Category: Spiritual Aspects of Leadership
Building Collaborative Relationships: The Role of Personal Values
Collaboration and collaborative relationships are the key to success in business and most other professions. These relationships are in turn heavily dependent on the values we bring to our work—values like honesty, compassion, humility, transparency, patience, and courage. These values are also the ones usually taught by the church and most other religious institutions. In this episode we talk about these values and why collaboration is so important to the production of value in business.
Video: Peter Hill Speaks on Humility
On October 30, 2018, Dr. Peter Hill spoke to our first Work Life Forum and presented the results of new research he and a multi-university team has developed about humility. A video of the event is now available;.
Humility is often misunderstood. It is not self-effacement or meekness, but involves having an accurate, ego-free assessment of ourselves, our abilities, and our limitations, and then being able to act accordingly. As such, humility can play an important role in how we deal with the stresses and conflicts in our work life. It can help us see and respond to circumstances more clearly and effectively, lower our stress levels, and improve our working relationships.
Liberate the Human Spirit!
Some workplaces seem designed to crush the human spirit, others to liberate it. The difference is usually obvious.
This raises the question: how might we encourage workplaces where people are happier and more alive, purposeful, and engaged?
There are several ways to think about this. One is through the lens of an area of psychology known as Self Determination Theory. You can find more information
here.
The Power of Integrity in Our Work Lives
Integrity involves being in alignment — our words and actions are in alignment with our values and who we are at a deep level. As the story of Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife suggests, integrity can help us through the tough times and be a source of strength and resiliency in our work lives.This story is from the Biblical book of Genesis, Chapter 39, and takes place after Joseph has been kidnapped by his older brothers and sold into slavery in Egypt.
Preparing Leaders for Crisis: The Value of Theological Education
We seem to be moving into a period of crisis that will put unusual burdens on leaders.
Cultural and institutional changes (and, in many cases, failure) will call for leaders grounded in a broader, deeper perspective. Our religious institutions, including seminaries, could play a critical role in helping us prepare for this future
Hank Paulson on Prayer
Former Secretary of the Treasury Hank Paulson wrote a spell binding memoir of his experience during the financial crisis of 2008. Much of it deals with the day to day effort to prevent a complete financial system meltdown, but one passage in particular deals with the role of prayer. After weeks of exhausting work and little sleep, there came a point where Paulson and his colleagues had done everything they could and still faced the possibility of catastrophe triggered by the impending failure of Lehman Brothers. And then, as told in the middle of a book about the financial system, Paulson telephones his wife and has this exchange:
Max De Pree and the Art of Leadership
“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.” (Max De Pree: Leadership Is an Art, Page 11)
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As many readers probably know, Max De Pree is the author of several highly regarded leadership books including Leadership Jazz: The Essential Elements of a Great Leader and Leadership Is an Art, and was the Chairman of Herman Miller, Inc., during an especially creative period for the company. He is also the inspiration and namesake for Fuller Theological Seminary’s Max De Pree Center for Leadership, from which I retired as a member of the advisory board a few months ago. I have recently been reflecting on De Pree’s approach to leadership, and believe that there is much we can learn from him.
Abraham Zaleznik, RIP
Abraham Zaleznik was a professor of leadership at The Harvard Business School for 43 years and a certified psychoanalyst. He was also the author of a very important, and famous, 1977 Harvard Business Review article: Managers and Leaders: Are They Different? To understand the impact of his article, one should remember that when written there was much less of an understanding that leadership is quite different from management; Zaleznik was on the leading edge of the wave. Zaleznik also had the ability to convey some of the psychological differences between leaders and managers and their formation and did so in a way that is still valuable.
