What Makes A True Leader?
The upcoming presidential election will be one of the most consequential in recent history. It will determine not only the kind of leader we want, but the kind of country we seek to be. The two political parties and their candidates offer sharp contrasts. Still, what are some general principles — some non-negotiables — we might consider in choosing our next president, especially if we are a person of faith.
It seems fitting at this tenous time to step back from the clutter of talking points, exaggerations, phony narratives and drama currently swirling around both campaigns and consider what it takes to be a true leader.
I keep returning to two key guides — historian Doris Kearns Goodwin’s 2018 book “Leadership in Turbulent Times” and the 6th century “Rule of St. Benedict.” Written orginally for monastic communities, the Benedictine Rule continues to offer wisdom on what it means to lead both effectively and compassionately in any age.
In her book on leadership, Kearns Goodwin explores significant traits of four American presidents about whom she has written extensively — Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson.
What all four have in common, she says, is that “at some point, ambition for the self became ambition for something larger.” All four men were chastened by experiences that tested their inner mettle.
Lincoln suffered bouts of depression. Theodore Roosevelt endured the death of his first wife and his mother on the same day. For Franklin Roosevelt, it was contracting polio just as his political star was rising. LBJ suffered a massive heart attack when he was the powerful majority leader of the U.S. Senate.
Without those life-altering experiences, would those leaders have made the choices and championed the causes they did? Would Lincoln have had the same empathy for the enslaved if he hadn’t suffered a form of emotional enslavement? Would Theodore Roosevelt have become an active conservationist had he not worked through his grief horseback-riding through the vast American West?
FDR would apply the same balm of optimism he used to cheer up his fellow polio patients at Hot Springs as he did to shore up his confused, despairing fellow Americans during the Great Depression. After his heart attack, LBJ became more focused on his legacy. He worked for sweeping socal programs and civil rights legislation in the Senate and then insured their passage during his presidency.
Today, the American electorate seems obsessively focused on each candidate’s personal strength. By contrast, Kearns Goodwin points to other leadership qualities, some of them surprising. One is resilience (discussed above) and the others are a more spiritual in nature: empathy, self-reflection and humility.
To Kearns Goodwin’s list I would add another trait: truthfulness. It is normal for politicians to put the best shine on their policies and vision. However, it is something quite different — something deeply destructive — to repeatedly peddle half-truths, gross exaggerations and out-and-out lies that have been consistently debunked.
In addition to truthfulness, empathy might seem an obvious choice as a non-negotiable trait. Still, it is a quality that one must cultivate continually in the manner of the Prayer of St. Francis. “Grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love.”
Self-reflection, Kearns Goodwin says, means owning your mistakes and being strong enough to shoulder the blame when something goes wrong. It also means not hogging the credit or self-aggrandizing when things go right.
Humility might be one that raises eyebrows. Kearns Goodwin points out something that St. Benedict also says in his Rule for monastics: humility isn’t about being weak and self-effacing. It means being aware of your limitations and humble enough to admit and learn from your mistakes.
On this point, Kearns Goodwin and St. Benedict sound remarkably similar. The longest chapter by far in the Benedictine Rule is on humility. St. Benedict sums up his attitude elsewhere in the The Rule by saying, “Be the first to show respect to the other, bearing with the greatest patience one another’s weaknesses of body and behavor.”
In still another section, he says don’t be motivated by what is good for you, but what is good for others. What Kearns Goodwin calls “the common good.”
St. Benedict also takes the definition of leadership beyond our conventional understanding. The real duty of a leader, he says, is “the care of souls.” It echoes something St. Aelred of Rievaulx later wrote in his famous treatise On Friendship: true friends are the guardians and caretakers of each others hearts.
Caring and compassion also weave through St. Benedict’s exploration of leadership. Repeatedly, he likens the abbot or prioress of a monastery to a “physician” who always is ready to apply “the ointment of encouragement.”
This is not to say our leaders should blindly follow the mob or not try to correct wrong behavior that upset the common good. Even so, Benedict says they must remember that they “have undertaken care of the sick, not tyranny of the healthy.”
In other words, they can “hate the faults” they find in others, but still “love the person.”
“We will get the kind of political leadership, be it good or bad, that we demand and deserve,” President John F. Kennedy once observed.
Now might be the time to pray for leaders that emulate these other words in the Prayer of St. Francis:
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.
Humility, empathy, resilience, self-reflection, truthfulness. Darkness into light. Hatred into love.
How do each of our current choices for president measure up?
