Consider the belief that we are essentially selfish individuals seeking our separate advantages, and that our tireless attempts to manipulate one another constitute the prime engine for social advancement. So begins one of the best pieces I have read about leadership – “Leadership-Speak in Contemporary Society.” Its author is Douglas Ottati, a theologian, and it is the opening chapter of his book Hopeful Realism. I had never heard of Ottati before stumbling across the book, and if the title intrigued me, the subtitle convinced me this was someone I wanted to read – “reclaiming the poetry of theology.” Imagine my surprise when the first chapter was about leadership, a subject I continue to find important and fascinating.

Ottati calls it “leadership speak” when “talk about leadership relies on this rather uninspiring spirit.” Though uninspiring, Ottati successfully argues that this spirit is an animating spirit of our time - we find it in our sports, in our politics, in our economics. As you think about next year’s election, think about the sheer number of sports metaphors that get used about candidates and their campaigns. How often do we hear not about the substance of a candidate’s position, but how taking that position may affect the candidate’s standing in the poll – how they are doing in the horse race. Leadership-speak is pernicious because it is reductive. It artificially narrows the complexity, the confusion, and the dynamism of life by insisting on a single pattern for everything. For Ottati, “leadership-speak is bound up with a manager model, a bad mysticism, and a bad mythology.”

The manager model rests on a narrow sensibility. “Persons and things – including oneself – are regarded as resources or means to management objectives.” It is also narrow in that “it remains almost entirely technical and procedural… by itself it says little or nothing about the point of leadership and the world in which leaders lead.” For Ottati, this suggests both bad mysticism and bad mythology, and he desires to expand the conversation. Unlike reductive leadership-speak, truly interesting conversations about leadership will enlist a broader sensibility and a better mythology than those associated with the competitive leader-manager.

A better mysticism for conversations about leadership would arise from “some sense of the fullness of life and the world.” This deeper sense of the fullness of life includes a sense of human interconnectedness and imaginative attentiveness to the other. Persons are never simply resources in a larger strategic plan. A deeper sense of the fullness of life also “entails a perception… of the tearing of life’s precious fabric.” Focusing on goals and objectives ought never blind us to the pain and tragedy of life. A better mysticism, a more penetrating awareness, supports a felt sense of interconnectedness, a perception of the [tearing of life’s precious fabric], and an inkling of the good…. A better mysticism entails a kind of sacramental resonance with the intricate and delicate web of life, a touching on the mysteries of care and pain, of beauty, and of belonging to a wider universe. Ottati seems to be arguing that we run the risk of missing out on life’s beauty and tragedy if we become too captured by a narrow view of leadership as purely technical and strategic.

In addition to being informed by a better mysticism, interesting conversations about leadership also will be informed by a better mythology, a richer picture of human beings in the world, their possibilities and limits. Three related ideas make up this more adequate mythology. Human beings wield significant, but also limited powers in the world. We cannot make anything we want to have happen happen. “Persons, communities, and institutions are caught up in fragmentation and conflict.” Not everything is possible and sometimes among the best things we can do is minimize harm. Yet, in a world of fragmentation, misorientation, conflict, and destruction,… possibilities for good abound.

Informed by a better mysticism and a more proper attentiveness… we may suggest that truly humane leadership will picture the chief end of life more along the lines of a nourishing and common meal… than of a meticulously planned, executed, and evaluated management system. Moreover, informed by a better mythology, we may reject the notion that life is competition in favor of the more complicated view that life is limited freedom situated in the midst of interactive interdependencies, plagued by tendencies toward fragmentation and conflict, and yet blessed with possibilities for truer sensibility and community. We may therefore insist that, even as genuine leaders appreciate the importance of action and effort, they also remember that all things are not always possible, that persons and communities sometimes are caught in straits and circumstances beyond their own doing and undoing. We may note that genuine leadership often draws on an appropriate pessimism, a realistic sense that is not surprised by defeats and tragedies and terrors…. Nevertheless, we may also suggest that leadership is hopeful…. A good leader is often an optimist who ventures a creative act, who risks in order to make things better.

Last week I wrote about paradox, about the need to keep multiple ideas inside while still being able to function. I appreciate Ottati’s deep reflections on leadership, his more theologically informed conversation on it, because it opens me to the beauty and complexity of the world in which I try to lead. There is helpful paradox here. Setting goals is important. Reaching goals matters – but it is not all that matters. Paying attention along the way to those with whom we share life’s joys and sorrows also matters – taking time for a hug, a kind word, standing in awe while beauty emerges from some unfamiliar quarter, crying with a friend. Some things may not be possible, but we seem to discover that only as we try and reach toward seeming impossibility. Leading may have something to do with sketching a rich picture of the world, inviting others to add their colors – knowing that sometimes things will be a little ugly, yet keeping on in hope nonetheless.

For me, an important indicator of the quality of something I read is the depth of reflection it invites. Ottati’s article convinces me that there is a richer and more complicated world out there than some of the leadership literature can suggest. That I am pulled more deeply into the world’s complex beauty by what he writes, that I find myself asking about a more adequate mysticism and mythology for leadership and for life, is a gift given by his words.

With Faith and With Feathers,

David