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A
Way to Engage, Not Escape
"In a time when educational leaders are told
to focus on numbers-driven, outcome-based, bottom-line
accountability, the idea of spirituality in leadership can
seem quaint, irrelevant and downright squishy. What possible
use can spirituality have for leaders, other than perhaps to
serve as a brief and unreal respite from the rough-and-tumble
world?"
by Roger Soder, September 2002, The School Administrator
Online, Leadership Series
For more articles on disabilities and special ed visit
www.bridges4kids.org.
By understanding and
respecting our connections, we can welcome life’s
uncertainties.
In a time when educational
leaders are told to focus on numbers-driven, outcome-based,
bottom-line accountability, the idea of spirituality in
leadership can seem quaint, irrelevant and downright squishy.
What possible use can spirituality have for leaders, other
than perhaps to serve as a brief and unreal respite from the
rough-and-tumble world?
Respite might well be enough, given the harshness of that
world, and we might want to consider the claims and
implications of spirituality for no other reason. But welcome
respite should not obscure a curious aspect of spirituality. A
closer look reveals something more, something paradoxical:
Spirituality is critical not as a way to escape but as a way
to engage. Joining spirituality to leadership is a pragmatic,
down-to-earth way to engage ourselves intelligently,
effectively and ethically.
To join in that closer look, we first must provide some sense
of what we mean by spirituality. Because of my natural bent
and lack of training, I am unable to put forth strict
definitions that would satisfy philosophers or theologians.
Rather I approach spirituality by more mundane means, drawing
on the observations, experiences and, if I may, the wisdom of
people across time and across cultures.
Sometimes we can learn about spirituality not from people but
from animals and how people respond to animals. I learned
something about spirituality on a cold gray Seattle afternoon
five years ago, on my way across the University of Washington
campus to the library. Approaching the main quad, I saw a
crowd had gathered; several hundred people were looking at
something atop a three-story campus building. There amongst
the gargoyles and busts of scholars long past was a snowy owl.
Ignoring the crows that were dive-bombing it from time to
time, the owl was, well, just there, silent, unmoving—as were
we, just there, just taking in the sight of this magnificent
creature.
Newcomers on the scene would see the crowd gazing at
something, would follow the line of sight, see the owl and,
through silence or a quiet “wow” would show their own sense of
wonder. From person to person we passed on what little was
known. I found out later that it had been many decades since a
snowy owl was sighted this far south. Climate change and
scarcity of food on the Arctic tundra had pushed this bird
many hundreds of miles from its normal home. Here the owl was,
in the middle of a large urban research university. In the
presence of the bird, in that pausing and silence, we had a
dim reminder of connections between humans, other animals and
the earth, our only home.
Spirituality has something to do with understanding and
respecting those connections. As the old saying goes: We can’t
put it together; it is together.
Understanding the Whole
Everything is connected. Everything exists in relation to
everything else. What we need to understand is what those
connections actually mean. To say “It’s us over other peoples;
it’s us over the animals; it’s us against the environment” is
a way of talking about connections. But that way of talking is
wrong ethically and ecologically and it is wrong in fact. The
earth and everything on it do not exist at the behest and
bidding of humankind. What we need is an understanding of the
balanced and modest role human beings play in relation to
everything else.
Spirituality, then, involves an understanding of connections
between humans, other animals and the environment—an
understanding that puts humankind as a small part of the
whole, despite our apparent immense power over the
environment. It is an understanding that emphasizes a
long-term time perspective because only with a view of tens of
thousands of years and beyond can we hope to understand the
real impact of our actions. Finally, spirituality suggests an
understanding that we don’t understand everything, which means
we must learn to tread carefully; we must learn to be more
tentative, gentle, modest and cautious.
Much of what I am suggesting here as the basis of spirituality
is rejected by many leaders. The very terms I am using seem
contrary to notions of power, control, assertiveness,
ambition, profit-and-loss statements and other images of
leadership. Can we seriously expect a candidate for the
superintendency to talk to a board of directors about the need
to be tentative, gentle, modest and cautious? But before we
reject spirituality out of hand, let us consider what happens
when the virtues and habits of mind of spirituality are absent
in our daily lives as leaders.
When we don’t understand gentleness and modesty as a part of
spirituality, we become too sure of ourselves. We develop a
wrong, arrogant and perilous sense of power over other people
and other things. We assume we are in charge and that all is
for our benefit and, with that assumption, we are little
better off than Mickey Mouse as the sorcerer’s apprentice in
“Fantasia,” with about as much sense and about as much chance
of survival.
Assuming that we know it all, or at least know enough to lord
it over everything else, we end up on dangerous ground. Part
of that dangerous ground involves social engineering on a
massive scale. Consider the historical fact that it was
arrogant self-confidence that brooked no opposition that led
Bolshevik leaders to embark on terror and genocide with the
slogan, “We shall drive mankind to happiness by force.”
In our own time in our own organizations, we do not see terror
and genocide as change strategies, but often in our own
moments of supreme self-confidence we claim to understand the
needs of people better than they themselves. We will drive
humankind to the happiness we know they need, not with terror
but with workshops facilitated by outside change agent
consultants who, with happy-face smiles, will assure the weary
poor dears that although change is, yes, we know, threatening,
we will all be the better for it.
With the arrogance of assuming we know it all and assuming
that all the resources out there are predestined for our
personal use, we experience a rootless ambition and a
corresponding rootless dissatisfaction. “I would annex the
universe if I could,” said British imperialist Cecil Rhodes,
and there are many today who would like to do the same.
Likewise, it is the legend of Faust that lingers in a dim
recess of our mind: If you can satisfy me, you can have my
soul. But the more we have (in the way of what we think of as
power or resources), the more we want. We are like the
birthday child who opens the last of the presents only to look
around and ask, “Is that all?”
Lack of spirituality in leadership also leads us to act from a
short-term time perspective. We are in a rush because others
want things done now, and because we have convinced ourselves,
in our self-importance, that if we don’t make it happen now it
never will. The pressure for now, this very moment, pushes us
to get things done immediately without necessarily considering
implications. “Just do it” is the order of the day.
This focus on the immediate, the now, today’s payoff, is a
dangerous business. As nicely shown by Stewart Brand in his
1999 book, The Clock of the Long Now, a short-term time
perspective is dangerous because it narrows our understanding
of connections and narrows the alternatives we might consider.
With a focus on the short-term, we often make bad decisions.
We ride backwards on a train, never seeing anything until it
has passed us by.
Moreover, the focus on the now casts shadows on our
relationships with others. In our haste to get on with it, we
ignore or dismiss as “unsupportive” those people who might be
trying to give us vital information about the reefs and shoals
looming ahead. And in our haste, we sometimes treat people
shabbily; we treat them as instruments to “just make it
happen.”
Other dangerous fallacies are thinking we are the center,
acting with arrogant self-confidence because we assume we know
it all, and going for the short-term gain (which might be a
loss in the long run). These shortcomings are consequences of
ignoring spirituality, of ignoring connections, of being
unwilling to be a modest small part of the whole.
Job’s Example
We would be better off as leaders, as human beings, if we were
to take a cue from the Book of Job. There are many ways to
interpret this complex part of the Bible. One way is this:
Here is Job, wealthy, owner of all those cattle and those
goodies, smug, self-centered. He knows it all, except one
critical thing. He doesn’t understand connections. Near the
conclusion of the tale, God poses for Job a thundering series
of questions—Was Job there when God laid the foundations of
the earth? Can Job tell when animals will give birth? Did Job
set the stars in motion?—all pointing to Job’s lack of
understanding. Job begins to act with a new spirituality as
well as a new understanding of connections, the dangers of
pride and the importance of modesty.
When spirituality becomes part of our leadership, we can begin
to move in better ways. If the ancient wisdom of the Chinese
classical text Tao Te Ching teaches us that “On tiptoe, your
stance is unsteady,” that same wisdom also teaches us that we
gain much more by becoming more centered, more grounded, with
a better center of gravity.
With spirituality, we can slow down a bit, take a longer view,
take a more modest view of ourselves and our circumstances. A
longer time perspective will allow us to weigh and consider,
to be more thoughtful, to reflect on connections and
consequences. Our decisions will not be perfect (however
defined), but they will most likely be better—better for
ourselves, our community and our environment. By being less
sure of ourselves, less full of ourselves, we will give
ourselves the opportunity to listen more and learn better.
Direct Involvement
Spirituality is not some magic way of getting out of trouble
or pretending that troubles do not exist. Spirituality is a
view, a perspective, a way of engaging.
And engage we must. Do we want wise citizens behaving wisely
in a free society and a healthy earth? Then we are going to
teach them about wisdom and freedom and connections because
nobody is born knowing about these things. But getting the
necessary support to address such matters is difficult. It is
a rough-and-tumble world. Resources are scarce and are easily
turned to efforts and diversions other than schools. And even
those resources within schools are hard to come by.
In a time of acquiescence to state political and bureaucratic
demands for nothing but continuous testing of basic skills
acquisition, it is difficult to teach about wisdom and freedom
and connections. To secure the blessings of liberty to
ourselves and posterity and to do so in wise ways means, like
it or not, a direct involvement in the world, a direct
involvement in politics.
How specifically we become involved in politics and how we
conduct ourselves depends in part on the situation. An ancient
Buddhist text reminds us: “When you meet a swordsman, draw
your sword; do not recite poetry to one who is not a poet.”
And in our own time we must sometimes return fire with
something close to more of the same if we don’t want to get
run over. However, and it is a very large however here,
involvement and conduct depend on more than the situation. Our
actions must be guided, in the end, by the spirituality that
will remind ourselves of relationships, connections, not being
too sure of ourselves.
James Boyd White, professor of law and English at the
University of Michigan, puts it this way: “Our most practical
end is never definable in terms of material results but always
and only in terms of a certain kind of community: a way of
facing the uncertainties of life together.”
Spirituality can help us accept and even welcome those
uncertainties as we engage the world and face together the
challenges of school leadership.
Roger Soder is a research professor of education and
co-founder of the Center for Educational Renewal, Box 353600,
University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195. E-mail:
rsoder@u.washington.edu. He is the author of The
Language of Leadership.
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