The State of the Ship

The Spirituality in Leadership
Thomas Moore

An ancient Sufi story tells an important lesson. The mullah Nasrudin is on a boat with a fellow devotee. His companion corrects Nasrudin's bad grammar. Nasrudin asks if he's made a special study of grammar. "Yes," said his friend. "Did you ever study swimming?" asks Nasrudin. "No." "Too bad, because the boat is sinking."

When I glance at current titles on spirituality in books and magazine articles, I get the impression that we still think spirituality is a personal matter. We are concerned about what to believe, how to be enlightened, how to find a good organization or teacher, and how to eat, sleep, and meditate properly. While these things are important -- just as good grammar makes life clear and beautiful -- our ship of state is sinking, due in large measure to a spiritual crisis in leadership.

Although many business and political leaders are doing their best in a complex world, others in powerful positions betray their immaturity through their failure to appreciate the spiritual nature of their calling. Leadership is a calling and a privilege and merits good pay, prestige, and honor. But leaders must also pay a high price. They have responsibilities to communities that rely on their vision and skill.

As soon as we mention community, we are talking about a spiritual situation, because community is a way we transcend our personal lives, and transcendence is the heart of spirituality. We seek to transcend our limited knowledge, our self-centered values, and the limitations of our physical existence. It is no accident that community, whether the sangha of Buddhism, the agape of Christianity, or the ummah of Islam, lies central to the world's religions and spiritual traditions.

Spirituality keeps the role of leadership tied to the needs of community, and the leader's primary reward comes from the deep joy of truly serving. It takes a big mind, a big imagination, and a big person to be a leader. Aristotle spoke of the importance of having a big soul. These personal qualities have to be strong and deep-seated to withstand the pressures to play the game and strive for personal gain.

I don't mean to demand an idealized picture of leadership. Business and politics involve game-playing in the deepest sense, and the shadow of politics and business paradoxically keeps them honest. But there is a difference between back-room wheeling and dealing and outright greed and self-aggrandizement. When community suffers from too much conniving and self-serving, something is seriously wrong.

Like anyone, leaders need continuing education to keep their calling in mind and to reflect critically on their behavior. In the realm of psychotherapy, my field, I appreciate the value of supervision, a structured way to get feedback on your work. Maybe everyone, leaders included, needs some form of positive, intelligent, no-nonsense feedback to help them do their jobs with self-possession.

Three areas in particular would be material for reflection: power, money, and sex. All are deeply involved in all levels of leadership, and yet they are perhaps the most unconscious, unexamined areas in life.

Leaders often reveal highly neurotic attitudes towards power as they seek to control their constituents and colleagues whom they see as opponents. One wonders what sort of family background has given rise to such meanness of spirit. On the other hand, power can offer real joy and the sense of accomplishment.

Leaders should be paid well for their special work, but money is full of meaning, and a good leader could read the pay scale as being either reasonable or suspiciously out of order. Many a political or business leader has come crashing from a position of honor due to unconsciousness and lack of conscience regarding money.

Leadership demands passion and drive, two resources closely linked to sexuality. When a person's sexual life is reasonably together, that person can lead with honesty, compassion, and energy. But when personal sexuality is riddled with confusion and dissatisfaction, drive can turn into excessive aggression, sexual acting-out, and the desire to possess things, control people, and hoard money. A lucky leader will have a good supervisor offering insight into the erotics of the job. I'd rather see a leader who is sexually happy than one who is repressed or acting out -- two sides of a coin.

All leaders need some form of contemplation and reflection, a strong and flexible sense of values, and a reasonably settled emotional life to do their job with both passion and compassion. They can get their spiritual education by studying the lives and thoughts of spiritually sophisticated leaders (the private ideas of Martin Luther King, Jr.), by learning the basic teachings of the world's spiritual traditions, and by developing special practices of prayer, meditation, retreat, fasting, yoga, or ritual.

The spirituality of leaders consists primarily in the quality of their leadership and only secondarily in their personal spiritual resources. In recent years especially, American political leaders have appealed to the religious sensibility of the people by parading their religious ideologies and sentimentalities. Generally, the spirituality they manifest so publicly is only personal and limited to that questionable criterion of belief. Their vision doesn't tangibly extend to care of the planet and its people. We have become shockingly more militaristic and imperial, lacking the central spiritual qualities of inner tranquility and a genuine, deep-seated love of peace.

A leader has to understand some key distinctions: spirituality is not ideology; a sense of values is not narrow moralism. Nor is spiritual practice an empty posturing or rote church attendance; faith is not unintelligent and uninformed belief; and God is not a limited idea owned by any religion or sect.

How can we turn around today's self-destructive pattern of leadership? We can shed the narcissistic secularity of the times and step outside the circle of self-regard that contains us. Parents can take on the joys and the weight of their spiritual calling and help their children sort out their values and find their active place in a needy society. Teachers can understand that theirs is a spiritual calling: They are not just imparting information but initiating children into a world where they will be leaders in their own ways. Businesspeople can see that in a materialistic approach to society, their efforts are merely for money, self-advancement, and personal success. If they can appreciate the spirituality in their daily work, they might enjoy a position of leadership where they can contribute directly to a society of peace, equality, and security.

We followers, members of the community, can go all out in honoring those who demonstrate spiritual vision and a big soul. We can also voice our concern when leaders fail in that vision and immaturely confuse personal gain with the joy of community. In other words, you -- whoever you are -- have a spiritual calling. You have a role in your family and community to lead with a big vision and deep values, not with ideological moralism. It does little good to wait for a leader like Gandhi or Martin Luther King. You can begin today to lead with wide open and transcendent vision, deep ethics, and tender compassion. You can also encourage your leaders to do the same, transforming self-interest into radical care for every person, every being, and the planet itself. Anything less is not worthy of being called leadership in a time of urgent need and threat to life.