Chris Lowney
1 A Leadership Approach That Has Survived the Test of Time
Chris Lowney has written a beauty of book bringing into focus leadership principles first implemented 450 years ago when Jesuit founder, St. Ignatius Loyola, established a leadership culture that led to one of the great organizational success stories in history. And along with the lessons on leadership, Lowney's readers also get a great story on several important chapters in world history.
Loyola builds on love driven leadership, an approach to leadership based on the notion that everyone has leadership potential, and true leaders unlock that potential in others. The how of unlocking potential is rooted in an orientation to "greater love than fear." This notion of leadership fits well with the growing trend of "people centered leadership" as evidenced by best selling books authored by Pat Lencioni, John Maxwell, and others. This is a welcomed change from former corporate speak where sports figures and a towel snapping, take-no-prisoners model took center stage
Lowney details Loyola's four pillars of success: self-awareness; ingenuity; love; and, heroism. The first step to leadership is self-leadership which springs from personal beliefs and attitudes. Throughout the book, Lowney highlights Loyola's belief that self-awareness is linked to leadership showing through example how leaders thrive by understanding who they are and what they value, by becoming aware of unhealthy blind spots or weaknesses that can derail them, and by cultivating the habit of continuous self-reflection and learning.
Loyola's spiritually based approach to leadership also identifies attachments in life as obstacles to leading. He also underscores how ingenuity disposes people not to just think out of the box but to live outside the box.
"Heroic Leadership" is organized around the following chapters:
Of Jesuit's and J.P. Morgan
What Leaders Do
The Jesuits
Leadership Role Models
"To Order One's Life"
The Spiritual Exercises
"The Whole World Becomes Our House"
"Refuse No Talent, Nor Any Man of Quality"
"An Uninterrupted Life of Heroic Deeds"
"Exceptional Daring Was Needed"
"The Way We Do Things"
A strong leader relishes the opportunity to continue learning about self and the world and looks to new discoveries and interests. And real leaders - real heros - find fulfillment, meaning, and, yes, even success by shifting their gaze beyond self-interest and serving others. And they become greater - enhanced as persons - by focusing on something greater than self-interest alone.
This is a book that most will use as a reference for years to come.
2 Especially for the non-Jesuit educated.
'Values' have a bad reputation in business given the Enrons, Adelphias and WorldComs of the world. There seems to be a lack of heros in the workplace, much less, leadership. Having had the privilege of not only reading, but listening to a presentation by, Chris Lowney, this book should be added to the booklist of any individual who aspires to supervise, manage or lead effectively and ethically. It should be required reading for MBAs as well as veteran CEOs to remind them about their responsibility to nurture excellent "follwership." Lowney provides readers with the four pillars of Jesuit values, plus the principles of personal accountability (see opening sentence) and that we all lead no matter where we are in the organization. Great history on the Jesuits, their history, zeal for excellence in education, political acumen, adaptability and ethos. We would all benefit from going forward in our personal and professional lives "with one foot raised." And, yes, I hold undergraduate and graduate degrees from a Jesuit university.
3 Leaders, not just managers
I must confess that Lowney was preaching to the Choir being that I am jesuit educated. For those who have experienced jesuit leadership this book will only reinforce your image of the Society of Jesus. However, there is much to be gained from this book for those who may have never even heard of the Jesuits.
Lowney articulates well the four principles of Jesuit leadership and gives stunning historical eaxamples which illuminate them. I believe these historical examples, though a bit simplified and most certainly glossing over some unflattering instances, are particularly forceful since they leave the reader amazed at how a group of pre-enlightenment men in the overt service of the Papacy achieved such a high degree of insight into the world and, yes, enlightenment. Lowney leads you to the conclusion that the Society's four principles of leadership are responsible for this.
If you accept that Lowney is certainly only giving the good news, much can be gained from this book.
4 "The greatest enterprise in the world." That describes my
Jesuit high school and college. But then again I think just about every Jesuit school graduate would say the same thing.
Ten men, no money, no business plan and within ten years they had thirty schools established and running.
And not only has the Jesuit order survived for over four hundred years (after its abolition by the Pope everywhere but in Russia), but it has thrived. There is simply no comparable for-profit corporation with that same history of longevity and success.
Igantius Loyola set out some clear policies that survive and work to this day.
Almost thirty years out from high school graduation I value my Jesuit education more than ever. What I've found is that the ability to reason, calculate, write and think is much more rare than I previously thought. To this I have the Society of Jesus to thank. I really can't imagine my life without my Jesuit education.
The Jesuit high school course of study is essentially the same for my son's class of 2007 as it was for my class of 1975. But it should be noted that the Jesuits have adapted and requirements in Greek and Latin are no longer there. The key here is some foreign language is essential for a high school student.
Money can come and go but education lasts and that can't be taken away from you.
There were lots of things I didn't know about the Jesuits that I learned in this book. Looking back I can see where these principles were applied. Things such as "only the best teachers."
There is a definite Jesuit "way we do things" which is consistent at all Jesuit schools.
The references to "The Spiritual Exercises" were helpful and enlightening.
Some of the historical discussion about Paraguay, China and India was either unclear or slightly too long. Jim Rogers of "Adventure Capitalist" said it best about Paraguay. He described how the Jesuits had created a civilization there in the jungle and once the Jesuits were kicked out of the country,it relapsed and hasn't been the same since.
The readership for this book isn't limited to Jesuit school alumni or even those in business. If you want to lead a better and more productive life look at Lowney's distillation of Loyola's leadership principles, apply them and learn. ...
5 Historically Informative, Practically Applicable
The leadership lessons that are stressed in this book are simple and can be applied to each of us as individuals not only in our business lives, but also our relationships with our families and friends. Any organization, regardless of religious orientation, would benefit from weaving these principals into the fabric of their modo de proceder.
I also found this book to be very informative about the history of the Jesuit organization and the enormous impact they have had on shaping the world we live in today.
6 Outstanding insight into Leadership
I have been a student of leadership for years and this book does an outstanding job describing some of the key aspects of leadership demonstrated and taught by the Jesuits.
As a product of a Jesuit education, I found this book very interesting in reflecting on my career and the education I received in a college prep environment. These lessons are more important to me today than they have ever been.
Great Job Mr. Lowney.
7 Leading by examples.
Truly refreshing. Mr. Lowney blows through cliches about leadership and infuses the subject with life. At the same time, he reclaims from the clutches of bookstore preachers serious discussion about spirituality in daily life.
Mr. Lowney begins from the undeniable premise that there is a lack of genuine leaders in our business world and our civic life. He finds in the history of the Jesuits numerous individuals -- who would never be labeled "leaders" by Forbes or Time -- who have exerted tremendous positive influence on the world. Starting with less-than-nothing, the Jesuit "company" quickly became the brand standard for higher education, science and language. It remains a powerful international force. Its impact is the envy of every other "multinational."
Mr. Lowney's argument is that the secret of their success is no secret at all: If you carefully recruit and train leaders at all levels, your organization will flourish. Those leaders must have self-awareness and discipline . . . and love. For it is the honest concern about your brothers and sisters that reflects leadership and elevates the shared enterprise.
But like the Jesuits, Mr. Lowney does not settle for platitutes and formulas. His book challenges you to examine your own life. For those of us mid-career, the book is nothing less than a call to renewal and a reminder that Loyola was older than we are now when he started this whole thing. The book extends a warm and positive encouragement to reinvest in yourself so that you can invest in others.
Heroic Leadership is the product of deep reading and deeper thinking into its subject. But it is written with a brisk and lively voice that is never preachy. Think instead of that teacher who first got you excited about learning and who gave you a glimpse of what you could become. If "empowering" weren't such an overused term, it would fully apply to this book. So consider the book "refreshing" -- it is bright, different, rejuvenating, bracing, and nourishing.
8 A Magnificent Debut
Chris Lowney's "Heroic Leadership" is as rare as it is brilliant. The fluency of Lowney's prose and the compelling appeal of his thesis are such that "Heroic Leadership" offers invaluable lessons to anyone seeking to raise one's career or company to its highest level. Certainly, those who attended a Jesuit high school or college will have a particular affinity for Lowney's anecdotes about intrepid Jesuits, and will readily see the application of the Jesuit method and Jesuit achievement to their own working lives. Unlike most of what is offered on the "leadership" front, "Heroic Leadership" is written in a witty, engaging style that is as amusing as it is instructive. There is undoubted pleasure and pride in seeing how this ingenious band of far-flung priests managed to create their extraordinary enterprise. Actually, the real treat is not in learning about the most famous Jesuits, such as Ignatius himself or Francis Xavier, but in following the adventures and achievements of more obscure if no less accomplished men such as Matteo Ricci and Christopher Clavius. Whether as a history of a remarkable organization of men as an inspiration for career or company development, "Heroic Leadership" delivers winningly and admirably.
9 Great book!
A thought-provoking yet straightforward book of value to anyone interested in how to make an organization more successful. Whether or not you care for the spiritual aspects of the Jesuits, their extraordinary success from the earliest days and the principles which drove them apply directly to the modern day enterprise and offer lessons that counter many current management techniques. After all, a group that taught its members to be flexible in the face of rapid change, to set ambitious goals, to think globally, and to take risks seems to have had in mind the challenges facing many managers today -- yet those modes of thinking were developed more than 450 years ago. Not author's thunder, but any 10-person start-up with no experience in education which had 30 colleges up and running in a decade -- without modern day communications or transportation -- and then surpassed its competitors to become the largest of its kind, 450 years later boasting 21,000 professionals -- bears taking a look at in an era of 3 year wonders. How did they do it? Read the book.
10 A Different Kind of Leadership
Leaders need followers, right? This engagingly written book warns us that it is precisely this kind of thinking that has produced the vacuum of leadership that has recently rocked corporate America. Lowney finds a profoundly different way to think about leadership in the early history of the Jesuits. Through fascinating stories about Jesuit astronomers, linguists, explorers, and high school teachers, he illuminates a kind of leadership in which "everyone leads, and everyone is leading all the time," and in which leadership consists of unlocking the leadership potential in others. Certainly this is a book for "professional" leaders, like corporate managers. However, it is equally, if not more, a book for those of us whose leadership will always occur in less conspicuous venues.
