What comes to mind when you hear the word “leadership?” Power, control, authority, or command? Perhaps charisma, confidence, courage, or strength? Most often, I hear leadership defined as influence. All these words relate to what leadership is and how it is experienced in practice.
However, many of these descriptors come with drawbacks. They have accumulated negative baggage over time. We have seen, and most likely been hurt by, power misused, control that dehumanized, unchecked charisma used to manipulate, and authority wielded as a weapon. As for influence: well, I would say yes, except that many of the most poignant and enduring leadership lessons I’ve learned have come from bad examples of it. They definitely influenced me, but in the opposite direction from what they intended. Would I call that leadership? Probably not.
Much of the leadership theory and practice we use today traces back to a period in Western history often called the Enlightenment—a philosophical movement that emphasized human reason as the primary way to understand the world. During this era, many thinkers argued that the only reliable knowledge is what we can observe with our five senses and measure objectively (as if we could judge our knowledge free of bias and thus call it “reality” independent of any greater authority). Over time, this way of thinking led us to organize knowledge into systems of “expertise,” granting experts authority, confidence, power, and influence. This is the “cult of the expert”: when the only legitimate knowledge is what can supposedly be known universally, objectively, and with certainty, the person who holds that knowledge becomes the unquestioned authority and gets to define reality for the rest of us.
And unquestioned knowledge is dangerous! It breeds arrogance among “expert” leaders who believe they know everything and what’s best. Our best leadership theory is based on this paradigm: leaders who “know,” followers who comply, and goals reduced to measurable performance metrics.
In our contemporary context, leaders “produce” and deliver results. They have the chops to get it done, untainted by such frivolities as emotion, personality, spirituality, or other rationally unknowables. They make the hard calls with a steel mind and cavalier attitude. They direct the work of their “human resources” to extract every ounce of productivity, ensuring the efficiency of every cog in the wheel. And they report success in terms of bottom-line profitability.
This way of leading has become so ingrained in our culture that we cannot even imagine any other way. Indeed, any other approach seems illogical, impractical, and highly suspect. To be fair, we have advanced in our thinking over the last century, recognizing that people cannot be treated as cogs in the machine. We have given workers greater say in organizational matters, organized them into unions to advocate for fair treatment, and expanded employee benefits, such as health insurance and paid time off, to make work a bit more palatable (or at least tolerable). But I believe we are essentially putting new wine into old wine skins. Underneath it all, the same rationalist philosophy still governs our leadership and organizational practices. Gain the right information through education and use that expertise to “control” processes and people to get results.
I sense a groundswell of disillusionment, a dissatisfaction that stirs our hearts with a longing for that which gives us meaning and makes us human. It is a holy discontent, arising from the margins, that dares to challenge the old leadership paradigms and to (re-)engage in the discovery of sacred vocation (from the Latin vocāre, meaning “to call,” and containing the root vox, or “voice” suggesting that calling is a voice from someone outside us).
As human beings created in the image of a Triune God (a God who is inherently relational and creative), we desire the sacredness of our being. And so, can we dare to imagine leadership theory and practice not based on the “cult of the expert” but on the sacred calling that makes hospitable space for imagination, spirituality, friendship, narrative, emotion, legacy, and community? Can leadership be a human expression of divine love?
I believe it can, and it must for the sake of our missions. If leadership theory begins with the presupposition that everyone with whom we work has a divine vocation, uniquely designed and formed by God, then our leadership practices must respect and welcome their vocation at the leadership table. Indeed, they are a gift from God, intended to contribute their vocation significantly to the mission.
Every human enterprise, whether it’s for-profit or nonprofit, sacred or secular, contributes either positively or negatively to the flourishing and well-being of God’s created order. This was ordained by God in the cultural mandate of Genesis 1-2. Therefore, “mission” should be the most appropriate descriptor of our human vocation in its various expressions of work, church, family, and civic participation. And any mission that makes a positive impact on the world around us, that expands the horizons of its creative and life-giving possibilities, is fundamentally built, ordered, motivated, and driven along by love.
Leadership, then, I would suggest, is not primarily influence. It is language. It communicates and, in doing so, creates community and fosters belonging. Language is where management connects to mystery, and imagination fuels impact. The dialogue of language is where the “magic” of leadership happens, when relationships are most creative and from which an exciting mission emerges to re-colonize the world, not with reductionist categories, but with the expansiveness of God’s kingdom.
This blog series is titled “The Language of Leadership.” I will use Jesus’ Beatitudes in Matthew 5 to contribute to a new paradigm of leadership grounded in love. The Beatitudes present us a better way to be human based on God’s design and loving imagination. The Language of Leadership, as a paradigm for leadership theory and practice (although it’s not new; it has simply been rediscovered), restores human agency, honor, interdependence, and legacy, and reinvigorates it not for the manufacturing line but for our sacred vocation.
