Sermon: The Vulnerability of True Leadership

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The Vulnerability of True Leadership

By Charles Rush

February 18, 2007

[ Audio (mp3, 6.1Mb) ]

ere is a lot to this simple passage. I want to seize on only one aspect, the importance of vulnerability in true leadership. This is true if you are a manager at work, a community organizer, a parent, and even more true the more intimate our relationships.

I wrote this early in the week and then I went to Washington for a meeting on Thursday. After the meeting, I strolled out on the Mall and I noticed rows of these Teepee's and so I asked one of the workers if we were going to have some kind of gathering of Native-Americans. He said no ‘It's a gathering of some sort of Christians'… The Promisekeepers. I said ‘What are they going to do in the teepees?' He said, with a wisdom borne of experience ‘I've learned not to ask questions like that.'

As you know, Promise keepers want men to recover their sense of responsibility and leadership in the family and in their communities. There is some legitimate concern about what that means because we do not need a reassertion of control. In the curious way that the Spirit moves what follows is something of an answer to the Promise keepers. Leadership, yes. Control. No thanks.

These days we do not hear much about the problems in the work place, largely because there is a lot of money being made and this tends to gloss over structural fault lines. But I hear about it from time to time. Someone recently shared with me this story. A new manager in their division was following orders and decided to cut two employees, reducing one group from 8 to 6. The workload was to remain the same. How was that work to be made up principally? First, he wanted the supervisor of the group to be responsible for the outcome of the group, meaning that he was simply going to work longer hours picking up what fell through the cracks in the future. Secondly, there were two mothers that had been hired four years ago. They made a deal at the time that the mothers could finish work by 4 p.m. to get home to their children and the situation had worked fine. The new manager said curtly ‘Things change. That was then. This is now.'

This new manager was given a set of goals and made unilateral decisions about how to best achieve those objectives. So he was now in the mode of having to ‘impress his will' on everyone that was directly responsible to him. His own internal view of his success was his ability to control the situation. At best, he can only be understood as a ‘benevolent tyrant' but it is tyranny nevertheless. In the words of Jesus today he is ‘Lording it over others' and Jesus tells us ‘you shall not be like the gentiles (read Roman slaveholders) who Lord it over one another' but rather you shall serve.

In the 50's and early 60's we had a management culture in our country that stressed-( perhaps overly stressed)- the need for managers to be consistent, assertive and self-controlled. These are necessary qualities of course. But it was an era that appropriately elected General Eisenhower to be President of the country because it seemed we wanted to transfer the same military efficiency and control of command-compliance to our business and social life.

It was an era where IBM made all of their managers wear white shirts, buttoned down preferably. And no facial hair (facial hair was a symptom of either insubordination or a lack of personal discipline). The command structure was from top down, the virtue of respect for authority and loyalty to authority was elevated. Leadership had to be strong, know where it was going. Discipline, structure, and follow through were primary character qualities for effective managers. And this ethos transferred to other social institutions as well.

More than a few Fathers felt they needed structure their families along this model as well. That is why when you look through the family photo album from that period there are all of these stiff shots of kids in suits for formal occasions. The boys all had stiff slick um in their hair. Everyone in the family is in some variation of painfully constricted formality. [Today, it seems, we mainly take pictures on vacation. Then we needed a photo of all of us structured. That's when we get out the camera. For most of us, other people would think we lived at the beach or at a ski resort if they only had our family photo album]. Photos indicated our value: then it was formal structure (today leisure).

And the Father in our families often functioned more like CEO or General or Football Coach than anything else. In my town the boys referred to their fathers as #1, mother #2. If you wanted to have a party you had to get #2 to approve and take the proposal to #1 for final clearance. #2 was more understanding and sympathetic usually, although more demanding on a daily basis. #1 was gone most of the time and had to be approached like the Dean at college for any variation on the routine.

Dr. Delatorre, the brain surgeon down the street, was something of a caricature of what I am talking about. He combined his need for structure and control with a special flavor of Cuban machismo. Every evening, you would see him coming home in his Mercedes. He used to have his kids all line up in the driveway when he pulled in from work. You could see Delatorre kids running from everywhere. There were five of them, running with panic in their eyes. They were already supposed to be home, waiting for him for supper. Yet again, they weren't. Running. They knew if they weren't in that line, out came the rod. And he would line them up like the kids in the Von Trapp family. And all the other kids would watch and say ‘poor kids, can you imagine living with the Dictator Doctor?' We used to call him General Pinochet behind his back.

Dr. D was merely a caricature of the leadership values of the era. There was a reciprocal relationship between the degree of controlled structure and the impersonal. The more structure, the more impersonal. Quite a few children from that generation have a tale to tell about dealing with impersonal authoritarian structures. Not to pick on my Roman brothers but Catholics who grew up in this era are not so likely to remember Sister Pat as they are ‘the Nuns', the impersonal collection of celibate women in habits with ‘the stick'. The more controlled structure, the more impersonal the impact. Rules meted out, one size fits all. Structure applied for our own good. That was then and we have clearly grown.

By contrast, what people tend to remember from that and what people tend to remember today, are the few times when leaders let down their guard and share with us our common humanity.

Think about your own memories of your family for a moment. What image stands out for you from your parents? It is probably not the memories of your parents fulfilling their roles day in and day out, although that is important too. Rather, for most of us it is the exceptions that stand out. Such as the following:

I remember my father, in his coat and tie, sitting on the ground with me, eating these dirty baked potatoes I had cooked in the back yard.

We loved it when Mom made believe she was Dracula and scared us.

When I was learning to drive, I ran into the same car three times, but my mom took the blame.

When we told my father that we were too scared to sleep, he would put on an old straw hat and sing bar songs to us from the stairs that he learned in the Army.

Sometimes when we were shopping, my Mother would make us all duck and hide, because she saw her pretend boyfriend Federico that didn't know she had any children.

“The most important feature of these recollections is that they do not represent anything recognizable as a parenting technique or skill… Rather they had a spontaneous, even accidental quality, sometimes breaking all the rules.”[1] We remember when our parents were vulnerable, when they dropped the role of parent for a moment, and became simply human, goofily human.

Likewise, when Richard Farson, asked people a similar question about the workplace, you can imagine the kind of responses that he got. Asked for memorable moments with the boss, these are typical kinds of answers.

I was still learning how to be a paramedic but I felt a lot better when my supervisor confessed that even after thirty years on the job, she still gets very scared sometimes.

As a junior faculty member, I had a difficult relationship with the dean of our school until one day when he became emotionally overwrought and told me how discouraging his career had been . After that, I had a new understanding of him and a much more cooperative attitude.

My boss came in wearing his beanie hat from his freshman year at Georgia Tech, looking as stupid today as he did then, and asked me if he should wear it to a reunion.

What is interesting is that most of these recollections ‘would hardly be thought of as an approved management technique. They tend to be moments that the bosses were not likely to remember and would probably think were insignificant, yet often revealed something of their humanity. In these incidents the bosses may have exhibited spontaneity, genuineness, caring- but not skill.'[2]

What we remember about people is when they were vulnerable enough with us that we got a glimpse of their touching humanity. They reveal something of themselves with us that we can identify with. It is not impersonal. It is personal. It is not structured and it is not from top down.

As Richard Farson has recently pointed out, real leaders don't have a set of techniques that they apply to the people they lead and manipulate them into doing what they want. That is the same old authoritarianism or simple chicanery it has always been. Real leaders are full of humanity and have to have a relationship with others in a personal way if they are to be effective. If you want to understand the difference, says he, ‘Think of the difference between seduction and romance. Technique is required for seduction but it is useless for romance. Being vulnerable, out of control, buffeted about by the experience, pained at any separation, aching for the next encounter, wild with jealousy, soaring with ecstasy, and plummeting with anxiety- all these are what make it a romance. If you know how to have a romance, it isn't a romance, but a seduction. Not knowing how to do it makes it a romance.

He goes on to comment. ‘Managers think the people with whom they work want them to exhibit consistency, assertiveness, and self-control- and they do, of course. But occasionally, they also want just the opposite. They want a moment with us when we are genuinely ourselves without façade or pretense of defensiveness, when we are revealed as human beings, when we are vulnerable.'

And here is the important point. ‘This is true not just in leadership but in every human situation. It's what wives want from husbands, what children want from parents, what we all want from each other. It's what most arguments and conflicts are unconsciously designed to produce: to get us to reveal that the other has had an impact on us.'[3]

Jesus models this for us in his character. Thank God, he did not leave us a ‘how to manual of principles for integrated living. Instead Jesus made himself vulnerable and lived out of that authenticity. He didn't try to control the events of his life. Rather, he responded to the sick and the lepers with compassion and sensitivity. When the religious rulers and political leaders of the day tried to corner him, he had courage and spoke the truth. When children came to him he expressed the simple wonder at the world where ‘the sparrows toil not, yet who is adorned as these'. When his disciples didn't understand what he was getting at, he was patient with them. When he taught the crowds about the Kingdom of God, he was enthusiastic about becoming integrated the Soul and our World. When he was tried for treason and blasphemy, he remained firm in his convictions and not arrogant. He was a great leader of people but he had other qualities than manipulation or control- authenticity, sensitivity, compassion, patience, insight, understanding, courage, conviction (but not control).Indeed, he pointed us toward the simple but profound insight that it is in our touching humanity that we see the real meaning of our lives. Indeed touching humanity is more the place to look for real spiritual experience than some ecstatic religious experience or some esoteric meditative trance.

And he challenged us to risk living empowered by the Spirit of God. What in the hell is that? It is not something you learn, it is something that you are, something you become something you live. We hate the idea that the most important key to living is something that can't be taught exactly. It sounds so vague and uncontrolled. A lot of us what a programmed spirituality. Just tell me what to do. Just give me the disciplines to follow. Just tell me when I'm good and when I'm bad. There is clearly a market for structured churches since they keep growing.

But, on reflection, we know that this is not possible and that the only way we grow is by being vulnerable and open. “In some fundamental sense, we cannot learn how to have relationships, how to raise children, how to lead other- how to be human, if you will. Why? Because to a great extent it is the very condition of not knowing, of being vulnerable to life and being surprised by life, of being unable to manage or control our lovers, our children, or our colleagues, that makes us human.”[4]

This is a great insight from someone who has spent 30 years in the field of leadership and psychology. This is what he says. “I used to want to know how to handle my children, my employees, my students, my friends. Now it is a great relief to me to realize that I cannot. Nor, I believe, can anyone else. I especially cannot handle the people I love most. The prospect of an achievement now appalls me; instead, I think of it as a blessing that I, and we, will never learn.

That doesn't leave us in a miasma. Nor does it mean that we don't continue to read and try to gain understanding about our humanity. But it does say that we cannot escape the awful, wonderful challenge of being vulnerable and human. That is fundamentally a spiritual challenge that requires faith. St. Paul told us that we should pray to God that God would make us like Jesus. Jesus himself suggested that we pray that we become ‘the children of God', compassionate, full of wonder, courageous in our convictions, risky in our trust, intimate and vulnerable in our love, expansive in our inclusiveness. In short, we need to become genuinely human.

Wouldn't you like to see a few more men like that? I would. And I'd like to see some women like that too. Let it be our prayer that our relationships, our families, our community, and our work will be changed by the touching humanity that we bring to bear. Amen.

[1] Farson, Richard. Management of the Absurd Paradoxes in Leadership (New York: Touchstone, 1997), p. 32, 33.

[2] Ibid. p. 34.

[3] Ibid. p. 39.

[4] Ibid. p. 40.