Faith-based leadership models (5)

Shared leadership

A key aspect of shared leadership is dialogue. Good conversation involves us in cooperating, thinking of each other’s feelings and experiences, and giving each room to talk.

This is an area where faith communities hold considerable resources.

The Inter Faith Network for the UK, for example, has published a Code of Conduct for interfaith dialogue that contains useful lessons for all leaders. Their Code suggests that when “we talk about matters of faith with one another, we need to do so with sensitivity, honesty and straightforwardness. This means:

• recognising that listening as well as speaking is necessary for a genuine conversation;
• being honest about our beliefs and religious allegiances;
• not misrepresenting or disparaging other people's beliefs and practices;
• correcting misunderstanding or misrepresentations not only of our own but also of other faiths whenever we come across them;
• being straightforward about our intentions; and
• accepting that in formal inter faith meetings there is a particular responsibility to ensure that the religious commitment of all those who are present will be respected.”

Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi, has written of the way in which the “wisest is not one who knows himself wiser than others: he is one who knows all men have some share of wisdom and is willing to learn from them, for none of us knows all the truth and each of us knows some of it.”

Sacks has written about argument, debate and conversation as being a fundamental aspect of Judaism. He argues that this is because Judaism is “an attempt to do justice to the fact that there is more than one point of view; more than one truth.” He says that we must learn the art of conversation as it is only as we allow our world to be enlarged by others who think and act in radically different ways from us that truth emerges.

The Hindu understanding of pluralism holds similar potential for peaceful coexistence between those holding differing views. Because each of us are different we all approach reality in different ways. Therefore none of us can claim to know absolute truth. On this basis we can simply say, “your ideas and belief suit you and are best for you, mine are fine for my purposes so why threaten or feel threatened by each other?” True leadership therefore involves the humble recognition of the necessary limitations of what we perceive as absolute.

Soul

Deepak Chopra has become recognised as one of the top motivational speakers internationally by seeking to bridge the “technological miracles of the west with the wisdom of the east", principally Hinduism. Chopra argues that leaders are the symbolic soul of an organisation or group. At different times, groups need a parent, protector, ruler, muse or visionary. Successful leaders embody the values for which their group or organisation hungers. Leaders are born as they sense the felt need of the group or organisation.

Great leaders understand lower needs, like the need to feel safe, and meet these but also respond from the higher levels of spirit by understanding that their followers yearn for freedom, love, and spiritual worth. Great leaders, Chopra argues, are in touch with every level of human experience.

Alan Briskin has argued, in The Stirring of Soul in the Workplace, that the soul is a place of union among opposites and, in a world where there is information overload, represents our ability to hold onto the whole and create coherence through relationships with others. Soul “resides in the tension between apparent opposites” and it is in grappling with contradictions that soul is stirred into being. He quotes an ancient Sufi teaching: “You think because you understand one you must understand two, because one and one make two. But you must also understand and.” Briskin points out that the and is the point of overlap that unites in relationship. Caring for the soul, he suggests, involves an appreciation for and.

Doing so involves both dialogue and respect for uncertainty and is the source of creativity within workplaces. Dialogue is important because when we dialogue “we meet at the crossing between the forms of each other’s thought.” Respect for uncertainty is significant because by looking for patterns and attempting to find opportunities in the new patterns that emerge we can recalibrate our own intentions and forge relationships that incorporate randomness rather than condemning it. This does not mean the abandonment of planning and accountability but does involve operating in a richer perspective that tolerates “both a causal connection between events and an appreciation for the dice being thrown.”

Similarly, Danah Zohar, in SQ: The Ultimate Intelligence, has argued that Spiritual Intelligence (SQ) is our access to and use of meaning, vision and value in the way that we think and the decisions that we make. As such, it is the intelligence that makes us whole and that gives us integrity. SQ is about integrating, understanding and always adapting to new perspectives, Zohar suggests that the following generate a high SQ:

• being flexible – the world is a place of multiple realities, so live in it;
• being self-aware – look inward and don’t be afraid of what you’ll find;
• have a vision and be led by your values;
• use adversity – learn from death, failure and the things you fear;
• be holistic – see the big picture;
• be open to diversity – enjoy difference, like flexibility;
• be your own person – find true faith in your own convictions;
• ask “Why?” – it works for kids!
• reframe – step back and find the broader context;
• practice servant leadership; and
• create conditions for change.

Zohar argues that it is when we are a little uncomfortable that learning and innovation is most likely to occur.

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Henryk Gorecki - Miserere.