In September, the Benedictine teacher, Joan Chittester challenged us to think about discipleship through her Monastic Way newsletter. I found this edition to be incredibly intriguing as the other subject that I have studied more than contemplative thought is leadership.
My first experience with leadership principles was in high school. For four years, I was part of the Junior Reserve Officers Training Corp or JROTC and later in college, I would attend two years of the Senior Reserve Officers Training Corp or SROTC. I would also do 8 years of Army Reserves, attending leadership training there as well. It would be my college experience that would really demonstrate to me how to be a leader. Patterned after the various military academies, the college experience was a lot of reading and studying of both military and civilian leadership in class and then practicing leadership skill out in the field. One thing that becomes abundantly clear when studying good leaders, they are excellent students of their respective art. Successful business leaders are excellent students of business and successful military leaders are excellent students of martial arts and state craft.
If we dig deeper, we will see that you cannot have leadership without discipleship.
Discipleship often revolves around a deep, personal commitment to learning and internal transformation. When we become a disciple, we begin to open ourselves to being guided, often in a spiritual context, by a teacher, a sacred text, or a divine presence. Discipleship calls for humility, dedication, and the willingness to be molded and transformed. In this role, we become students primarily, often absorbing wisdom, practicing ethical self-discipline, and seeking to embody certain virtues. Discipleship is a journey inward, one that asks us to look deeply at our own souls, to cultivate inner peace, and to align our lives with what we perceive to be our higher truths.
In contrast, leadership encompasses the outward expression of these inner transformations. A leader takes the wisdom gained through discipleship and actively applies it to guide, uplift, and inspire others. A strong leader has the vision, responsibility, and the ability to make decisions that serve the greater good. Leaders are called to be role models, to act with integrity, and to create positive change in their communities. Leadership is about channeling our growth and understanding into actions that benefit others, drawing from our own journeys to support and guide those around us.
Both roles are deeply intertwined, and you cannot really effectively have one without the other. The best leaders are often those who have been, and continue to be, dedicated disciples. Their leadership is enriched by their spiritual insights and their ongoing commitment to personal growth. Similarly, the journey of discipleship can be profoundly influenced by the responsibilities and experiences of leadership, offering countless opportunities to put spiritual principles into practice in real-world scenarios.
When we look at leadership and discipleship through a spiritual lens, we can think of discipleship as cultivating the fertile soil within, nurturing it with wisdom, compassion, and mindfulness. Leadership, then, is the blossoming of that soil into a garden that provides nourishment and beauty to the world around you.
Cultivation of both for me started with rote memory of concepts, but as I became a father, a pastor and eventually a clinical lead and team leader, I found that there is a deep contemplative practice, and the practice of mindfulness involved in becoming a good leader.
Humility is a difficult practice both to learn and to master. A leader needs to always be curious and learning. Learning requires one to be humble. The American Psychological Association defines humility as characterized by a low focus on the self, an accurate (not over- or underestimated) sense of one's accomplishments and worth, and an acknowledgment of one's limitations, imperfections, mistakes, gaps in knowledge, and so on.
For me, humility is a constant reevaluation of my steps daily and assessing what I did right and what I did wrong. It is then taking my missteps and learning from them. I am a pretty smart guy; I often tell folks two Masters are equal to one Doctorate. But there is always room to learn. I once told a college freshman client of mine that they were smarter than me. Why? Because their information was (usually)fresh and up to date and they did not have the ingrained learned habits I have as a 47-year-old.
St. Benedict devotes the entirety of Chapter 7 in his Rule to the practice of humility. In a post, I offered these thoughts on humility: "Humility is a contemplative practice and one who undertakes this practice strives for freedom from pride and arrogance. One cultivates an acceptance of lowliness of mind and the ability to see one less and others more. It lends itself to compassion or justice because it takes one's narcissistic self out of the picture and sees only the other(s) in one's midst. The practice of humility opens our eyes to God's virtue, love, and mercy for us and for others. Humility allows us to see ourselves no higher or greater than those around us."
When I have studied famous business and military leaders, the most often noted practice is a devotion to learning and reading. Devotion is also a practice in discipline. There are lots of leaders who can teach us about discipline. The last twenty years have exposed to several Special Forces Operators like Jocko Willink, David Goggins and The Lutrell Brothers who have opened our eyes to the rigors of their training and the discipline it takes to be in top shape. In my youth, I was reading about Teddy Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower and Ernest Shackleton. There are plenty of civilian teachers who can offer us plenty of examples of discipline. Scott Jurek is one who comes to mind. I spent 10 years running ultra races and learned a lot from the leaders in that sport. Devotion helps build self-discipline.
There is a big difference between hearing and listening. As a spiritual practice, it is an action of contemplation. It enhances our attentional skills, our ability to be present with others and the ability to create a hospitable and open space for others. In my work as a therapist, this is one of biggest skills I teach couples. Being able to listen well is a learned behavior and one that does not come naturally. Try working with children for a while and you will see how hard it is to get them to listen.
Listening does not just include listening to others. As a spiritual practice, it is a contemplative practice to learn to listen to and to trust our inner voice. A strong and effective leader can discern both the outer voices of their colleagues and subordinates with their own inner voice and the lessons they have learned from their discipleship in their discipline of study.
If you are a person in charge of leading a church or a community, you have an ethical responsibility to be open to learning. As we watch our church memberships decline, two words come to mind, resonance and relevance. Historically, churches impeded spiritual growth by not allowing questions to be asked or narrowly following rigid church doctrine and biblical interpretation. These times are over. To be a good leader is to be a good disciple. To be a good disciple is to study the people of your church. And if your church is declining, studying what it is that is causing it so. There is plenty of sociological data currently available to help us understand what to do differently.
Discipleship as a practice is more than the historical preparation of the people for Jesus' return, it is also bringing people to safe space to be in community and fellowship with each other. To live, learn and grow. Faith is a subjective experience and no one person can put a claim on how someone should life their faith. Even if there is a church doctrine, everyone is in their own process of becoming within that doctrine.