Media Release

Mangalore, Nov 24: “What is leadership? Are only a few born to lead? Can everyone in a company or institution be a leader? Yes”, says Chris Lowney, the renowned international resource person on leadership. And the basis of his argumentis nothing but the functioning of a 450 year old international organisation, of which he was a member for seven years.

Chris Lowney has written a well articulated thesis on leadership based on such a premise in his bestseller Heroic Leadership: Best Practices from a 450-Year-Old Company that Changed the World.

The book was the number 1 bestseller of the CBPA and was named a finalist for a 2003 Book of the Year Award from ForeWord magazine. It has been translated into ten languages, including Kannada.

The major argument of Lowney in his book is that “We can be leaders in everything we do – in our work and in our daily lives, when teaching others or learning from others. And most of us do all those things in the course of any day.”

But, we might ask, if everyone is a leader, who is the one to be led? That is the point. Everyone can be a leader and everyone can lead everyone all the time – “sometimes in immediate, dramatic, and obvious ways, more often in subtle, hard-to-measure ways, but leading nonetheless.” For such a definition of leadership,

Lowney adds a corollary that “leadership is not an act. It is my life, a way of living.”

Lowney has discovered phenomenal success of such a leadership model in the 450 year old religious organisation called the Society of Jesus, popularly known as the Jesuits. He was a Jesuit himself for seven years, after which he left the Order and became a manager in the reputed company J P Morgan’s for many years, before leaving it and beginning his research on the celebrated book.

In his opinion, St Ignatius, the founder of the Jesuits, wanted everyone of his recruits to be a leader and not just another member. That is why, argues Lowney, Ignatius took utmost care in selecting candidates to the Jesuit Order.

“It is this scrupulous scrutiny of candidates that produced great missionaries who explored the lengths and breadths of the world – be it Francis Xavier and De Nobili who came to India, or Matteo Ricci, Benedetto de Goes and Christopher Clavius in China or Spanish Jesuits in the South American revolutionary ‘reductions’ with the Gurani tribals there”.

“What are the characteristic features of such a model of leadership? Lowney lists four of them: self awareness, ingenuity, love and heroism. A good leader, says Lowney, understands his/her strengths, weaknesses, values, and worldview; confidently innovates and adapts to embrace a changing world; engages others with a positive, loving attitude; and energises himself/herself and others through heroic ambitions.

In Mr Lowney’s opinion, more can be achieved in a company or organisation through love than fear. Even researches have proved this. And for this, everyone in the organisation must be made to feel and truly believe that he or she is a potential leader.

Lowney has been engaged full time in giving leadership programmes in various corporate institutions and other organisations around the world. He has been coming to India since 1994. Recently he was in Bangalore, addressing the Jesuits and others, where in his unique way, he showed how some of the principles of

the corporate world could be profitably used in religious leadership, and that St Ignatius’ valuable insights could prove helpful for leadership in a changed and fast changing world. “Ignatius called the Society of Jesus the Company of Jesus.

The word ‘company’ is important, as the original meaning of company in Latin (cum panis) is sharing the bread together. If every company, be it secular or religious, understands this ideal, it will not only be successful, but would be a great model in society,” he said. 

For the participants it was an exercise of delving deeper into their own Ignatian heritage.  Fr Jossie D’Mello, the programme co-ordinator of Prerana, Ignatian Spirituality Centre, Bangalore, said that the four major characteristics of leadership (self-awareness, ingenuity, heroism and love) were in fact in tune with the themes of the four weeks of the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius.

“In the Spiritual Exercises, the first week is basically for self awareness. In the second week, the exercitant makes an ingenious choice to follow the ‘King’. The third week is heroic commitment to a suffering King and the fourth week is the contemplation to attain love,” Fr Jossie said.