Led to Lead
In the second edition of her co-authored book, Graziadio School of Business and Management professor Bernice Ledbetter examines leadership from a perspective of faith.
As far as corporate buzzwords go, leadership has been at the top of many lists for the last few decades. Headlines implore us to consider the morning rituals of effective leaders and analyze the traits, best practices, and values that determine a person’s success in the workplace.
Leadership became an academic course of study in the post-World War II era, when soldiers
returned home from service overseas, decorated, distinguished, and a little different
than when they left. Their new confidence, bravery, and commitment to country established
them as leaders, a term that at the time emphasized a heroism that was mostly transactional
and by and large male.
As time moved forward, leadership—by definition and discipline—evolved to suggest
a transformative impact on a group as opposed to its traditional interpretations.
“The heroic model of leadership doesn’t work anymore,” says Bernice Ledbetter, director
of the Center for Women in Leadership and professor of organizational theory and management
at the Graziadio School of Business and Management. “Current generations believe leadership
is vested in the group, that diversity is normative, and that everyone’s voice needs
to be heard. Everyone has a role to play and everyone can be part of both the conversation
and also the enactment.”
This trend shift, a systematic move towards more distributed or shared models of leadership,
thus became a gleaming opportunity for academic institutions to ensure that their
faculty, staff, and students gained the necessary knowledge and capabilities to lead
effectively in each of their roles. For Ledbetter, pursuing leadership in an academic
setting, particularly at faith-based institutions, gave her the opportunity to explore
where culture and values intersect.
In 2000 she was invited to contribute to an initiative spearheaded by Baker Books,
a Christian publishing house that was proposing a series of books that examined multiple
aspects of culture through a faith lens. Partnering with Robert Banks, a biblical
theologian with expertise in practical theology, Ledbetter provided an academic and
disciplinary perspective to the book Reviewing Leadership: A Christian Evaluation of Current Approaches.
Over the course of a decade, as the concepts outlined in the book—such as ethical
foundations of leadership and leaving a legacy— continued to evolve, readers became
more and more interested in how faith shapes leadership and how the constructs of
different faiths may influence the conversation. The second edition of the book, which
emerged in response to increasing social and intellectual discourse on the cultural
importance of leadership, was released this year.
“The assumptions of Christian leadership suggest there ought to be something different,
better, or more than transactional understandings of leadership,” says Ledbetter.
“Leadership must be informed by strong moral values, and many times those values come
from a person’s faith perspective. As people of faith, we hold ourselves to an even
higher standard of alignment of values with our leadership expressions. What we believe
informs how we lead.”
Servant Leadership
As Reviewing Leadership notes, Christian leadership is inherently rooted in scripture, namely in Christ’s
mission on Earth to not only be served but also to serve. Ledbetter and Banks also
introduce the apostle Paul’s impact on the study of Christian leadership, especially
in his ability to develop others into leaders who then continued the transformation
trend. The authors note the key characteristics of Paul’s influence: “displaying boldness
amid opposition; influencing motives rather than asserting authority; being affectionate
and emotional, vulnerable and transparent, authentic and sincere; and exemplifying
a follower-centered, not self-centered, approach.”
Ledbetter notes, “Paul understood that in order for the church to grow and spread,
leadership had to be dispersed, which led to a greater sense of shared responsibility
and community. Paul was Jesus’ spokesperson, but he held people accountable for taking
the message and sharing it with the people in their communities.”
In modern business practice, those in managerial roles achieve greater success through
serving those they manage. As employees feel encouraged, supported, and enabled to
participate in the success of the organization, they tend to become more energized
and produce higher quality work.
“It’s not about giving up your power or status,” explains Ledbetter. “It’s about motivating
front-line workers to align with a set of values that are at the core of a business
and take deep responsibility for making that mission a reality.”
This “service first” philosophy evolved into the idea of servant leadership, a concept
first coined by Robert K. Greenleaf in an essay he penned in 1970 titled “The Servant
As Leader.” According to Greenleaf, “Servant leadership is a philosophy and set of
practices that enriches the lives of individuals, builds better organizations, and
ultimately creates a more just and caring world.” In the essay Greenleaf also asks,
“Do those served grow as persons? Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser,
freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants? And, what is the
effect on the least privileged in society? Will they benefit or at least not be further
deprived?”
The type of servant leadership imagined by Greenleaf can be seen in modern business-to-consumer
relationships, in which those serving organizations take ownership for creating a
shared vision within the business and assume responsibility for designing a culture
of service with the customer.
Ledbetter references fast casual food chain Chipotle and how a company-wide crisis
tasked front-line workers at each of their 2,000 locations across the U.S. to demonstrate
the company’s strongly-held value of service—bringing fresh food to customers—on a
daily basis.
“People want to know that their leader is capable and competent, but they also want
a say in how and why things get done,” says Ledbetter. “When we as leaders serve those
who report to us, they in turn serve the customer. If you want satisfied constituents,
you have to have really satisfied and well-cared-for staff. You can’t have one without
the other.”
In the classroom Ledbetter imparts the same concept of servant leadership to students
in her management courses.
“I believe we’re in the business of serving—both the students and the community at
large,” she explains. “We’re there to guide and shape and direct, and students want
to see us as partners in their development. Involving students, inviting their input,
being honest with feedback, and empowering them is a form of service. Servant leadership
is not about surrendering power or status. It is about a shift in mindset as to the
role and responsibilities associated with leading.”
Modern Work Life
The increasing interest in the topic of leadership, Ledbetter notes, is due in part
to the growing need for people to step into such roles in response to our world asking
for better models of influence. This need has engendered broader and deeper conversations
about effective leadership that have resulted in a shift in the modern work environment.
Beyond longing for more distributed models of leadership, modern professionals are
seeking meaning in their work and pursuing avenues to more seamlessly integrate work
and personal life. Ledbetter notes that, historically, people have kept their personal
lives separate from their work lives. This duality, especially for millennials in
the workforce, can be exhausting. The concept of living an integrated life has its
roots in scripture, particularly in the notion that faith informs life and vice versa.
This integration has become increasingly necessary particularly because people are
spending more time at work than ever before and, as a result, are seeking a sense
of purpose while maintaining and exceeding fiscal performance
“True Christian leadership means leading a team with a sense of purpose with respect
to our responsibility to our fiscal goals and plans—purpose and meaning must be infused
in everything,” says Ledbetter. “Time puts pressures on all of us. Performance puts
pressures on all of us. By being part of a faith community that helps us grow and
learn, my hope is that we help each other become better in our leadership.”
Reviewing Leadership also emphasizes that nurturing, enhancing, and supporting employees also contributes
to feelings of belonging and inclusion, which lead to higher job satisfaction, better
job performance, and a sense of community.
“Am I satisfied in my work? Is there a sense that we’re all members of the same team?
This is the model that informs leadership, which informs the way we go about doing
our work,” says Ledbetter.
Everywhere you look, consumers today are longing for values alignment and are closely
observing organizations to determine that their core values and what they stand for
align with their own. Thus, there is mounting pressure on companies to express their
values authentically. While in the past companies could get by on rhetoric, today’s
corporate ethical standards require transparency and demand authenticity.
“We have a great opportunity today in our world to lead with integrity, values, clarity,
moral purpose, and a sense of alignment between what we believe and how we express
that belief through our leadership,” says Ledbetter. “As people of faith, we are going
to hold ourselves to an even higher standard of alignment between our values and our
leadership expression.”
“Leadership requires a good deal of self-reflection and self-knowledge—who I am, what
I stand for, what my strengths and challenges are. But it’s not possible to do it
alone,” Ledbetter maintains. “We need people around us to help us understand how we’re
perceived and how we can strengthen our leadership practices. It’s something we need
to be constantly working at. We do have exemplary leaders in biblical text and in
our workplaces who embody what we admire most in leadership. We are all working towards
an ambitious goal of fine tuning leadership to its highest expression. The hope is
that the book creates a dialogue about values-based, faith-informed leadership.”