.

Self-Managed Teams

A spiritual leader’s organization channels effectiveness and achievement to self-managed teams in which members are self-directed.

This is the foundational experience of the organization’s purpose and effectiveness.

The organization’s identity is strong here or nowhere. Team members inspire each other, motivate each other, and foster mutual growth. Members of self-managed teams develop new behaviors and new ways of thinking that percolates up and influences the whole structure.

Such an organization gives importance to building community and welcomes everyone as important contributors both to work and to community life. In a healthy organization, relationships contribute to each one’s health and self-esteem; and, highlight the human values of compassion, empathy, love, and friendship.

Such an organization fosters community through its own rituals, stories, symbols, and celebrations.

This kind of organization manifests special appreciation for its workers. This not only in matters of work environment, salary, benefits, and morale; but,  also in fostering a mindset of consultation, listening, getting feedback, and a commitment to diversity.

Culture of Openness

Every organization moved by inner values develops a culture of openness and trust. Communication is very important and channels of communication are carefully maintained. This approach includes open records whenever possible, including financial documents, executives’ salaries and benefits, trustee actions, and so on.

This free flow of information generates trust and a sense of belonging.

A spiritual leader fosters in his or her organization a dedication to ongoing education. This starts in the hiring process. Then, leaders continue it in carefully planned training, and it is maintained through the freedom to learn and experiment.

Both with products or services and with internal organizational life.

Ongoing Education

This dedication to ongoing education includes:

  • meaningful dialogue 
  • sharing of ideas
  • questioning assumptions 
  • debating company strategies

Spiritual leaders need to create organizations that extend and prolong their values. Such commitment will include some of the values indicated here.

So, are you the type of person who puts their trust in their teams like a spiritual leader? Do you operate on faith that the people working for you and the organization can meet and exceed expectations? Or are you the type of leader that feels “command and control” is the only real way of getting things done. I would love to hear your thoughts!

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——————–
Dr. Leonard Doohand

Dr. Leonard Doohan  is an author and workshop presenter
He focuses on issues of spiritual leadership
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Edited by Scott Leathers

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Business Results of Spiritual Leadership

Posted on July 29, 2012 by Leonard Doohan

Spiritual Leadership

You may not have noticed, but there are some significant consequences of spiritual leadership when the leader shifts focus from self to others. A new ethic emerges.

When this shift happens, people don’t work, less but they do work differently.

And included in this difference is the desire for self-expression and self-fulfillment. when this happens, it is critical that the leader must stress the development of these qualities.

This happens anywhere you deal with people: in business, non-profits, government, and on the soccer team.

Kouzes and Posner, in their book, Credibility, suggest this:

“Leaders we admire do not place themselves at the center; they place others there. They do not seek attention of people; they give it to others. They do not focus on satisfying their own aims and desires; they look for ways to respond to the needs and interests of their constituents.” 

A New Spirit

A good leader can create a new spirit in an organization.

Such a leader lifts the spirit of everyone by enhancing their self-worth and making everyone feel important. He or she makes others feel better about themselves, and makes sure that all treat each other with civility, respectful caring, and even reverence.

In fact, a spiritual leader shares power and evidences a spirit of freedom while we have in the last decade seen many who expanded their power and became enslaved to it themselves while their followers ignored it.

A New Notion

A new notion of authority naturally arises from the way a dedicated leader works with followers.

For such a leader controlling others never enters the debate, rather the focus is always on reciprocity and mutual respect. Authority is a sacred trust, and it is “for others” not “over others”.

The leader no longer accepts authority over or power over, but only authority for and power to facilitate the growth of others.Of course, empowerment cannot be taught by people who have practiced dis-empowerment for years.

Thus, the spiritual leader knows when it is good to restrain one’s leadership.

The leader challenged by inner values of mind and heart pushes autonomy and responsibility down to others, involving and empowering them in a common vision.

A New Responsibility

With all of this, a new view of shared responsibility grows up, in which authority is not centralized—that’s  primitive in today’s world, rather it is placed at the lowest level possible. This practice of subsidiarity leads to co-responsibility.

This kind of leader is not weak, rather he or she is assertive of the right issues, challenging all to be responsible for shared vision and values.

It means calling people to be strong in confronting problems the organization faces.

A New Knowledge

Since there is no longer true leadership without the underpinning of a new knowledge and integrated theory,  a spiritual leader facilitates people’s willingness to share their knowledge with the organization, aware that everyone’s input is part of the mission and vision.

A leader creates exceptional moments which bring forth the unanticipated skills and insights of every follower. When this happens previous barriers become gates to discovery beyond our superficial knowledge of coworkers.

As leadership develops and matures the leader appreciates that organizations need to become more democratic.

Contemporary models of leadership tend to promote empowerment, believing that power is expandable.

A New Democratization

This new democratization is the way to go, thus rejecting any kind of control or elitism whether based on class, wealth, gender, status, or position.

Genuine participative teams increase individual commitment to pursue team goals and it deepens awareness, personal responsibility in decision-making, and self-evaluation.

Democratization is a dimension of individualized consideration that manifests transformational leadership and lets each individual grow to their best.

A New Approach to Failure

A spiritual leader appreciates the gifts of all, establishes a new approach to failure.

In fact, even welcomes it, knowing that if you want to be successful you must learn to fail and learn from failing. This leader appreciates that it is a mistake not to allow others to make mistakes. Thus he or she gives followers some reasonable opportunity for failure without reprimand.

People rarely learn from doing things the right way, but they can learn from mistakes, and many mistakes are not destructive of an organization’s values and vision. Some dysfunctional organizations love to hide mistakes from boards, from followers, and from each other.

The spiritual leader does not divide people into winners and losers, but optimizes everyone’s contribution.

A New Grassroots Growth

A leader guided by spiritual dedication sees an organization in a totally different way than do others.

He or she sees a new grassroot growth. Instead of a top down philosophy of control, the leader lives comfortably with a percolating model of leadership. Hierarchies continue to exist but our belief in the efficacy does not.

Thus, some models of leadership are counter-cultural.

A New Approach to Leadership

The spiritual leader’s new approach to leadership is one that stimulates self-leadership.

Always concerned to discover what needs to be done tomorrow that is not being done today, the leader seeks responses in others. While performance goals will always be important, the leader strives to stimulate self-leadership thinking in all followers.

For this to be successful it will include education of the imagination that helps all rearrange elements to construct further possibilities never thought of before, to envision new structures never tried before, and to set in place new criteria for effectiveness never used before.

A New Value Structure

Leadership today focuses on values that are traditionally considered feminine.

This new focus on feminine values is giving rise to questions about the meaning of power, authority, management style, and so on.  After all, power, muscle, number crunching, planning, and even decision-making are traditionally viewed as male contributions to authority, but computers can do all this today.

The spiritual leader learns some of the feminine characteristics of leadership.

Male aggression gives place to supportive interdependence, competition to nurturing, connections, and discussion, domination to power sharing, self reliance to relationships, position and status to democracy and interpersonal development.

The bigger picture emerging is that women’s ways of leading will call for a questioning of present beliefs regarding the nature of societal development.

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——————–
Dr. Leonard Doohand

Dr. Leonard Doohan  is an author and workshop presenter
He focuses on issues of spiritual leadership
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12 Fallacies Regarding Leadership

Posted on June 6, 2012 by Leonard Doohan

12

In previous contributions I have addressed ideas relating to spiritual leadership. From the perspective of this approach to leadership, some common ideas and sayings are actually false.

Here are 12…

1) Leaders Empower Others

The idea that leaders empower others is well-intentioned but it is a fallacy. Other people already have tremendous power, leaders simply free them to use the power and skills they already have. So, the leader focuses not on empowerment if that implies giving away power, but liberation.

As John Gardner pointed out:

“Leaders are almost never as much in charge as they are pictured to be, followers almost never as submissive as one might imagine.” That influence and pressure flow both ways is not a recent discovery.

2) Leaders Lead Others

Likewise the frequently stated concept that the task of the leader is to lead others is now simply old fashioned. The leader recognizes that the self-leadership of employees is the organization’s greatest untapped natural resource.

So, he or she does not lead directly but facilitates self-leadership in others. Let people lead themselves, in most cases they do not need you.

3) Not Tolerating Dissent

A frequently heard fallacy is that an organization cannot tolerate dissent. An organization needs the energizing value of dissent. It is silence, passivity and apathy that are bad. We need active teams with critical thinking and collaborative skills.

The leader does not encourage silent support but discussion and disagreement.

4) Management Sustaining Leadership

Some individuals who are inexperienced in organizational development think that management skills will sustain leadership. This is not so! Management obsolescence is now a given.

Managers rapidly become obsolete as their established methods grow old.

What Dr. Demming pointed out a long time ago is still true that management causes 85% of all problems in an organization. The spiritual leader appreciates that management leads to compliance, whereas leadership leads to shared values in a common vision.

5) Learning Collaboration

Many immature leaders mistakenly think that an individual can learn collaboration. It is not that simple. You must first unlearn non-collaboration before collaboration can begin.

This is the pain of conversion.

So, for the spiritual leader there can be no collaborative methods on top of an uncollaborative attitude or structure.

6) Leaders as Separate

In times when people saw leadership as genetic and embodied in the great person theory, they felt that the leader stands apart from the organization. Clearly that is no longer the case.

The leader must be a part of the organization and not apart from it.

Hierarchy is still the dominant model of organizational behavior and structure. Often when people talk about collaboration, they mean a collaborative approach within a hierarchical structure.

The word “hierarchy” means sacred and gives the manager the status of high priest.

This is a dysfunctional form of leadership today.

So, the spiritual leader is not apart from but an integral part of the institution.

7) Top as Leader?

An interesting fallacy is that if you are on top, you are the leader. No! Spiritual leaders surface anywhere in the organization, and it has nothing to do with superior position.

Leadership is not a position, or job, or place in the structure, it is a process and commitment, an attitude to life.

The spiritual leader knows that no position gives leadership, only a single-minded commitment to grow does.

8) Controlling Development

Leaders must control the organization’s development. An astounding fallacy! “Leaders know that the more they control others, the less likely it is that people will excel. Leaders do not control. They enable others to act” (Kounzes and Posner).

Control guarantees the diminishment of excellence.

A great leader is one who senses the future mission and direction in the expressions of followers. So, no control, but yes for guided freedom.

9) Power is Limited

In times of reaction to more participative forms of government it is still heard that power is limited. Power can be shared, it is expandable. Remember that powerlessness corrupts and absolute powerlessness corrupts absolutely and produces the loss of commitment and common vision.

The spiritual leader does not limit power but shares it, giving others control and power over their own lives.

10) Leading the Organization

A common fallacy is that top people in a hierarchy lead their organizations. The leader does not lead the organization but its people, making a substantial difference to their lives and they will make a substantial difference to the organization.

The leader does not focus on the organization but on its people.

11) Charismatic Leadership

Now and again we hear that society today needs some charismatic leaders. No! I think not. Charismatic leaders are generally autocratic, presuming they have the vision while their followers are empty and passive.

This is not the approach of a spiritual leader.

Rather, charisma is not found in the lonely individual but in a developing group.

12) Leadership Longevity

Coming out of old notions of leadership is yet another fallacy: once a leader always a leader. No! Many of yesterday’s leaders with all their gifts and virtue intact are simply obstacles in today’s institutions.

The spiritual leader is always a restless learner.

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——————–
Dr. Leonard Doohand
Dr. Leonard Doohan  is an author and workshop presenter
He focuses on issues of spiritual leadership
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Articles of Faith: The Calling of a Spiritual Leader

Posted on April 21, 2012 by Leonard Doohan

Business Man Pondering

The Calling of a Spiritual Leader

—————————————————————————–
This post is part of our Sunday Series titled “Articles of Faith.”
We investigate leadership lessons from the Bible.
See the whole series here. Published only on Sundays.
—————————————————————————–

Realizing Leadership

Rediscovering the importance of a sense of call

It is important for anyone working in a position with potential leadership that he or she needs to pause to reflect and to rediscover the importance of a personal calling to leadership.

How you lead is important.

Many potential leaders are doomed to a service at the margins of organizational life; a cosmetic role that fails to capitalize on both the opportunity and essential vocation to leadership that their position entails.

Many organizational professionals today are envisioning their leadership responsibilities as a spiritual and holistic dimension of their lives.

Clarity to Serve

Now and again we see an opportunity so clear and significant that we must confront it with all our energy to capitalize on its challenge, and there has rarely been a moment in history when a comprehensive rethinking of spiritual leadership was needed.

For leaders whose inner values motivate their leadership, Jesus Christ in the Christian scriptures is their model.

(Please see Matt 20:28; Mark 10:45; John 10:15 –18;  13:1 –5; Phil 2:7)

There, Jesus appears as a person of holiness, compassion, and inclusiveness as he fulfils the role given him by God.

(Please see Isaiah 61:1 –3a)

Many hold on to this courageous leadership style as a developmental process that they can imitate today. When many suggest that the leadership needed today is followership, they imply that the leader who is inspired by Christian values also appreciates that leadership is a form of followership.

It’s Not About You

Spiritual Leadership focuses on the service of others

Authentic leadership values focus on the service of others, demand that we shed self-interest and give priority to other-centered leadership. Many leadership writings today are influenced by Christian values, others are sprinkled with them, like salt and pepper, once the basic ideas are already established.

Others today feel convinced of a new challenge to leadership that not only enthuses them but conquers them. It seems to be an answer to a search they have consciously or subconsciously been making.

It may well mean letting go of present emphases and following a deeper call.

Authentic leadership is not something we do but something we are; it is a passionate response to the yearnings of our hearts. It means we have to unite the major dimensions of our personal, community and organizational sides of life into an integrated whole, where deep convictions and inner values permeate everything we do.

People are not free to lead unless they have discovered deep within themselves the values that give them an enduring purpose, a clear personal mission, and, yes, a sense of destiny.

The Perfect Model of Leadership

For Christians, Jesus is a model of leadership

Jesus is the model of leadership—his  prophetic action of washing the disciples’ feet epitomizes servant leadership (John 13:1 –5); and his self-description as the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for his sheep shows the depth of his commitment to his followers (John 10:15).

Several times he claimed that he had come among us to serve and not to be served (Matt 20:28; Mark 10:45; Luke 18:27), a conviction so clear in the early Church that St. Paul can insist that Jesus emptied himself to assume the condition of a servant (Phil 2:7).

We see Jesus’ leadership in his teaching ministry which consisted not in a collection of laws to be obeyed, but rather in a way of life to be imitated.  We see his leadership in his ministry of prophetical denunciation of societal injustice and of inauthentic expressions of religion.

We see Jesus’ leadership in his constant pursuit of a holistic life, not based on rules and regulations but on compassion.

Leadership Where It Matters

We see his leadership in his daily fights against discrimination, in being a voice for the voiceless, in constantly identifying with the marginalized.

We see Jesus’ leadership not in empty claims to authority, but in his ministry of healing miracles.

Jesus, our model, is a person of holiness and compassion, of sharing and inclusiveness, of passionate concern for the oppressed, and of courageous challenge to the injustices of institutions.  His behavior violates the social norms of his day, defies the parameters of prudence, and confronts the established visions of the social and religious elite.

He calls for change, gives a new vision of people’s relationship with God and with each other, and challenges institutions, both civic and religious.

Drifting in the Wind

Some individuals who think they are leaders approach their leadership like going through a line in a cafeteria, one day choosing to emphasize one thing and the next day another.

How can a person create a vision of spiritual leadership if he or she is not convinced of the importance of a spirit of authenticity and integrity in all that he or she does?

Some executives have other people waiting on them hand and foot, and it is impossible for them to become great leaders.

Spiritual leaders are critical transformational leaders who constantly reflect on their own motivating vision and daily analyze their own use of power. Their charisma, individualized consideration, and intellectual stimulation are each modified by a life of service to the common good and common vision.

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Dr. Leonard Doohan  is an author and workshop presenter
He focuses on issues of spiritual leadership
Email | LinkedIn | Web | Blog

Image Source: thank-a-hippie.com

Filed under: Articles of Faith, Authentic Leadership | 3 Comments »

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