“Jesuits would have never used words like ‘leadership development’ to describe the way they molded their seminarian recruits,” says Chris Lowney, author of Heroic Leadership: Best Practices from a 450-Year-Old Company that Changed the World. “But once I was thrown into a very different environment [17 years at J. P. Morgan, after seven years at a Jesuit seminary], I could look at their approach through a ‘corporate’ and ‘leadership’ lens, and I began to see the Jesuits had a lot of intuitive wisdom about what it takes to make good leaders. All organizations, from investment banks to religious orders, have to motivate people, set goals, conceive strategies, and so on. And it struck me that in some ways, these 16th-century Jesuit priests had done some of these vital tasks more effectively than we were doing in our supposedly modern companies.”

Lowney is as good an example as any of a person who has followed his personal vision to step into leadership opportunities. Probably one of the few managing directors at J. P. Morgan whose degrees were in Medieval History and Philosophy and who trained at a Jesuit seminary, Lowney changed out of his black clerical garb on a Friday and went to work in a pinstripe suit at an investment bank the following Monday. Living on $90 a month (plus room and board) as a Jesuit may have been a heroic decision, but so was leaving the seminary. Currently a consultant with the Catholic Medical Mission Board, and head of Pilgrimage for Our Children’s Future (www.pocf.org), Lowney donates at least 20 percent of his royalties to charities providing education and health care to impoverished children in the developing world.

Lead yourself and others will follow
“When I ask people to name a great leader,” says Lowney, “they will often think of the president of a company, like Bill Gates, but they never think of their own name.” The Jesuit model is that we’re all leaders and that we each have a responsibility and opportunities to lead. “We’re still stuck with the stereotype that associates leadership with one great person, with being in charge, with having power and authority,” says Lowney. But we all have the capacity to influence, persevere, innovate, and teach. Think of parenting, for example, which requires all those skills. The way we live our daily lives can have as much impact as decisions made in boardrooms and offices.

Self-awareness is the foundation of leadership
Jesuit founder Ignatius Loyola developed a 30-day Spiritual Exercise program as a tool for self-awareness. While we can’t expect companies to treat new recruits to this kind of regimen, what about a 30-hour commitment to guiding employees through a self-assessment of strengths, weaknesses, and values? Once completed, people can more quickly step back and take stock of themselves and their decisions several times a day: what happened in the last few hours? What went well and what went poorly? How do I get back on track?

The focus in modern companies is short-term, notes Lowney, emphasizing quarterly results rather than investing in development and training of employees. We have to find ways of investing in ourselves. “We’re under so much pressure that we all forget who we are and what we’re trying to do,” Lowney says. Continuous self-examination is critical to maintaining values while moving forward toward goals.

Self-awareness leads to ingenuity
It’s obvious, given technological advances, that companies have to continually adapt and innovate to survive. But for Jesuits, ingenuity goes deeper than that, involving indifference to attachments: they not only think outside the box, they live outside the box. Employees may not be keen on freeing themselves of attachments to material things, but they can learn to detach from personal fears and insecurities that drive decisions and actions, like recognizing a need to control or micromanage when delegating authority, or that relocating to a new geographical area would be more productive.

Matteo Ricci, for example, shaped Jesuit strategy toward Asia by charting his own course. Rather than expecting the locals to learn his language and conform to his beliefs, he learned Chinese, and even adapted his writing style to mimic Confucian scholars. He pioneered a strategy of assimilating to host cultures in the 1500s that we can continue to learn from in our current global economy.

Teams thrive in environments of love, not fear
Companies can create a positive environment through encouraging and modeling respect, demonstrating employees’ value, and creating colleagues rather than competitors. Loyola was not afraid to call this “love.” “Love is the glue that binds individuals into loyal, supportive teams,” Lowney writes in Heroic Leadership. For Jesuits, love is not just an attitude or feeling, but an action. If one believes that we are all deserving of love, the vision to see others’ talents and the energy to be supportive in helping people realize their potential come naturally.

Lowney points out that legendary football coach Vince Lombardi often talked about theimportance of treating team members with love and dignity. Lombardi’s approach, perhaps based on his Jesuit education, produced results. Love can discover or uncover talent and is the basis for the loyalty required to work together on a long-term basis.

You don’t have to wait for the right opportunity to be a hero
We tend to associate heroism with extraordinary acts, but Lowney writes that, “Jesuit heroism is not just a response to a crisis but a consciously chosen approach to life.” Heroism is serving causes that are bigger than our own selfish interests. “It’s not about the opportunities that come your way, like saving people trapped in a fire,” says Lowney. “It’s about choosing to be heroic in the decisions you make in your everyday life.”

Details
Heroic Leadership has been used as a text in business and ethics courses in both Jesuit and mainstream colleges, and has been translated into Korean, Chinese, Indonesian, Russian, Croatian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian. Lowney recently spoke at the Notre Dame Networking Alumni Conference.