Look Who's Talking... Chris Lowney, author of “Heroic

New Orleans CityBusiness, Dec 1, 2003 by Deon Roberts

Chris Lowney is an author and former Jesuit priest who spoke at Loyola University New Orleans Nov. 12 about his new book, Heroic Leadership, which offers the Jesuit Order as a good model for dynamic business leaders. Lowney's presentation was part of a series on ethics sponsored by Loyola's College of Business Administration.

What prompted you to write this book?

The book is a product of personal experience. I was a Jesuit seminarian for seven years, then worked at J.P. Morgan for 17 years. I started at J.P. Morgan in the management training program almost right away after leaving the Jesuits. I did investment banking jobs and was also a managing director in charge of human resources groups in Asia and in Europe and in the United States. All organizations have to set goals, motivate people, sell ideas. And I thought it would be very interesting to reflect on how 16th century Jesuits did all those things and what we could learn from them.

You say the Jesuits' model of success is based on four pillars. Explain those four.

Self-awareness, know your strengths and weaknesses and values and to update yourself on those daily; ingenuity, to adapt confidently to a world that keeps changing; heroism, to keep yourself energized by a passion to excel and by ambitious goals; and love, to treat other people with a positive supportive attitude that tries to unlock their human potential.

I'm not saying that this is the only way to be a leader or even the best way to be a leader. I'm saying that this is what I believe made Jesuits successful. In fact, one of the things that I very much wanted to take on in the book is this kind of pop-leadership fad culture that would have us believe that there are seven irrefutable laws or 10 steps in a magic formula. These four pillars are not the magic formula but a path for any individual to continue to identify and remain constant on his or her values.

How challenging might it be for some business leaders to develop these pillars?

I would say that self-awareness is the foundation of all leadership. It's acquired, not innate, but it's open to every one of us. And I think probably the most extreme claim in favor of self- awareness came from Socrates, I believe, who said the unexamined life is not worth living. What I would say is, whoever you are, you may decide that ingenuity, heroism and love are not the values you want to cultivate and role model, but you will not lead successfully unless you've taken the steps to understand yourself and explicitly name what values you do want to role model.

Is this book in response to the recent corporate scandals?

In fact, I had the manuscript finished before any of the scandals erupted. I took a summer off from J.P. Morgan, played around with the idea and decided that there was a book in it and I would really enjoy doing this type of work. I didn't have a decade-long master plan to do this.

The wave of corporate scandals has caused some people to question the ethics of large companies. How long do you think that suspicion will last?

I guess my personal perception is that public cynicism will last for some time. And maybe that's not a bad corrective influence. The flip side is when the market was doing as well as it was, a lot of CEOs were probably wrongly lionized as being more ingenious or brilliant than they actually were.

The title of your book refers to the Jesuits as a 450-year-old company. How has that concept been received?

The Jesuits called themselves a company. The name of the organization in Spanish is Compania de Jesus. And recall that the roots of the word company are from Latin. So, their original notion is these are your companions, the people you want to work with, that energize you. The question should not be so much how can we call this religious order of priests a company, but rather why has our lived experience of a company drifted so far away from the original notion of what company meant.