Leadership&Spirit

I recently read Leadership and Spirit by Russ Moxley (2000).

In this work, RM takes examines our humanness through four dimensions:  mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual.  He delves deeply into the spiritual component, particularly as it relates to leadership, to partnership, and to community.

My biggest takeaways:
> Fully engaging the spiritual/emotional in our work creates necessary congruence.
> Ignoring the emotional/spiritual ultimately results in commitmentless work.
> Leadership exercised devoid of attention to the spiritual dimension fails to plumb the depths of organizational achievement, experiencing only the shallows as result.
> We often say yes when we want to say no – a collusion derived from fear- or dependency-based environments.
> Only from honoring a diversity of viewpoints can a shared sense of purpose and meaning emerge. 
> Fully actualizing work should bring to us a sense of life, rather than the feeling of a daily march toward death.
> An environment of partnership, of community, which recognizes and invites differing gifts, skills, energies, and thinking, fosters high performance and worthy achievements, both individually and collectively.
> When we spend more time in human doing than in human being, we begin to understand the emptiness of the former and miss the power of the latter.

> Our inner life irrefutably affects our outer work. 

> Only when leaders learn to create space for honest dialogue, truth finding, shared decision making, does true partnership in the leadership process emerge.  

> Only through relationships and community do we come to fully make sense of our lives. 

Favorite quotes:
“... our practice of leadership either suffocates or elevates spirit.” (p. xii)

“It is my conviction that in the activity of leadership the who is more important than the what or the how.” (p. 107)

An excellent book, very well written.  Thanks for the recommendation, RP.

PrimeDirective

For those who remember the Star Trek television and movie series, the "Prime Directive" is probably firmly embedded into your mind.  What was the Prime Directive?  It was the fundamental mandate by Star Fleet Command strictly forbidding its personnel and representatives from substantively interfering in the development of the beings and civilizations they encountered in their interplanetary travels.

From a leadership perspective I've been entertaining the idea that we (those in leadership roles of some kind) might also be bound by a Prime Directive of our own:  Our fundamental responsibility is to cultivate and empower the leaders around us.

Nanu and shazbot!  (Oops, wrong scifi series.)  ;-)

For your consideration, nonetheless.

Power

Power over is what some bosses, organizations, politicians, countries, and terrorist groups depend on to get what they want.  They leverage disproportionate control of things like money, resources, media messaging, or brute force to create fear in others.  Those others then, in the face of that fear (real or perceived), acquiesce to the wishes of the power brokers.  

Power to, on the other hand, is the dynamic of collective engagement in some common pursuit - where a sense of community thrives.  It is the power behind movements, almost always made of volunteers (and, no, not always with the noblest of intentions or worthiest of goals).  We see this kind of power at play in religious movements, support for sports teams, and political revolts.  It is power rooted in spirit, in a common commitment, in a deep sense of fellowship - what the U.S. Marines call "esprit de corps."  

The "power over" gang can usually get their way in the short term, as long as the inequities can be sustained.  They do, however, have to constantly lock the gate and watch over their shoulders.  The "power to" group, on the other hand, tends to be tenaciously long-lived, doggedly persistent, much more transparent, and far less scrupulous - because the source of their power comes from a deeper and more existential place.

Those of us intent on living lives with meaning (and, perhaps even, to lead others of like mind) do well to spend our time, our thinking, and our efforts working in that "power to" realm.

IAmPilgrim

I recently read I Am Pilgrim, a novel by Terry Hayes (2014).  

In this superb thriller, TH includes all the ingredients I love:  international espionage, a tough but noble-minded hero, deceit, intrigue, political machinations, life-or-death-of-the-planet implications, clearly defined good and bad guys, a ticking clock.

The primary plot revolves around the hero, a CIA operative with aliases galore, racing the clock to interdict a lone wolf terrorist (aka, Saracen) bent on unleashing small pox among the U.S. population.  There are plenty of interwoven subplots and some remarkable serendipitous connections.

This was my first reading of TH’s work, but it won’t be the last.