For Others to Follow

An Ethos of Leadership Grounded in Spirituality

Paul K. Bates

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781725299719
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Church

For Others to Follow is a call for Spirit-led leadership guided by a grounded theory derived from a multi-layered analysis of rich, firsthand narratives given by respondents to a research questionnaire and reflected through four decades of experience. Taken together, the recommendations in this book underpin an ethos, a character of leadership that will invite others to follow and to emulate, while the leader herself grows and blooms.

1

Approaching the Challenge

It was just before the Passover Feast. Jesus knew that the time had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he now showed them the full extent of his love . . . Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God; so, he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him.

(John 13:1 NIV)

Although secular culture defines remunerated labour effectively in economic terms, I suggest that work is actually best understood as spiritual in nature. Work activities (at their best) serve to express personal vocation (an internal and personal good). Work is (at its best) meaningful and purposeful in that it contributes to human flourishing (an external and communal good). Vocation and human flourishing hold, in turn, both anthropological, i.e., cultural/social, and spiritual characteristics, invoking and expressing the divine-human relationship. Nowhere, perhaps, is the divine-human endeavour more critical than in the exercise of leadership. If the essential act of leadership is the reshaping of the way we do things, then Jesus’ act of washing the feet of his disciples, as portrayed in John 13, is at the core of divinely-inspired leadership.

If leadership is a practice, what is the practical purpose of Leadership? Yishuang Meng elucidates, writing:

Modern theories of leadership such as strategic leadership theory emerged as early as the 1980s when outdated theories of behavioral contingency were questioned, resulting in the beginning of a shift in focus, leading to the emergence of modern theories hypothesizing the importance of vision, motivation and value-based control of clan and culture.23

Marguerite Rigoglioso adds, “By engaging more of workers’ total selves, organizations hope to develop staff who are more satisfied, productive and innovative.”24 While this shift in focus may be underway, my research suggests that the human search for meaning and coherence continues to be frustrated by what appears to be a large number of work environments. Ann Morisy declares, “People have a hunger for meaning.”25 As suggested through my research, many employees risk being reduced to factors of production as organizations prioritize profit and output over human flourishing.26 There is a further risk to human flourishing wrought by increased urbanization, post-modernism, marginalization of faith communities, and social change in general. For example, cultural transmutation being brought about by rapid advancement of multiculturalism. As will be explored later, multiculturalism27 ultimately brings broad societal benefits—I argue that it is the rate of change that can bring potential challenges, such as the perceived loss of tradition among some, resulting in feelings of dislocation, or distortion. The working lives that are the central concern of my work may well be described by Swinton and Mowat when they state, “Most of us tend to live within situations in ways which are unreflective and uncomplicated.”28 In other words, we tend to accept an ‘it is what it is’ approach to work. We may not seek greater meaning. We become resigned to our situation, perhaps in order to keep it uncomplicated. We keep our heads down. We accept minimal affirmation of our work. We bend to the mores of the environment—sometimes at the suppression of our true values. We accept and tolerate weak, even bad leadership. We brush aside value-less ‘performance’ feedback from a supervisor who has surprisingly little real awareness of our work, and we settle into a state where we seldom ask, ‘is this all there is?’ Shrugging our shoulders, we plod along.

This book contributes to a growing field of enquiry. Meng continues, “Spiritual leadership and workplace spirituality are in their infancy, and consequently, theoretical knowledge related to this subject in Western religious theology and practiced leadership ethics is limited.”29 A number of business schools have undertaken to incorporate, in their curricula, the deeper spiritual dimension of human flourishing at work, moving beyond a focus which is primarily on the development of strategies that enhance productivity and profitability; eschewing the spiritual dimension of work. There is much more to be done. The church, also, is broadening its discourse on the search for deep spiritual contentment at work. Again, however, much learning is required.

Theological gravitas is drawn from the vocational perspective that work is important in the full sense of transformatio mundi over annihilatio mundi, in that our work may be a contribution to the new kingdom. Thus, work may be viewed within a framework of the doctrine of last things, implying a divine-human cooperation empowered and enabled by the Spirit. We must recognize and embrace, then, the practice, and deep human value of spirituality in the workplace. Miroslav Volf underscores this, when he states, “The picture changes radically with the assumption that the world will not end in apocalyptic destruction, but in eschatological transformation.”30

Drawing from the research conducted for this work, viewed through the lens of research and personal experience, the fundamental threads to the argument are as follows:

• There is a deep thirst for meaningfulness in work, evidenced frequently by an expression of caring for others, as well as personal achievement.
• Dissonance, mild to severe, is pervasive.
• Human beings are generally settling for less in terms of achieving a state of flourishing in their work.
• Leadership that is self-centred must be replaced by leadership that is other-centered.
• Practices of leadership must ref...