Heroic Leadership

by Chris Lowney

  THE COURAGE TO DELEGATE AGGRESSIVELY

  This indifferent approach to exercising authority started at the top. Those who had founded religious orders before Loyola had bequeathed him a menu of centralized and decentralized business models. Benedict's Rule had counseled that "whenever any important business has to be done," the abbot should "call together the whole community" and solicit input. Dominicans and Franciscans summoned delegates to Rome for triennial global leadership congregations. All three orders-the Benedictines, Dominicans, and Franciscans-nurtured grass-roots democracy, empowering local communities to elect their own superiors.

  Loyola had no time for any of it-literally. Rome was a onemonth trip from Madrid in the sixteenth century, and a roundtrip drained two valuable months-not to mention the disruption caused by postponed decisions and interrupted work. The critical meeting that elected Loyola general was a pretty good indication of things to come: only six of the ten founders even made it, the others off on far-flung missions that were deemed more important. While Dominican and Franciscan delegates gathered for general congregations every three years, the Jesuits convened only eight such congregations in their first hundred years.

  Nor would Loyola countenance local election of superiors. The Jesuit general appointed all senior managers. This practice alone profoundly colored the whole company's mindset. Instead of loosely agglomerated "federal Jesuit republics" focused on regional priorities, the Jesuits were decidedly global, with authority radiating from a strong hub to many spokes. As Jesuit generals considered candidates to head Jesuit teams, nationality was rarely an overriding concern: instead of a community of Spaniards being led by one of their own, Jesuit communities might find themselves headed by expatriate troubleshooters or rising stars being groomed for yet bigger assignments to come.

  What did Jesuit generals do with the vast authority Loyola's Constitutions harvested for them? If they were true to his style and to the company's modo de proceder, they lavishly delegated it to whoever could make the best informed, fastest decisions in the field. Jesuit Pedro Ribadeneira described the kind of manager anyone would want to work for, in the sixteenth century or the twenty-first, recalling

  The confidence [Loyola] showed to those to whom he was entrusting some important affair, by giving them complete freedom, and credit, and allowing them authority to act according to the capacity and talent of each one. And to the instructions which he was giving them he added: "You who are on the ground will see better what should be done."34

  Those comfortable assuming authority were not reined in but given more. Francis Borgia had been duke of Gandia before joining the Jesuits. Given his administrative experience, it's no surprise that Loyola endorsed one of Borgia's decisions before even knowing it: "Whatever means you shall judge to be better in our Lord, I fully approve.-.-.-. In this matter we have but one will, but you are in closer touch with affairs where you are."35 This wasn't special treatment for a favored lieutenant. A similarly worded letter to Simao Rodrigues betrays Loyola's habitual instinct to delegate aggressively: "I leave everything to your judgment and I will consider best whatever you shall decide."36

  More telling was his treatment of those who hung back from flexing authority. When a vacillating Olivier Mannaerts looked to Loyola to decide a local management issue, the ball was quickly batted right back to Mannaerts: "Olivier, cut your suit according to your cloth; only let us know how you have acted."37 As luck would have it, when Mannaerts screwed up the nerve to "go with his gut," he screwed up the decision as well. Confessing the bungle to Loyola elicited not a reprimand but immediate encouragement to get back in the saddle: "I wish for the future you do, without scruple, as your judgment tells you to do according to the circumstances; rules and ordinations notwithstanding."38 Nurturing Mannaerts through early fragility paid off handsomely. Years after Loyola's death, Mannaerts was given charge of Jesuit operations in the Netherlands and Belgium, transforming a region in ruins into an operation of seven hundred Jesuits running nearly thirty colleges.

  Loyola resolved the complicated management challenge of building responsive, innovative, globally focused teams. It takes not just "lots of delegated authority," as conventional wisdom would suggest. To be sure, innovation and creativity happen when individuals enjoy a wide berth and the managerial support to take risks and experiment. But speed and a global mindset often require the opposite: a centralized authority to weigh opportunities and mobilize resources quickly against emerging opportunities. In other words, speed, innovation, and global focus happen only when lots of delegated authority sits alongside lots of centralized authority.

  That's certainly the way Loyola and his cofounders saw it. Holy obedience, the very extreme of tightly centralized authority ("as if he were an old man's staff"), lay beside wide-open self-initiative ("cut your suit according to your cloth; only let us know how you have acted"). Indifference made it work. Self-aware Jesuits stayed focused on their goal (helping souls). They didn't get tripped up confusing the means with the goal itself. Take an order today, chart a course tomorrow-just as long as we're heading where we need to go.

  Ingenuity blossomed when Jesuits layered the "whole world is our house" spirit on top of an indifferent attitude. Ingenuity inspired the confident optimism that solutions were out there, and with imaginative, out-of-the-box thinking, men like de Nobili and Ricci uncovered those solutions time after time.

  THE CHALLENGE REMAINS: INGENUITY IN A WORLD OF CHANGE

  "The urgent question of our time is whether we can make change our friend and not our enemy."

  Ignatius Loyola could have said something like this while launching his Jesuits into a Europe that had changed more in fifty years than during the previous thousand. But in fact, former United States president Bill Clinton said this in his first inaugural, nearly 450 years after Loyola's death. It's unlikely that the Jesuit-educated Clinton was consciously echoing the change-ready message Loyola hammered into his team. But the former president's observation suggests that we haven't gotten much better at coping with change from the sixteenth century to today.

  What was Jesuit ingenuity? In Clinton's terms, making change a friend instead of an enemy. Jesuit ingenuity is the ability to innovate, to absorb new perspectives, to respond quickly to opportunities or threats, and to let go of strategies that no longer work in order to embrace new ones. As Loyola put it, ingenuity is being comfortable traveling through the various regions of the world and using all the means you can to reach your goals.

  Jesuits have negotiated change since well before the industrial-revolution and continuing through the "e-economy," from a monarchical Europe through a democratic Europe that's seen the birth and death of Communism, from a predominantly Catholic world to a predominantly Christian world to a multicreed world to a largely secularized world.

  So what wisdom do they have to teach?

  First, that corporate ingenuity is cultivated and won one person at a time. The Jesuit company embraced change because individual Jesuits embraced change. Xavier embraced change by picking up and going where needed at short notice and being confident enough to make major decisions once he arrived. De Nobili embraced change by being imaginative and fearless enough to look at the world from other perspectives and courageous enough to take on the hierarchy in defense of his ideas. Loyola embraced change by trumpeting the goal of flexibility but also walking the walk by delegating power and providing generous personal encouragement to subordinates who assumed that delegated authority.

  Corporate ingenuity is cultivated and won one person at a time. The Jesuit company embraced change because individual Jesuits embraced change.

  Jesuit managers focused their energy on freeing recruits from personal obstacles to ingenuity. The now predictable refrain? Selfawareness is the cornerstone of ingenuity. Three aspects of selfawareness are essential for pursuing personal ingenuity:

  • indifference-inspired freedom from unhealthy attachments

  • knowledge of personal nonnegotiables: t
he values, goals, and ways of working that are not up for discussion

  • confidence to embrace new approaches and explore new ideas or perspectives, born of a "whole world becomes our house" attitude

  Indifference enabled the count of Civitella to trade in an Italian noble's lifestyle for a sannyasi's single daily serving of rice. But Jesuit-style indifference is not ultimately about the material dimension of trading a European lifestyle for an unfamiliar new-world lifestyle. It's about those internal drives, fears, and prejudices that prevent flexibility and openness. Indifference is seen in the ego health of a Xavier, willing to accept orders and just as ready to turn around and plot his own course. Loyola himself provides the mirror image. The ex-military man, well used to commanding troops, designed a company that focused authority at its center. Yet the same Loyola freed himself from the controlling impulses that inhibit delegation. De Nobili provides the most relevant modern example. His greatest detachment was not from the trappings of a noble lifestyle but from the personal fears that so often cripple initiative: fear of failing, fear of falling out of favor with managers, fear of taking risks-not to mention the considerable fear of looking like a complete idiot in front of peers. Taking risks inevitably exposes us to some or all of these natural fears, and few people detach themselves from them as effectively as de Nobili did.

  A second dimension of self-awareness is no less critical to personal ingenuity. Men such as de Nobili, Ricci, and their successors in India and China tested the boundaries of Christian practice and expression in ways that baffled and at times outraged many of their sixteenth- and seventeenth-century contemporaries. Their confidence to do so depended not only on their indifference but also on their ability to identify their nonnegotiables. Some people shrink from change, paralyzed by plain old fear of whatever is different. Others drift aimlessly from one set of values and strategies to another. Both responses-paralysis and incoherent lurching-indicate the same underlying problem: lack of core values and principles. The time to hash these out is not when one is confronted with complicated choices, when one is under stress, or when one is grappling with an urgent problem or opportunity. Those who come to the table with a strong understanding of their nonnegotiables can pounce instinctively on opportunities that suit their broader objectives. Sitting in a Madurai hut with his kutumi and tilakam would not have been a good moment for de Nobili to begin wondering about core Christian values. He had had that discussion with himself years earlier, most intensively when he and his fellow Jesuit recruits had undertaken their monthlong Spiritual Exercises.

  Attaining indifference and knowing nonnegotiables are only preludes to what really brings ingenuity to life. When Nadal told trainees that for men on a journey, the whole world would become their house, he was encouraging far more than mobility alone. He was pronouncing a fundamentally hopeful, optimistic, adventurous, and even playful outlook. Leaders with a "whole world is our house" attitude eagerly look forward to what lies around life's next bend. Ingenuity rests on the conviction that most problems have solutions, and that imagination, perseverance, and openness to new ideas will uncover them.

  If ingenuity helped early Jesuits identify counterintuitive, risky strategies that took them far beyond European mainstream culture, their third leadership pillar-love-brought the courage and passion to execute those strategies. Men such as Xavier and de Nobili took enormous personal risks while doing difficult, often lonely work. These Jesuits and others like them energetically took on challenges because they worked in environments charged with trust and mutual support. The next chapter explores this third pillar of Jesuit leadership-the energy, courage, and loyalty Jesuits discovered in a company bound "by greater love than fear."

  CHAPTER 8

  "Refuse No Talent,

  Nor Any Man of Quality"

  How Love Uncovers Talent

  and Unites Teams

  gnatius Loyola exhorted Jesuit managers to govern "with greater love than fear." Francis Xavier explained that "`Society of Jesus' means to say `a Society of love and conformity of minds,' and not `of severity and servile fear."' Loyola's successor as general, Diego Lafnez, wrote to Jesuits in India: "It does not seem necessary to write a special letter to you since I often communicate with your superiors about essential matters.-.-.-. However, I wanted the satisfaction of writing and speaking to you at this time as a mark of my affection for you, whom I carry in my heart, inscribed and impressed upon my soul."1

  Jesuit correspondence and the Constitutions brim with such expressions. The cofounders were determined to enshrine love as a cornerstone of their fledgling company.

  Why? Their sentiments were not merely pious echoes of the great Judeo-Christian mandate to "love thy neighbor as thyself." Instead, by relentlessly urging their teams to a generous, wideranging vision of love, Loyola and his cofounders tapped an invig orating leadership principle. Love was the glue that unified the Jesuit company, a motivating force that energized their efforts. More profoundly, love was the lens through which individual Jesuits beheld the world around them. Loving their superiors, their peers, their subordinates, their enemies, and those they served changed not only the way Jesuits looked at others but what they saw. Their vision became more acute, their eyes open to talent and potential.

  Love was the lens through which individual Jesuits beheld the world around them. It changed not only the way Jesuits looked at others but what they saw. Their vision became more acute, their eyes open to talent and potential.

  In short, love-driven leadership is

  • the vision to see each person's talent, potential, and dignity

  • the courage, passion, and commitment to unlock that potential

  • the resulting loyalty and mutual support that energize and unite teams

  REFUSING No TALENT: THE OUTSIDER TURNED LEADER

  It must have been quite a conversation stopper.

  Jewish people had been expelled from Spain, Loyola's homeland, and Rome was on the verge of herding them into ghettos. Most Europeans wouldn't be seen in the company of a Jew, yet here was the Jesuit founder telling dinner companions that Jewish lineage would be a special grace: "Why imagine! That a man could be a kinsman by blood-.-.-. of Christ our Lord."2

  Loyola was raised in the most militantly anti-Semitic nation in Europe. Most Americans instinctively associate Spanish sovereigns Ferdinand and Isabella with Columbus's pioneering voyage to the New World in 1492. But their highnesses took other noteworthy royal initiatives that year. They had finally succeeded in vanquishing the Moors in order to unite Spain under their leadership-their Christian leadership. The monarchs lost little time underscoring the point with a 1492 decree expelling Jews from their realm. Faced with the ultimatum of convert or flee, as many as fifty thousand Spanish Jews became at least nominally Catholic, and three times as many fled to North Africa, Italy, or elsewhere.

  Loyola had been studying in Paris for five years when Diego Lafnez, the son of wealthy Castilian merchants, arrived. The two met on Lafnez's first day in Paris. It no doubt relieved the new arrival to find a fellow Spaniard who was comfortable navigating the alleyways of the university quarter. But Lafnez didn't need help for long. Whether navigating Paris streets or scholastic treatises, Lafnez soon outpaced Loyola and was later hailed by one of the cofounders as "endowed with a singular, almost divine, intellect."

  But there was something far more noteworthy about Lainez in the particular circumstances of the sixteenth century: he was descended from Jews. His great-grandfather had converted to Christianity, and in the code of the era that made Lainez a nuevo cristiano (New Christian). It was not intended as a compliment. Still, nuevo cristiano was less offensive than most other labels hung on descendants of Jewish converts to Christianity. Far more popular was a less technical term: marrano (swine).

  Loyola's Paris circle numbered fewer than half a dozen when Lafnez the marrano joined them. Xavier was already part of the group; so was the Portuguese Simao Rodrigues, who was chosen to accompany Xavier to I
ndia but never made it past Lisbon. A few years later, Loyola, Lainez, Xavier, Rodrigues, and a few others founded the Compania de Jesus, setting Lainez on a most unlikely path. He would not even have been allowed through the door at any other major religious order; they excluded New Christians from theirs ranks. Yet somehow Lafnez-together with Loyola and the others-was founding and running a religious order. Moreover, before long Lafnez distinguished himself even among the leadership group; according to Loyola, "To no one, not even to Francis Xavier, does the Society owe more than to Master Lafnez."3 So none were surprised when Loyola charged Lafnez with oversight of Jesuit Italy. Not only the nerve center of church power, it was far and away the early Jesuits' largest, most important center of operations.

  Which isn't to say the job was fun. Xavier in faraway Asia enjoyed free rein to craft Jesuit strategy for an entire hemisphere. Poor Lafnez had to run a countrywide operation with his boss, Loyola, sitting across the hall. Two strong leaders sharing one city with overlapping responsibilities isn't typically an ideal formula for smooth collegial relations. Loyola "forgot" to consult Lafnez, the country head, before summoning a talented Jesuit from Venice to Rome; Lafnez promised Venice an equally talented replacement from Loyola's staff without consulting Loyola.

  Lafnez began to complain to colleagues that Loyola's meddling was becoming more than a minor irritation. (It's a relief to know that even enlightened, saintly Jesuits fell prey to the same dysfunctions that enliven modern corporate life.) Then one day a stern letter arrived for Lafnez from Loyola's secretary. Loyola was the general, after all, and publicly badmouthing the boss was no wiser a career move in the sixteenth century than it is in the twentyfirst. The letter "clarified" the working relationship between the Jesuit boss and his Italy country manager: