It’s Lent right now, the season when Christians prepare to celebrate Easter. But to paraphrase the old ad for Levi's Jewish Rye Bread: You don't have to be Christian to learn leadership lessons from Jesus. Despite being executed as a criminal, Jesus managed to start a faith that now has more than 2 billion followers and has lasted almost 2,000 years. Clearly, Jesus knew a thing or two about leadership.
And Fr. James Martin, S.J. knows a thing or two about Jesus. The Jesuit priest and editor at large at America, the Catholic magazine, has just published Jesus: A Pilgrimage (which made its debut on The New York Times bestseller list as soon as it was released).
Fr. Martin is also the “official chaplain” of The Colbert Report and the author of the bestselling The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything and My Life with the Saints. Before becoming a Jesuit priest, Fr. Martin earned his bachelor's degree from Wharton and worked at GE for six years in corporate finance and human resources.
I was lucky enough to interview Fr. Martin in his office at America.
Geoff Loftus: How do you define a leader? What characteristics make someone a leader for you?
Fr. Martin: Someone who inspires people to share in their vision. When I was working for GE, we were often told that a good manager is someone who helps his or her employees do their jobs better. And I've never forgotten that. Leading, in a sense, lies in understanding who is following. But it is also about helping the person see further than the job that he or she is doing at the time.
Geoff Loftus: How does Jesus fit your definition? What leadership characteristics does he display?
Fr. Martin: Jesus obviously "inspired." The root of the word "inspiration" is "spirit," and so the one who in-spires literally places the spirit within a person. In the secular world, or the business world, this might be the spirit of boldness or confidence or enthusiasm for a particular task. In Jesus's case, it was God's spirit (the "Holy Spirit" in Christian terminology) who was with Jesus in his ministry, and it was this Spirit that Jesus communicated to his friends.
Jesus laid out an idea of what the world could be like – which he called the "reign of God" – where the hungry would be fed, the naked clothed, the sick healed and the dead raised — which electrified his listeners. And inspired them to work for that vision.
But more than that, the carpenter from the small town of Nazareth carefully selected for his inner circle a group of disparate people — beginning with a headstrong fisherman named Peter – and inspired them to take his message "to the ends of the earth." None of these men were remotely perfect. Dedicated to Jesus of course, they were also fractious, ambitious and often cowardly: their leader, Peter, even denied knowing Jesus shortly before his execution on the cross.
Now, many of us tend to focus solely on the Twelve Apostles, but Jesus's group of "disciples" was actually far larger than that, perhaps seventy in number. (The Gospels speak of increasingly larger circles of "apostles," "disciples" and "followers.") Jesus had to lead and inspire all these people, men and women both, from a variety of backgrounds, in the face of extraordinary odds. In the end, after his Resurrection, they would be willing even to die for him. (According to the early tradition of the Church, after Judas committed suicide, ten of the remaining eleven apostles would die for Christ.)
It's not a stretch at all to say that Jesus was the greatest leader the world has ever seen. There's a reason why you see all those churches in your town.
Geoff Loftus: Corporate leaders need to know themselves and project the image they think will help them lead — how did Jesus do that? What was his self-knowledge or self-image?
Fr. Martin: It's very hard for us, perhaps impossible, to know exactly what Jesus's "self-knowledge" was. (Or to know how he understood his divinity.) Here's the classic theological conundrum: Since Jesus was divine, does that mean he knew everything? But since he was also human, doesn't that mean that he needed to be taught something before he knew it? It's one of the basic mysteries of the Christian faith.
One possible way to understand this is that Jesus grew in his understanding of who he was. Certainly by the time he was performing miracles he understood his purpose. But Jesus led by not only "projecting an image" but by being the person he called others to be. That is, he embodied — literally — the “reign of God,” and what God the Father desired for the world.
There's an insight here for corporate leaders. Even when I was working in GE as a young man, I saw that simply getting a promotion didn't mean that you were on that day completely ready to assume those responsibilities of the new position. Understanding what one's vocation is, what one must do on the job, often takes time. It takes time to learn who you are supposed to be. And how you are supposed to become that person. Jesus may have experienced this as well, but again, we may never know.
Geoff Loftus: Was the “reign of God” Jesus's central message? How did he communicate it? How effective was he?
Fr. Martin: The reign of God was indeed his central message, which he communicated by "word and deed," as New Testament scholars say. And he was, of course, incredibly effective! He spoke, said people of the time, "with authority." His miracles lent meaning to his words, and vice versa. There is another lesson here for those in the business world: his entire being proclaimed his values. Everything he said and did expressed his mission.
Geoff Loftus: Was Jesus a good communicator? What about some of his paradoxical or extreme-challenge statements? Isn't that off-putting? Don't those kinds of things inspire so much emotional heat that people are going to miss the point?
Fr. Martin: Jesus was probably the most effective communicator who ever lived. After all, we're still quoting him! Often he would use what New Testament scholars today call "Gospel hyperbole," that is, going far beyond what was needed to make a point. "If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to be thrown into hell." Most mainstream scholars believe that Jesus was not in fact asking people to gouge out their eyes. But he needed to make a point. He needed to wake people up. And sometimes a little hyperbole helps to get people's attention.
The Catholic writer Flannery O'Connor was once asked why the characters in her short stories were so outlandish. “When you can assume that your audience holds the same beliefs you do,” she said, “you can relax a little and use more normal ways of talking to it; when you have to assume that it does not, then you have to make your vision apparent by shock — to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost blind you draw large and startling figures.”
Geoff Loftus: Were the miracles just publicity stunts or did they carry Jesus's message? Were they steak or sizzle? Both?
Fr. Martin: The miracles were not publicity stunts at all. In fact, Jesus disdained doing them on command — as if to prove his identity. They were always performed either to help a person who was suffering (a healing, an exorcism or raising someone from the dead), or a group of people in need or in danger (the feeding of hungry crowds, the stilling of storms). But they always carried multiple meanings.
Once again, his words underscore his deeds, and his deeds underscore his words. At one point in Matthew's Gospel, when Jesus forgives a paralyzed man's sins, some grumble that he doesn't have the authority to do so. So as a response, he heals the man before the crowd. "But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins” — he then said to the paralytic — 'Stand up, take your bed and go to your home.'"
In that retelling, the miracle both heals and educates. It amazes too. So it is both steak and sizzle.
Geoff Loftus: In an interview with Tim Reidy in America magazine, you called Jesus' story “radical.” Did it need to be radical? What was the point of that?
Fr. Martin: Jesus's story is “radical” in both the modern and traditional senses of that word. In the modern and more colloquial sense, Jesus is radical in that he is shaking up the status quo. One traditional definition of the Christian is that he or she is to comfort the afflicted, but also afflict the comfortable. Jesus the radical shakes things up, and shakes us up.
But in a more traditional sense, he is "radical," in the original meaning of the word, which means getting back to the "roots" of the faith. Jesus calls the people of his time, and us, to remember certain essential truths. As any leader of integrity must.
Geoff: You mentioned that Jesus was the greatest leader the world has ever seen. I agree with that assessment, and here's the reason:
Just prior to Passover, Jesus entered Jerusalem and was hailed by the crowds as royalty. Within a week, the Establishment (as we kids of the '60s used to call those in power) had tortured him and executed him as a criminal. Within the space of days, his followers had gone from the absolute greatest moment they had experienced with Jesus to the lowest possible outcome that they ever could have imagined. But even in their fear, they didn't give up all hope. They were confused and frightened, but they waited to see how God would reveal himself. All because of Jesus' leadership. They were faced with complete, catastrophic failure, but they held their ground.
I'm pretty sure that in all of history, no CEO has ever left a legacy that withstood his own execution as a criminal — a legacy that flourished beyond all imagining.
Fr. Martin: That’s all true. But of course it helps your cause when you rise from the dead.
