Supernatural Leadership

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Organizations spend an estimated $160 billion annually in the U.S. and more than $366 billion globally on leadership development programs. Yet only 25% of organizations and 11% of executives believe their leadership initiatives are effective, according to research from the Brandon Hall Group and McKinsey.

I believe leadership training often misses the mark, not because it emphasizes skills, competence or emotional intelligence — all of which matter — but because it neglects the leader’s inner life.

What is missing in training is that leadership is not merely a function of what a person does, but of who that person is becoming. From a Catholic perspective, leadership should flow from the interior life, which is shaped by the virtues. When practiced, it develops character, which is ultimately governed by charity. I like the word “charity” as it disguises its true meaning, “love,” a word rarely used in the halls of corporate America except perhaps when marketing or selling a product or service.

Authority cannot flow, at least naturally and freely, from the power that comes from a leader’s title. Just as one doesn’t automatically become a saint by walking into a monastery or church, one doesn’t automatically become a leader simply by walking onto the C-level executive floor.

When the role of leadership is severed from a leader’s interior life, leaders will eventually fall back on the stuff learned in business school or leadership training — strategy, tactics, tasks, empty rhetoric that contains words like “team” and “we” and often manipulate people into action through incentives or perhaps negative pressure (the familiar carrot-and-stick technique).

The move from everyday leadership to supernatural leadership is made possible by a vigorous inner life. The inner life is the hidden, habitual orientation of the soul toward God. Note: You won't find this in most leadership training programs. 

A soul’s disposition should be rooted in truth, disciplined by the practice of the human virtues of magnanimity, humility, justice, prudence, self-control and courage, and elevated by the theological virtues of faith, hope and love. Together, these virtues form a person’s character, and as Peter Drucker observed, “It is character through which leadership is exercised.”

Character is the outward expression of a leader’s interior life. Every ethical failure reported in the news is, at its core, a failure of character. Don’t be fooled: your people know your character. They recognize when authority is governed by virtue rather than enforced by position, and they trust leaders whose actions come from a well-formed interior life.

I think leadership training programs leave out discussions of virtue and character, or perhaps just brush over them, because there is a bias that such discussions sound too religious and thus incompatible with the pursuit of excellence in a competitive, secular environment.

Nothing could be further from the truth. For those with a well-formed inner life, excellence is an obligation because one’s work affects others. Careless work burdens the common good; work done well serves it. Supernatural leaders don’t want to pursue excellence for their own glory but want to integrate it into their organization’s culture.

This interior life is shaped by good habits — virtues — that form the foundation of supernatural leadership. Magnanimity moves leaders to pursue great and worthy goals. Humility anchors them in truth about their strengths and limitations. Prudence enables sound judgment grounded in reality. Justice disposes them to give others what is due. Courage provides endurance amid resistance. Temperance fosters self-mastery, allowing the leaders to control their passions and focus on the mission. Together, these virtues allow leaders to pursue excellence with discipline rather than ambition, to attain excellence and success with humility rather than self-promotion, and to lead with authenticity.

The human virtues alone do not give leadership its full depth. They can produce admirable competence and success. They can help us lead lives pleasing to both God and neighbor. But something more is required to elevate leadership from the merely effective to the truly supernatural: the practice of the theological virtues of faith, hope and love.

For leaders, the theological virtues quietly shape a form of leadership modelled by Jesus Christ, who is perfect as his Father is perfect (Matthew 5:48). The theological virtues — also known as the supernatural virtues — enrich and strengthen the human virtues.  Faith grounds leadership in truth beyond the current circumstances, enabling leaders to see, judge and act with calm clarity because their decisions are anchored in God rather than fear, pressure or appearances. Hope infuses leaders with endurance and vision, sustaining the courage and the magnanimity when resources don’t seem sufficient by trusting that God will accomplish what he asks.

Love, or charity, perfects all the virtues of a leader by ordering them toward self-giving service for the good of others.

The question, then, is not whether leaders should become more strategic or more adaptable. It is whether leadership will remain merely functional or become truly supernatural. Supernatural leadership begins to take shape when the development of the inner life is taken seriously. When leaders are well-formed, excellence follows, and what endures is both the leader and the organizational culture that is ordered to serve the common good.