Next Page> 1 2 3 4 5

So how do Ignatian-style leaders operate?

First, with courage, willingness to take risk, or as I put it in my book, heroically, and let me draw on an example from Jesuit history to illustrate how Jesuit heroism will differ from our stereotypical ideas of heroism. Since we’re gathered at a university, the case study of education might be particularly relevant.

The Jesuits today operate what remains the most extensive private network of higher education in the world, with over 70 high schools and colleges in US alone. Maryland province schools occupy the foremost tier of that remarkable system, right behind Regis and Fordham in NY, where I studied. Within our lifetimes alone, this incredibly influential Jesuit education system across the world has educated presidents or prime ministers in US, Mexico, Canada, France, and God knows how many other countries. Jesuit alumni include so improbably diverse a trio as Bill Clinton, supreme court justice Antonin Scalia, and Fidel Castro.

But the Jesuit education system was not always extensive or great, and while it was still in its shambolic infancy, an early Jesuit named Pedro Ribadeneira nonetheless had the utter temerity to write the king of Spain and describe that system as something so important that, “the well being of the whole world and all Christendom” depended on it. What a vision!….Yet, totally grounded in reality. For in another place, Ribadeneira offers this assessment of what it’s like to teach in a school: “It is a repulsive, annoying and burdensome thing to guide and teach and try to control a crowd of young people, who are naturally so frivolous, so restless, so talkative and so unwilling to work, that even their parents cannot keep them at home.” Ribadeneira is charting out a definition of heroism incredibly relevant for our modern workplaces: individuals who are completely grounded in reality—able to see all the problems, yet able to envision the richest possibilities inherent in the work they’re doing. Christians understand this as an incarnational sort of heroism; in other words, it imitates this Jesus who showed up in our messy, complicated world, yet somehow remained undeterred from his own ambitious vision of how human beings might live and treat one another.

This Jesuit Ribadeneira, in fact, may have articulated a wonderful model of heroism relevant not only to the teaching profession but in many of our work environments: this idea of immersing yourself squarely in the mucky reality you face each day, yet not losing sight of your guiding vision and fondest hopes. We’ve grown accustomed to associating heroism with extraordinary acts like saving persons trapped in burning buildings or saving comrades in battle. This Jesuit vision is instead proposing that heroism is less about the opportunity at hand—because most of us can’t control the opportunities that life will present us: we may never have the chance to save someone in distress—than it is about the response to the opportunity at hand, which we can always control. The teacher, social worker, or pastor has no guarantee that he or she will make a profound, life-altering impact in a child’s life: his or her heroism is manifest in the commitment to live and work as if he or she might make such a difference, never losing sight of the fullest vision of what might be accomplished. I’m reminded in this regard of an anecdote, I hope not apocryphal, that President Kennedy visited NASA in the early 60s, met a gentleman sweeping the floors, and to be polite asked him what his job was. He supposedly replied, ‘sir, I’m putting a man on the moon.’ As leaders, we need likewise to get better at instilling in ourselves and among teams a mindset that no matter what one’s individual role, one can be participating in a broader vision by doing tasks not merely well, but in the spirit of trying to find ‘the magis,’ that opportunity to find what is ‘more’ in the work we do. The Ignatian corporate culture of this group invites you to be sure that each individual in your respective apostolates—starting with yourself—feels like a contributor to some broader project, something heroic, some lived incarnation of the magis.

There’s another important lesson for us in this example. Some of us may from time to time consider teachers heroic, but most of us don’t consider such individuals leaders, at least as conventionally defined. This Jesuit model runs counter to a lot of our cultural stereotypes about what leadership is and who leads. Let me ask you to join me in a thought experiment for a few seconds by thinking of the names of two or three living persons you consider leaders…….I wonder how many thought of your own name. I suspect virtually no one. Popular culture tells us that only those in charge are leaders—CEOs, generals, politicians; this early Jesuit vision is instead equipping everyone to lead in his or her own way by role-modeling virtues like the heroism—or magis-that I just described, whether he or she is running a company, an individual contributor, a student, teaching, or raising children at home. This idea of leadership is not about status or hierarchical position on an organization chart, but about role modeling a certain way of living.

As you all know better than I, Jesuit-style heroism—or magis—as expressed in the Exercises, comes with a clearly articulated objective: doing what is more for God’s glory, or for God’s greater glory. And this leads to a second set of challenges, and a second characteristic way of working, for individual leaders and teams today.

Next Page> 1 2 3 4 5