Spirituality and Leadership: An Interdisciplinary Perspective André L. Delbecq Santa Clara University Santa Clara, CA © 11/11

An Opening Aspiration We are God’s stake in human history. We are the dawn and the dusk; the challenge and the test. How strange to be a (Chosen Child of God) and to go astray on God’s perilous errands. We have been offered as a pattern of worship and as prey for scorn, but there is still more in our destiny. We carry the gold of God in our souls to forge the gates of heaven. Abraham Joshua Heschel

The Setting The Participants –500+ Working Professional MBAs Average Age 34 Religiously Diverse Divided Equally - Men and Women High Achieving Scientific, Engineering, Functional Mgrs. –350 Senior Executives Average Age 55 Technology (1/3) and Health Care (2/3) –Directors, Vice-Presidents, CEO, Board Chairs

Science Based Intense Business Settings At best unleash creativity in a decentralized, loosely-coupled, self-directed organizational culture At worst can be a destructive stew of hubris, greed, opportunism and activism Dangerous Places for the Psychologically/Spiritually Immature

Why Elect the Seminar Intensity of Knowledge Work Disillusioned with Darkness Cut loose from Societal Anchors Middle Age Crisis –ABOVE ALL SEARCH FOR MEANING Avoidance of dualism Learn Meditation

The Topics Orientation –Work and Faith Movement/Impact of Religious Practice, Cultural Tensions and Challenges Central Topics –Transformational Leadership Requires Spiritual Maturity –Career/Job Modified if Becomes Vocation/Calling –Distortions of Power and Greed Can Be Offset by Spiritual Awareness and Practice –The Mystery of Suffering and Leadership Can Be Moderated by –Spiritual Maturity

The Interdisciplinary Design Pivotal Leadership Struggles Addressed Through 2 Perspectives A social science lens: psychology, sociology, economics, management science & biography A spiritual lens: inclusive of inter-religious quotes and readings Subsequent Assignments Refracts Experience Through –Readings and Lectures relating to work place experience –Meditation: impact on work place experience

Model Leadership Dilemma, Distortion, Challenge Social Sciences Sp Spiritual Insights Managerial Sciences Spiritual Practice Biography

Two Brief Examples Calling/Vocation Distortions of Power

Calling As A Career Modifier Much Quoted Lilly Foundation Grants –The place where your deep gladness meets the world’s deep need” Buechner

Steve Jobs Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. So don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.

Empirical Managerial and Psychological Literature Greater Intrinsic Motivation –Finding sustained meaning in work –Bringing more purposeful values –Higher performance –Higher satisfaction Different Level of Commitment –Ability to endure difficulties –Less burnout and cynicism –Lower turnover Critical to Knowledge Work

But Imagine Yourself At or any age In A Complex but Constrained Role Reporting to Difficult Superordinate Within A Toxic Organizational Culture Facing Job Insecurity or Loss Limited Short Term Options Idealized Discussions of “Calling” Often Not a Source of Consolation

In These Cases “Calling” Literature Seems To Imply Undue Certainty Unrealistic “Self-Control” Absence of Mystery Avoidance of Suffering Amplified by the Need for Continuous Daily Discernment Extended Life Expectancy, Career Mobility

Leadership Biography A Helpful Step Into Realism Ghandi Eisenhower Eleanor Roosevelt Oppenheimer Business Biography Lives of the Saints/Biblical Stories/Biography

Key Lessons from Biography Long periods of preparation/Uncertain horizons –Delayed gratification – Eisenhower/Summit –Uncertain/erroneous career paths/ Palmer Setbacks and Failures –Woodrow Wilson, Lyndon Johnson, ML King Unpredictable Twists and Turns –Ghandi/ Grove/ Jobs

Theological Reflections Coping With Uncertainty –Focus on Be-coming; Allow Do-ing to Unfold by listening to gentle “calling” Our first work is not really our job today or tomorrow. Our first work is our heart and how our mind is brought down into our hearts when whatever we do is really for Him, in Him, and most especially into Him Father Simeon, Abbot, St. Isaac of Syria Skete Be-Coming Precedes Do-ing Shaped by Contributory Behavior

The Requirement of Patience Above all, trust in the slow work of God. We are, quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay. We should like to skip the intermediate stages. We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new. And yet it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability; and that it may take a very long time. Pierre Teilhard deChardin,S.J.

Speaking to The Impatient “Internet” Generation Two Sources of Hope –Called by Name “I have you by name, you are mine” Isa 43:1 “He chose us in him before the foundation of the world” Paul: Cor 1-5 –Endowed With Gifts “Special graces called ‘charisms’ given for the well- being of the community” CCC 2003

The BE-coming and DO-ing Are Enacted the “Now” Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Mother Theresa God is always choosing people. First impressions aside, God is not primarily choosing them for a role or a task, although it might appear that way. God is really choosing them to be himself in this world. Richard Rohr

The Eternal “Bulls Eye” The primacy of the “primary group” The mystery of “indirect” leadership The witness to light in imperfect organizations

Direct or Indirect Leadership in the “Now”-Empirically People are not inspired simply by position or expertise They are inspired to act by: –Who you are –Your integrity as a person Before they care what you know they must know that you care Kouzes and Posner

Relating Spiritual Disciplines Meditation on Light and Darkness in Organization Practice of Presence The “Examen”

Returning to the Triangulated Perspective Professional Dilemma, Distortion, Challenge Case Histories Self Reports Conceptual ReflectionMeditation Reflection Social Science, Sp Spiritual Insight Managerial Science Spiritual Practice Practice Biography

2 nd Example: Distortions of Power Aspects Of The Executive Personality We Celebrate That May Lead To Arrogance –Quickness Of Intellect –Visionary Capacity –Verbal Facility –Action/Risk Orientation Subtle Temptation From Strength

Reinforcing Attributes Of Office Prestige of Office –Deference To Power Associated Financial Rewards - Deference to Social Status Symbols And Perks –Select Clubs of Rich and Famous - Celebrity Symbols

Studies of Situational Narcissism Self Aggrandizement Organizational Boasting Rituals Self Flattering Explanations Denial And Felt Invulnerability Rationalization Sense Of Entitlement

Off-setting Spiritual Wisdom Humility –Learned by “humiliation” - Harvard Studies Love –Dealing with human imperfection

Undistorted Servant Leadership Depends on Centrality of Spiritual Disciplines Requires High Level Of Psychological And Moral Development –The Paradox of “Gravitas” Coupled to “Humility”

The Movement Through Apohophatic Meditation Stepping away from false self Focus Patience Listening Stress Reduction –Etc.

Reducing the 70 % Failure of Strategic Decisions Acting out of fear and impatience Relying on past practices rather than patient discovery Failing to incorporate stakeholder voices Separating heart and mind Not instituting double-loop learning

Spiritual Growth “I focused on contributing to organizational light and found my day more rewarding” “I have longed for a sense of purpose and now see it is both received and can be offered” “My relationship with God has been deteriorating as I separated my spiritual life from my work” “If I am going to give that much of myself to work it needs to have purpose and meaning” “The problem has not been my work but my approach to it”

A Movement Toward Leadership Maturity A Variety of Meditation/Spiritual Practices Incorporated Into the Leadership Day Resultant Spiritual Awareness Understood As a Continuing Journey Significant Shift in Self-Reported Satisfaction With Leadership Role Significant Impact on Collegial Relations, Productivity, Satisfaction.

Two Provocations: I. I have long thought that there is a lacuna in the ecclesiology with which most of the churches, especially the Catholic Church, function. The lacuna is that the churches are often full of people uniquely gifted with the Spirit. But this tends to be seldom adverted to because they usually exercise their gifts beyond the boundaries of congregational life. …. Without intending it, the impression is given that participation in the activities of the congregation is primary and the leavening of faith in the world, secondary. John Haughey, “Originality and Faith in the Commons”, Woodstock Report, No 100, June, 2011 pp

Two Provocations II. Why should there not be groups vowed to the task of exemplifying by their lives the general sanctification of human endeavor; those who would devote themselves in the fields of thought, art, business and politics, etc. to carrying out, in the sublime spirit these demand, the basic tasks which form the bone work of human society?” Teilhard de Chardin, The Divine Milieu, 1960

Calling Internalized We are God’s stake in human history. We are the dawn and the dusk; the challenge and the test. How strange to be a (Chosen Child of God) and to go astray on God’s perilous errands. We have been offered as a pattern of worship and as prey for scorn, but there is still more in our destiny. We carry the gold of God in our souls to forge the gates of heaven. Abraham Joshua Heschel