Faith Matters: The Missing Dimension of Leadership

The American Interest ^ | 23 May 2010 | Walter Russell Mead

[XHogPilot]

At the end of the most recent semester I sat with some of my undergrads and did something that, they said, their professors rarely did: I opened a discussion about personal ethics, commitments and choices and how they shape our lives. We talked about people like Eliot Spitzer, John Edwards, and other figures whose careers and family lives were destroyed by serious lapses and about how people starting out in life could try to protect themselves from this kind of tragedy. I don’t know that my contributions to that discussion revealed any particular wisdom, but this was clearly something the students wanted to talk about, and wanted to discuss with people from another generation. Building the kind of character, community and spiritual connection that can help keep us on track is something that all people need to think about, learn about and start doing, but our society is becoming less effective at providing this education.

The greatest enemy of both personal happiness and professional success is our human liability to moral failure. That, overwhelmingly, is how people ruin relationships, alienate spouses and children, lose jobs and destroy careers. To put it more positively, developing a foundation of values and the spiritual strength to keep working at them is the most important single quality leading to enduring personal happiness, social usefulness and professional success. Yet our elaborate university system, which offers people opportunities to specialize in all kinds of arcane knowledge, is frequently helpless when it comes to providing even the most basic guidance.

In the past, our colleges were much less shy about this. Many required significant course work in religion, and the spiritual training and development of the young was what many educators, whatever the formal subjects they taught, thought was the real business of their work.

[XHogPilot]

Heavily edited by me. If you read the entire article, you need to get past the first few paragraphs of current events before you find a very nice editorial.

[anniegetyourgun]

"Leadership in all walks of life must be rooted in real values and true leadership is inseparable from a commitment to sacrifice. There is no surer sign of social rot than a society whose leaders are animated more by a sense of entitlement than a sense of sacrifice."

Think about what nonsense & danger we've lived with through the recent decades: "love the one you're with" - "don't worry, be happy" - "I'm okay, you're okay" - "whatever" etc. And now, it's even commonplace for our so-called leaders use foul language & crass imagery. Tough to find leaders who will sacrifice when they are lovers of self.