The Jesuit Guide To (Almost) Everything - James Martin [168]
But there may be more specific aspects of “our way of proceeding” that have helped the Society of Jesus endure for over 450 years, ideas that may be useful to those in the business world. Chris Lowney’s book Heroic Leadership has as its subtitle Best Practices from a 450-Year-Old Company that Changed the World. His book examines the characteristics of “our way of proceeding” that have helped the Compañia de Jesús flourish, and then he proposes some of those ideas as models of “best practices” for workers, managers, and corporations.
A former-Jesuit-turned-investment-manager, Lowney boiled down the list of the “Jesuit leadership secrets” to what he calls the “four pillars.” They are self-awareness, ingenuity, love, and heroism.
Let’s look at Lowney’s four pillars, add a few more, and think about how they might be applied in the working world.
The first pillar is self-awareness. “Leaders thrive by understanding who they are and what they value,” writes Lowney, “by becoming aware of unhealthy blind spots or weaknesses that can derail them, and by cultivating the habit of continuous self-reflection and learning.”
By now this should be a familiar part of Jesuit spirituality. The way of Ignatius is designed to help us not only grow closer to God, but also understand ourselves—our strengths and our weaknesses— and whatever it is that keeps us from freedom. The examen, for example, continually invites us to reflect on what we’ve done, what we are doing, and what we will do. Part of Ignatian spirituality is that constant process of reflection, action, reflection.
This spiritual practice is applicable to the professional life. Good workers or leaders will be familiar with weaknesses and stumbling blocks that may derail them, can address those problems and also reflect on what motivates them to excellence.
Second, ingenuity. “Leaders make themselves and others comfortable in a changing world,” writes Lowney. “They eagerly explore new ideas, approaches, and cultures rather than shrink defensively from what lurks around life’s next corner. Anchored by nonnegotiable principles and values, they cultivate the ‘indifference’ that allows them to adapt confidently.”
This is clearly seen in the life of Ignatius, who determined that the times demanded that his men should not be cloistered monks but rather “in the world.” His indifference enabled him always to be adaptable and not overly concerned with incidentals.
That kind of ingenuity also finds expression in the lives of the great Jesuit missionaries. St. Francis Xavier, for example, used any possible means to spread the Gospel, including ringing a bell to attract attention and singing songs in native tongues.
Perhaps the most notable example of this ingenuity comes from Matteo Ricci, a sixteenth-century Italian Jesuit who immersed himself in the study of Chinese and donned the robes of the Mandarin scholar, as ways of presenting himself as a man of deep learning to the Chinese nobility. He wrote to his superiors:
We have let our beards grow and our hair down to our ears, at the same time we have adopted the special dress that the literati wear . . . of violet silk, and the hem of the robe and collar and the edges are bordered with a band of blue silk a little less than a palm wide.
Soon Ricci’s home became a gathering place for scholars and Chinese thinkers. “His high intellectual prestige,” writes William Bangert in A History of the Society of Jesus, “was magnified by his more than twenty works in Chinese on apologetics, mathematics and astronomy, some of which have honored places in the history of Chinese literature.”
Ultimately, Ricci’s venture was scuttled after the Holy See disapproved of the Jesuits’ acceptance of the notion that “ancestor worship” and veneration paid to Confucius in Chinese culture were compatible with Christianity. (Ricci saw them simply as respect paid to families and to one of the most important men in Chinese