Heroic Leadership

by Chris Lowney

  There is no on switch for motivation. Or, more accurately, there is a switch of sorts, but it is on the inside.

  Loyola once encouraged a Jesuit team in Ferrara, Italy, by saying that they should "endeavor to conceive great resolves and elicit equally great desires."11 It was not an isolated sentiment. Jesuit culture spurred Jesuits to "elicit great desires" by envisioning heroic objectives. Outstanding personal and team performance resulted, just as it does when athletes, musicians, or managers focus unrelentingly on ambitious goals. Jesuits were also driven by a restless energy, encapsulated in a simple company motto, magis, always something more, something greater. For Jesuit explorers all over the world, magis inspired them to make the first European forays into Tibet, to the headwaters of the Blue Nile, and to the upper reaches of the Mississippi River. For Jesuit teachers in hundreds of colleges, magis focused them on providing what was consistently the world's highest-quality secondary education available-one student at a time, one day at a time. Regardless of what they were doing, they were rooted in the belief that above-and-beyond performance occurred when teams and individuals aimed high.

  The Jesuits built their company on this conviction. They looked to enlist total team effort in something that was larger than any one Jesuit. Yet team commitment followed individual commitment. Each recruit first went through the process of personally shaping and owning the team's goals, of eliciting his own "great desires" and motivating himself.

  How did the Jesuits build the most successful religious company in history? And how do individuals become leaders today? By knowing themselves. By innovating to embrace a changing world. By loving self and others. By aiming high.

  Self-awareness, ingenuity, love, and heroism. Not four techniques, but four principles forming one way of living, one modo de proceder. No early Jesuit succeeded by adopting three and ignoring the fourth. To understand Jesuit leadership, we must first dissect it to study its four core elements and then conclude by reassembling them to bring Jesuit leadership to life. For its real power lies not in the mere sum of its parts but in what results when these four principles reinforce one another in an integrated life.

  Later chapters explore each pillar in further detail. But the Jesuit leadership story must begin with the man most responsible for inspiring it: Ignatius Loyola. Loyola's story, of military man turned public leader, is a familiar archetype, as venerable as George Washington and as fresh as Colin Powell. But Ignatius Loyola's journey from soldier to company leader defies all stereotypes of how such human transformations happen. His journey to company leadership provokes reflection on the attributes that distinguish true leadership. The following chapter also revisits the unlikely origins of the Jesuit company, founded by a team who had no product, brand, or business plan-but who perceived clearly what they valued and how they wanted those values reflected in their work.

  CHAPTER 3

  The Jesuits

  An Accidental Company

  with a Purposeful Vision

  esuits enjoy enviable brand-name recognition. But while everyone knows why Coca-Cola is famous, the Jesuit brand often summons only a vague jumble of disconnected facts, anecdotes, and images: a handy epithet to hurl at a cunning adversary in a negotiation ("Jesuitical"), the image of a priest packed into a police van at a Vietnam War protest, or of another one retiring from Congress at the behest of a disapproving pope, or of still others slaughtered by armed forces in El Salvador. Jesuit also brings to mind quality educational institutions, with an alumni roster including Bill Clinton, Francois Mitterrand, Antonin Scalia, and Fidel Castro; and quality college basketball teams, with a deep bench of perennial NCAA championship contenders, including Georgetown, Gonzaga, Boston College, Marquette, and the University of Detroit Mercy.

  The ten Jesuit founders were an unlikely group, a vastly more diverse team than headed most sixteenth-century companies and organizations. Twenty-four years separated the youngest from the oldest of a motley group of Spaniards, French, and a Portuguese. Their family and socioeconomic backgrounds created an equally wide gulf. Pierre Favre was the son of poor French subsistence farmers. Francis Xavier was a Basque noble from Navarre, raised in his family's castle and well placed to inherit a hefty benefice later in life. Like Xavier, the Castilian Diego Lafnez was also wealthy. But unlike Xavier or any of the others, Lafnez also happened to be the great-grandson of a Jew and therefore a "New Christian" in the rabidly anti-Semitic code of Inquisition-era Spain. New Christians were not even permitted to join major religious orders, so it was ironic that Lafnez helped found one, and more ironic still that he succeeded Loyola to become the Jesuits' second general.

  The core group slowly coalesced while studying for advanced degrees at the University of Paris, then the world's most prestigious university system. Though most of them distinguished themselves even in that selective academic circle, their intellectual gifts varied no less widely than their backgrounds. One of them recalled Diego Lainez as being "endowed with a singular, almost divine, intellect, well nigh miraculously informed in the subtleties of various branches of learning." I On the other hand, Lainez himself couldn't help but note Ignatius Loyola's "limited endowments of earning.

  At the age of thirty-eight, well into the twilight of an average sixteenth-century lifetime, Loyola's track record hardly suggested leadership potential-two failed careers, two arrests, multiple runins with the Spanish Inquisition and other authorities, and no money.

  Still, the one with the "limited endowments" of eloquence and learning became the group's focal point. On the face of it, this handful of Europe's top talent had chosen to rally around a most unlikely character utterly lacking in conventional leadership credentials. At the age of thirtyeight, well into the twilight of an average sixteenth-century lifetime, Loyola's track record hardly suggested leadership potential-two failed careers, two arrests, multiple run-ins with the Spanish Inquisition and other authorities, and no money. He had no notable accomplishments, no clear prospects, no followers, and no plan.

  Would you sign up with this man?

  A LEADER TWICE BORN

  Harvard Business School professor emeritus Abraham Zaleznik once observed that "leaders are `twice born' individuals who endure major events that lead to a sense of separateness, or perhaps estrangement, from their environments. As a result, they turn inward in order to reemerge with a created rather than an inherited sense of identity."3 Ignatius Loyola may have had a skimpy resume, but he certainly qualified as twice born. Birth number one was in Azpeitia, a tiny Basque village not far from the French border in a remote area of northern Spain. The Loyolas were minor nobles, and while nobility hardly entailed a life of luxury in isolated Azpeitia, it did bring political connections that provided Loyola's ticket out of the hinterland. The teenage Loyola served as a page to the chief treasurer of the royal court. It was his apprenticeship for a military and courtly career; little time was wasted on less critical skills like reading and writing, and plenty of time was devoted to swordsmanship and the code of chivalry that so animated Cervantes's Don Quixote.

  Loyola's autobiography and later biographies offer only the most superficial glimpse of his early years, probably with good reason. Hagiographers tend to airbrush away the more embarrassing details of a saint's portrait, and some of Loyola's biographers were no exception. Loyola had his flaws. The Jesuit Juan Polanco, who served as Loyola's executive assistant, had occasion to hear the stories that slipped out at unguarded moments, and Polanco paints enough of a picture of "preconversion" Loyola for readers to imagine the rest: "Although much attached to the faith, [Loyola] did not live in accordance with his belief, and he did not keep himself from sin. He was especially out of order in regard to gambling, matters pertaining to women, and duelling."4 He was arrested at least once for misdemeanors that the local magistrate avoided detailing in deference to the Loyola family but nonetheless called "most outrageous." Another early acquaintance recalled the testosterone-charged Loyola in action: "[Loyola] drew his sword and chased them do
wn the street. If someone had not restrained him, either he would have killed one of them, or they would have killed him."5 What grave offense had prompted this unrestrained rage? Two passersby had bumped into him in a narrow passageway.

  His first career, that of military officer, didn't last very long. It ended with the battle that started it. Loyola and his garrison had the misfortune to be guarding the Spanish citadel at Pamplona when a far superior French army came calling. The heroic if misguided Basque rallied his compatriots for a certainly futile defensive stand. It only delayed the inevitable, at the cost of his career, his self-image, and very nearly his life, thanks to a French cannonball that shattered his right leg.

  A dashing rake-as Loyola fancied himself-doesn't dash as convincingly with one leg hobbled by a battle injury. Nor do the tight-fitting leggings favored at medieval courts make for very flattering attire when a clumsily set bone leaves an ugly, pronounced protrusion below the knee. Still, the stubborn Loyola refused to surrender his military and courtly aspirations immediately, instead subjecting himself to the sixteenth-century equivalent of reconstructive cosmetic surgery. One imagines a largely self-taught "surgeon" gamely hacking away at the offending tibia with the sharpest available local excuse for a saw, and it's safe to assume that there was no anesthesiologist on hand. It's hard to decide what's more remarkable: that Loyola survived his battle injury or that he survived the subsequent surgery to repair the damage. In any event, he survived both. And while the surgery resulted in some improvement, it left him with a slight limp-and without a military career.

  The Jesuits' pioneering leader

  This posthumous portrait of Ignatius Loyola was painted by the Renaissance master Jacopino del Conte in 1556. It is displayed in the international headquarters of the Society of Jesus in Rome.

  Loyola's story unfolds with unfortunate storybook predictability: the dissolute youth, the personal crisis, the intense conversion experience. The familiar, often romanticized plot line whitewashes what must have been a much more complicated internal struggle to reconstruct some sense of self and purpose. As gruesome as it was, his leg surgery might have been the easier part of this personal reconstruction. The surgery lasted only a few hours. But what Zaleznik would call Loyola's second birth dragged on for the better part of a decade. A profound and permanent religious conversion during his convalescence gave him a spiritual destination, but translating that goal into mature, sensible engagement in the everyday world proved a long, drawn-out, torturous process.

  At first taken with fantasies of imitating the heroic deprivations he read about in popularized legends of the saints, "he thought of going to Jerusalem barefoot, and of eating nothing but plain vegetables and of practicing all [the saints'] other rigors."6 Though his fantasies were particular enough to encompass footwear and diet for the trip, other details were apparently of less concern to him-like what he would actually do once he reached Jerusalem. His family were as appalled by the ill-conceived plan as any other family would be and did what they could to talk him out of it, "His brother took to one room and then another, and with much feeling begged him not to throw himself away."7

  To no avail. And thus began career two. Loyola traveled more than two thousand miles in an era when few Europeans ever strayed more than ten miles from their birthplaces. He begged for food and lodging, frequently sleeping in open fields or huddled in doorways. Once so vain as to submit to a life-threatening leg operation in a desperate attempt to restore his appearance, he now swung wildly to the opposite extreme, as he related in his autobiography (always referring to himself in the third person): "He decided to let [his hair] go its way according to nature without combing or cutting it or covering it with anything by night or day. For the same reason he let the nails grow on toes and fingers because he had been fastidious in this too."8 Though Loyola was far from the first European to undertake a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, he must have made for a particularly pitiful sight. Devastating outbreaks of bubonic plague still swept European cities periodically, leaving urban dwellers permanently vigilant and acutely anxious. Some towns refused entry entirely to vagrants such as Loyola who were unable to provide "passports" verifying good health. It isn't surprising that Loyola recalled bumping into a man in Venice who took one look at the pilgrim and "fled in horror-.-.-. presumably because he saw him so very pale."9

  Against the odds, Loyola landed in Jerusalem in the fall of 1523 after an eighteen-month odyssey-and was promptly deported after three weeks. Jerusalem was a dangerous place for the few solo travelers who managed to find their way there, and the religious order overseeing pilgrim visitors was growing exasperated and impoverished from having to ransom all the Europeans taken hostage. Thus, Loyola's second career, that of spending his life in Jerusalem imitating the heroics of the saints, evaporated as quickly, if not as violently, as his first.

  The discouraged deportee backtracked from Jerusalem. After near shipwreck he reached Venice. Six more months and six hundred miles later he was in Barcelona, where at age thirtythree a resilient Loyola launched his third career: studying basic Latin grammar with a class of preteen boys. He devoted only one sentence of his autobiography to explaining this sudden shift in direction to what many might call the first sensible thing he had done with his life: "He continually pondered within himself what he ought to do; and eventually he was rather inclined to study for some time so he would be able to help souls."'0 He crawled forward, from grammar studies in Barcelona, through college studies in Alcala and Salamanca, and finally to Paris, where he made the acquaintance of those who would become his Jesuit cofounders. The future "CEO" of the Jesuit company had finally landed at what most would consider the starting point of his life's calling, yet he was nearly forty years old, in the twilight years of an average sixteenth-century lifespan.

  THE PERSONAL APPEAL OF A TWICE-BORN MAN

  How did anyone, much less a cross section of Europe's best talent, ever allow himself to fall in with this guy? Eccentric seems too mild a word to describe Loyola's life before reaching Paris.

  Granted, his wasn't the most straightforward way to build a resume. Nor was his career progression the sort that impresses search committees: no painstaking climb up the corporate ladder, no assiduously cultivated network of power brokers, no succession of ever more accountable management positions, no track record of results as a rainmaker.

  But omitted from the above itinerary of Loyola's seven-year journey from Pamplona to Paris was a life-altering detour into the tiny Spanish town of Manresa. Intending to rest there a few days, he stayed a year. Words failed his later attempts to describe with precision what happened there. But he left no doubt about the impact of the mystical experiences that overwhelmed him. One afternoon spent on the banks of the river Cardoner "left his understanding so very enlightened that he felt as if he were another man with another mind." If he added together everything he had ever learned in his lifetime, he continued, "he does not think he had got as much as at that one time." 11

  Though in one spiritual gulp he apparently learned more about himself and the world than he had absorbed throughout his whole previous life, the profound revelation didn't bring insight about more mundane matters, such as "What job would I be good at?"

  Mystical though this experience may have been, magic it was not. Though in one spiritual gulp he apparently learned more about himself and the world than he had absorbed throughout his whole previous life, the profound revelation didn't bring insight about more mundane matters, such as "What job would I be good at?" Well, conventional wisdom notwithstanding, life is like that: there are dimensions to self-understanding beyond merely choosing a career path. Loyola left Manresa with no clearer career plan than what he had when he arrived and found himself back on the road, pursuing his vague, unrealistic plan to spend his life in Jerusalem.

  But what he had gained proved far more important and durable than divine career counseling-and is far more important to an understanding of lasting leadership. He walked away with
deep self-understanding, able to pinpoint his flaws with greater maturity and accuracy than ever before, yet at the same time able to appreciate himself as a uniquely dignified and gifted person in a world that seemed far more positive than it did when he entered Manresa. Though his personal pilgrimage continued, his selfpunishment stopped. He determined, for example, that it was no great sin to comb one's hair. Well, minor accomplishments precede great ones. If he didn't know what job to do, his greater sense of purpose and direction now served as a personal compass of sorts. Finally, he had developed a worldview. Or in less grandiose terms, he understood how he fit into the world and that it was not a hostile place.

  The self-awareness he had won was ultimately what drew others, even Europe's finest, to him. Of course, they must have been attracted in part by his natural leadership gifts, which even his eccentric history could not totally obscure-the heroism he displayed as the soldier rallying the defense of compatriots at Pamplona; the commitment and toughness he possessed as a pilgrim undeterred from his goal of reaching Jerusalem; and the resilient adaptability manifest in his transformation from soldier to pilgrim to remedial grammar student to university scholar. But Loyola's core appeal was not his own leadership traits-it was his ability to identify and unlock others' latent leadership potential. Each member of the founding team tells a similar story of undertaking a systematic self-examination under Loyola's personal guidance and emerging energized, focused, and able to articulate life goals and personal weaknesses. Here was supercharged mentoring from a man who modeled this poorly understood and drastically underutilized life tool. Loyola not only grasped his own strengths and weaknesses but also was generous, dedicated, and straightforward enough to guide others through their own self-assessment.