"CULTIC” LEADERSHIP VS. SERVANT LEADERSHIP IN THE CATHOLIC PRIESTHOOD.

Dean Hoge of The Catholic University of America, conducted a survey in which 1000 U.S. Catholic priests responded. The 2005 survey was a repeat of a survey he had conducted in 1990. There were a number of interesting findings from his written study of the survey titled “Experiences of Catholic Priests Ordained Five to Nine Years” that were summarized in an article by Jerry Filteau of the Catholic News Service. One finding was a return to a “cultic model” of priesthood from a trend since Vatican II towards a model based on “servant leadership”.

According to Hoge (from an article in the Boston College Magazine Summer of 2005 edition), “the cultic model […] sees the priest as mainly an administrator of the sacraments and teacher of the faith. The cultic priest stands apart from other Catholics […]. The cultic model emphasizes that priests are different from laity-higher in holiness and mediators between God and humanity.”

Hoge contrasts this with the servant-leader model of priesthood, which “positioned priests within the Catholic community, interacting closely with the laity and collaborating with them in parish life as spiritual and social leaders. […] Priests living the servant-leader model invested themselves more in community leadership beyond the parish than did cultic priests, as they attempted to have a beneficial effect on the larger society.”

As someone who believes that servant leadership has much to offer all of our institutions, this reversing trend towards “cultic” leadership in the Catholic Church troubles me. As a member of the Catholic Church and a student of servant leadership, I have felt much conflict in regards to the leadership methods used by my Church. It seems that many of the troubles that have plagued the Catholic Church are related to the “cultic” or hierarchical form of leadership that dominates the Church.

Carl Koch (one of my favorite teachers of servant leadership) pointed out in his article titled “Servant Leadership: Can the Bishops Learn from Southwest Airlines”, that “servant leadership has its roots in the person of Jesus, the Gospels and the early church, a church that collectively called forth its leaders.” It is my hope that our Catholic priests can find a way to return to their own catholic roots.

Servant Leadership & Politics

Here's a topic I try and stay away from. Not because it isn't important, mind you, but because it unfortunately polarizes us and causes more finger-pointing than true dialogue. Of course, this should probably be the place where we try and move beyond the finger-pointing and look for solutions that work for the common good. For now, however, I want to keep this as a leadership blog and not a political one. And I'll keep my personal political views to myself.

That said, Afghanistan's President Karzai was in Washington today. He responded to a question by first re-framing why we are fighting this war on terror. Now, regardless of your own opinions of President Bush or the Iraq War, what I want to emphasize about President Karzai's comments (and where this ties into being an effective leader) is that he made sure we were all clear about our mission by recalling past events. It was eloquently said and a great example of PART OF our job as leaders in the midst of chaos (or, in political terms, an election year). Here is what Karzai said:

Ma'am, before I go to remarks by my brother, President Musharraf, terrorism was hurting us way before Iraq or September 11th. The President mentioned some examples of it. These extremist forces were killing people in Afghanistan and around for years, closing schools, burning mosques, killing children, uprooting vineyards, with vine trees, grapes hanging on them, forcing populations to poverty and misery.

They came to America on September 11th, but they were attacking you before September 11th in other parts of the world. We are a witness in Afghanistan to what they are and how they can hurt. You are a witness in New York. Do you forget people jumping off the 80th floor or 70th floor when the planes hit them? Can you imagine what it will be for a man or a woman to jump off that high? Who did that? And where are they now? And how do we fight them, how do we get rid of them, other than going after them? Should we wait for them to come and kill us again? That's why we need more action around the world, in Afghanistan and elsewhere, to get them defeated -- extremism, their allies, terrorists and the like.

On the remarks of my brother, President Musharraf, Afghanistan is a country that is emerging out of so many years of war and destruction, and occupation by terrorism and misery that they've brought to us. We lost almost two generations to the lack of education. And those who were educated before that are now older. We know our problems. We have difficulties. But Afghanistan also knows where the problem is -- in extremism, in madrassas preaching hatred, preachers in the name of madrassas preaching hatred. That's what we should do together to stop.

The United States, as our ally, is helping both countries. And I think it is very important that we have more dedication and more intense work with sincerity, all of us, to get rid of the problems that we have around the world.

The role of leadership teachers

I recently ran across this post asking those teaching in educational leadership programs why faculty don't feel a moral imperative to turn out school leaders who prepare students to live in a technology-filled world.

A great question. And I began to wonder what the role of leadership faculty is in general. Are we stuck in the past teaching others to lead but not embracing the changing culture? Do we take the time to reflect on what challenges will face tomorrow's leaders?

Do we have the foresight to make changes to our curriculum today in preparation for a world that will look very different 20 years from now? For example: How many of us saw the internet or e-mail revolution coming in 1986? And did we attempt to understand the way we do business would be forever changed?

Those of us who teach leadership have an obligation to prepare future leaders well. The question is, will we take the time to see where we are going?

Corporate Watergate

I apologize for being so absent from posting lately....I realize it is very un-Trevor like. I hope to be back to daily posts again soon.

In the meantime, if you haven't done so I encourage to take a look at all of the things that have been going on with Hewlett-Packard lately. There are at least 10 different sub-plots to the story, so I won't even try and link to them all. But a good place to start is here.

In a nutshell, HP chairwoman Patricia Dunn (who recently stepped down) authorized surveillance of HP boardmembers (and family members) on suspicion of leaking confidential information to the press. This included obtaining confidential phone records, tracking boardmembers and reporters, and even attempting to place tracking software on a reporter's computer. And today several members of HP resigned after being subpeonaed by federal officials. And please bear in mind that this is but the tip of the revelations surrounding this story!

It's been an amazing story to watch. Here, here and here are just a few of the stories that will help fill in some of the blanks.

And in an amazing irony, it was recently reported that HP is the corporate sponsor for the upcoming Privacy Innovation Awards! LOL...you just can't make this stuff up!

Where/Who is the better wheel?

Greenleaf was never one for "reinventing the wheel." However, he did believe that is one is truly a servant then one is always searching, listening, expecting that a better wheel is in the making.

Look around you. Who are the prophetic voices that are speaking now? Not just on a global scale, as important as that is, but within our communities and organizations. Who is taking issue with the disparity between what is and what could be?

Live in the present. Be a seeker. Living prophets are all among us.....those that are making hard choices and undertaking the preparation that building a better society requires. It is up to us to seek them out and respond to their call.

Listening - Reader Input Requested

For todays Blog I thought I would practice listening. Some days it is tough to come up with Blog ideas and I was looking for some feed back from you the reader on what it is you like or do not like about the Servant Leadership Blog or what your most important needs are from this Blog. Also if you simply could indicate if you read the Blog on a regular basis that would be helpful too. Please post a comment or drop me an email at jablonski@usfamily.net. Any thoughts or comments are welcome.

Sacraments, Miracles, and Mindfulness

John P. Schuster is the author of the 23rd essay in Insights on Leadership titled “Servants, Egos, and Shoeshines: A World of Sacramental Possibility.”

One insight for me came from his reference to Abraham Maslow. In the essay he wrote, “Abraham Maslow, the great psychologist of motivation for this century, said an interesting thing about sacraments and miracles. He said that the people who look for great external miracles-outward signs and wonders-are looking at life all wrong. What they seem to fail to understand is that when you look at something closely enough and with the right eyes (sacramental eyes, I would say), then everything is miraculous” (p. 277).

For me this is a good reminder to pay attention to the small things, the things that more often then not seem meaningless. It is in the trivial that triumph just might be found. This is what practicing mindfulness is all about. For more on mindfulness visit the attached link to a talk from Thich Nhat Hanh here.

Insights on Servant-Leaderhip

Part Four of Insights on Leadership is titled “Servant-Leadership.” The essays in the final section of the book discuss the authors’ understanding of servant-leadership and its relevance to modern society.

The introduction to Part Four includes a quote from Robert Greenleaf’s essay Servant-Leadership. “The servant-leader is servant first – as Leo was portrayed. It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. The difference manifests itself in the care taken by the servant-first to make sure that other people’s highest priority needs are being served.”

For me the key to this idea is determining what the highest priority needs are. Too often it seems leaders focus on the followers wants, with the belief that this will keep them in power. Following Greenleaf’s best test of servant-leadership: “Do those served grow as persons?”, keeps the leader on the right path to servant-leadership.

Finding Hope on September 11.

“To me, 9/11 is a message about the sleep of humankind. It is a call to remember what is essential in oneself — that it is only by coming into relationship with the inner greatness of oneself that it can be possible to act in a way that can make a difference.” Jacob Needleman as quoted on the Spirituality and Practice web site.

As the anniversary of 9/11 approaches, the media is full of stories and flashbacks regarding the day five years ago. So many of these stories seem to play on the terror, the fear, the hopelessness of the day and it becomes very difficult to find hope through such reminders. When I recall that day five years ago, I remember hoping that we would respond to the acts of terror with acts of compassion, and despite what the media stories seem to convey, many people have responded with compassion. And since servant leadership is a leadership based on compassion, not on fear, it seemed appropriate to point out a place where one can go on the internet to find leaders acting with compassion in response to this anniversary.

Finding such a place seemed difficult, until I checked my email and read the latest Spirituality and Practice E-Newsletter . The newsletter is put out once a week by Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat and contains great information on spirituality and its practices with links back to their web page Spirituality and Practice – Resources for Spiritual Journeys.

This weeks newsletter has some great topics on the anniversary of 9/11, and if you have not seen their site before I would encourage you to check it out and sign up for their newsletter.

"Destiny and the Leader."

Joseph Jaworski is the author of the Twenty Second essay from INSIGHTS ON LEADERSHIP titled "Destiny and the Leader."

Jaworski’s essay has many noteworthy ideas, but one that stood out is regarding the need for self-discovery along the journey. He wrote, “I have come to believe that if we are willing to take that most difficult journey toward self-discovery and lifelong learning, we will lead lives filled with meaning and adventure. Moreover, we will gain the capacity to create and shape the future for ourselves and our organizations in ways we can hardly imagine.” (p. 259.)

I think that his essay points out that we can find meaning in all our experiences; it is not about finding the right experience, it is about finding meaning in the experiences we have.

Self-worth.

I had a conversation the other day with a co-worker about who were memorable teachers or other adults that influenced us in our childhood. Something we both agreed on was that those adults that influenced us the most were those who took the time to find a strength or a positive quality in us and then found a way to share their finding with us.

Fraya Wagner-Marsh and James Conley wrote about that ability in the 21^st Chapter of Insights on Leadership titled “The Integration of Business Ethics and Spirituality in the Workplace.” According to research they sited, “the most admired leaders are also the leaders who make their followers feel valued, who raise their sense of self-worth and self –esteem.” (p. 255).

True leadership is all about helping others to find their true self, and it is the acceptance of self that helps us to heal. My challenge is to take the time to look for those positive qualities, instead of taking the easy route of pointing out the faults.

More on the Common Good.

Trevor has posted a number of Blogs that have brought up the concept of the “common good” including the Wednesday, December 07, 2005 post titled The Common Good
and the Friday, September 16, 2005 post titled What constitutes success in the workplace

Christine Wicker’s quote that I referenced in my last post also mentioned the idea of working towards the common good.

So what is the common good?

The August 25th National Catholic Reporter had several articles that discussed the common good and how this term is being bantered about by various folks. They included Left seeks to revive 'common good' as new strategy and The difficult case of the common good.

And from The Catechism of the Catholic Church comes a great (but wordy) explanation of what the “common good” entails.

“By common good is to be understood "the sum total of social conditions which allow people, either as groups or as individuals, to reach their fulfillment more fully and more easily.

First, the common good presupposes respect for the person as such. In the name of the common good, public authorities are bound to respect the fundamental and inalienable rights of the human person. Society should permit each of its members to fulfill his vocation. In particular, the common good resides in the conditions for the exercise of the natural freedoms indispensable for the development of the human vocation, such as ‘the right to act according to a sound norm of conscience and to safeguard . . . privacy, and rightful freedom also in matters of religion.’

Second, the common good requires the social well-being and development of the group itself. Development is the epitome of all social duties. Certainly, it is the proper function of authority to arbitrate, in the name of the common good, between various particular interests; but it should make accessible to each what is needed to lead a truly human life: food, clothing, health, work, education and culture, suitable information, the right to establish a family, and so on.

Finally, the common good requires peace, that is, the stability and security of a just order. It presupposes that authority should ensure by morally acceptable means the security of society and its members. It is the basis of the right to legitimate personal and collective defense.”

So what is your understanding of the "common good"? Whatever it might be, it seems to be a concept worth putting some effort into getting a better grasp of what it is all about.

Seeking the Soul of Business.

Christine Wicker is the author of Chapter 20 in Insights on Leadership titled “Seeking the Soul of Business.”

A key point of Wicker’s article is brought out when she talks about the philosophy of Servant-Leadership and says “managers who see the search for life’s meaning as a legitimate part of the workday and employees who seek to forgo personal ambition in favor of the common good. A goal of the philosophy is to judge employees and managers less on how much profit they generate than on how much help they give each other and the customers.” (p. 246)

Wicker’s words are a good followup to the quotes from Robert Greenleaf that I posted yesterday regarding what Greenleaf called "the new ethic" that can make work whole.

Honoring the Worker.

Since Labor Day is a day that it set aside to honor working people, it seemed like a few quotations from Robert Greenleaf regarding work might be an appropriate way to close out the day. The following quotes are from the chapter titled “Servant Leadership in Business” from Greenleaf’s book Servant Leadership – A Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power & Greatness.

The new business ethic: “The work exists for the person as much as the person exists for the work. Put another way, the business exists as much to provide meaningful work to the person as it exists to provide a product or service to the customer.” (p. 155)

“The next step may be to acknowledge that every person is entitled to work that is meaningful in individual terms, and that is the obligation of employers, in toto, to provide it. Whereas ‘a living’ can be dispensed via money through a relief agency, ‘meaningful work’ is likely to be delivered only within an employing institution that is living by a new ethic.” (p. 159)

“I believe that you need to assume that work, all work, exists as much for the enrichment of the life of the worker as it does for the service of the one who pays for it. This does not mean that work will not be hard, demanding, and sometimes frustrating. It is just that the workers’ life goals (quite apart from the money they earn) will be served by doing the work, and that is at least half the reason the work is there to be done.” (p. 168)

These seem to be worthwhile words to think about as we start the new workweek.

Who is a Servant-Leader?

Every now and then, I do an Internet search for “servant leadership” and I often question if the articles that I come across really demonstrate servant leadership. It seems that often times “servant-leader” (or one of its variations) is a convenient label to apply to someone who happens to be in a leadership position and might on occasion do service work. So which of the following are examples of servant leadership?

In a recent speech, Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu gives many examples of people that he believes fit the example of “To lead, you must be a servant of all”. Tutu’s examples included: Mother Theresa, Nelson Madiba Mandela, Dalai Lama, Mahatma Gandhi, a Martin Luther King Jr., and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Kathryn Ballou, the new dean of nursing at Graceland University calls herself a servant-leader. In a recent interview she said, “I am a servant leader. I try to be transparent; there is very little I keep from my faculty. When we share as much information as humanly possible, we are bonded together...I don't like the phrase 'buy-in,' because it's not from the top down that we work, but it is collaboratively among participants.”

In an interview about his biography of Colorado University Professor Emeritus Gilbert White, Robert Hinshaw biggest surprise in writing the biography was that “White has been such a 'servant leader.' " His leadership style "begins with the assumption that to lead you have to listen," (…) "He was unusually effective in getting to the nexus of an issue and taking care of what needed to be done. And that's because he listened so closely to everyone. He leads from below."

Roy Tanner, a candidate for the US Senate from Florida, bases his practice of servant leadership on the following (from his Blog) “I'll bring principled servant-leadership to the U.S. Senate, I will accept no special interest funding and pledge to serve only a single term.”

Louis Farrakhan’s letter to Fidel Castro seems to imply that Castro is a practicing servant-leader. “Dear Commandante Castro, the idea of servicing the needs of the people rather than the idea of gaining material wealth is the essence of the revolution. This idea of service is the driving force in the Cuban Revolution that represents the seminal stage of what religious people of Christianity, Judaism and Islam call the Kingdom of God. I firmly believe that Allah (God) has chosen you and the Cuban people to begin this process of servicing human needs, thus setting the stage for all people of goodwill to emulate this mode of service to others. Jesus said, "He who would be the greatest among you let him be your servant." In this regard, you are one of the greatest leaders to emerge in the 20th Century, setting the foundation of a true example of service for all who will lead in the 21st Century.”

And a review of Michael Bergdahl's book What I Learned From Sam Walton: How to Compete and Thrive in a Wal-Mart World indicates that Wal-Mart practices “servant-leadership”. “One Wal-Mart answer is the concept of “servant-leadership.” Essentially, that means all managers put the needs of their employees and colleagues first. Managers are required to respond to any request for help, even if it means delaying their own work. The concept stems from Sam Walton’s oft-stated belief that “if you take care of your people, your people will take care of the customer and the business will take care of itself.”

Could it be that all these examples are an indication that leadership based on service is a goal of many, but that sometimes leaders become distracted from the real goal of the service?

Robert Greenleaf’s questions can help us to remember what servant leadership is really all about, “do those served grow as persons; do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants? And, what is the effect on the least privileged in society; will they benefit, or, at least, will they not be further deprived?”

Some Organizations Just. Don't. Get. It.

I offer this as evidence: Radio Shack lays off 400 employees via e-mail.

I rest my case.

But wait! The company says that during a series of meetings they explained to employees that layoff notices would be delivered electronically. Oh...I guess that makes it OK!

Before they go completely under, perhaps they should call across town and invite in Ann McGee Cooper & Associates.

Wrapping up the week

This week I talked about three faults that Greenleaf saw in education:

• The refusal to offer explicit preparation for leadership to those who have the potential for it;
• The attitude of educators toward social mobility; and
• The state of confusion regarding the teaching of values.

All three of these issues are just as big of concerns today as they were 30 years ago when Greenleaf first wrote the essay. Are things better? Worse? Is passion building throughout the country to deal with these issues?

What do/should we do with this information? Where do those of us passionate about servant leadership go from here?