Listening: The Heart of Leadership Association of Benedictine Colleges & Universities

Listening “Listen carefully, my child, to the master’s instructions and attend to them with the ear of your heart. This is advice from a father who loves you; welcome it and faithfully put it into practice. Rule of St Benedict, Prologue

Founding member: Sr. Elizabeth Novy

How We See the World “We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.” Anais Nin

Presentation overview Vocation Universal calling to holiness Particular callings to service Benedictine Leadership as found in the Rule Goodness of life Wisdom in teaching Servant Leadership (Greenleaf) Striving toward wholeness Living in community Basic Elements of Servant Leadership Trust (listening) Vision Service

Vocation “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” Frederick Buechner

Vocation “Discovering vocation does not mean scrambling toward some prize just beyond my reach but accepting the treasure of true self that I already possess. Vocation does not come from a voice out there calling me to something I am not. It comes from a voice in here calling me to be the person I am meant to be, to fulfill the original selfhood given me at birth by God.” Thomas Merton

Twofold Teaching The one who holds authority in the community is not above the group; but is to be at the center of it, mirroring the values and humbly bringing forward goodness of life and wisdom in teaching. Joan Chittister, OSB

The servant leader is servant first. “The servant leader is servant first…It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead…The difference manifests itself in the care taken by the servant first to make sure that other people’s highest priority needs are being served.” Robert K. Greenleaf The Servant as Leader

The Wisdom Leader “The wisdom leadership of the Benedictine leader is a ministry based on relationships, not on a hierarchical pyramid structure of power, but a web-like circle, with the leader in the center, reaching out to all members.” Ruth Fox, OSB

Reflection “I've been a priest for 50 years. I used to say I had 50 years’ experience in ministry. Now I understand that I have only one year’s worth of experience repeated 50 times.” Anthony de Mello, SJ

Learn to Live as a Unified Human Person “This means that you have to bring back together the fragments of your distracted existence so that when you say ‘I’ there is really someone present to support the pronoun you have uttered.” Thomas Merton

Divided Life The split between the faith which many profess and their daily lives deserves to be counted among the more serious errors of our age…[L]et there be no false opposition between professional and social activities on the one hand, and religious life on the other. Gaudium et spes, 43

Questions for Reflection How have you heard God speaking? For example, was it through a person, a situation at work or a realization about your gifts? Did you trust the ear of your heart? What hinders you from listening? What does it mean to you personally and professionally to engage with people at your workplace? How can you integrate Benedict’s principles of leadership, goodness of life and wisdom in teaching, in the many roles you play?

Basic Elements of Servant Leadership Trust Vision Service

Servant Leadership Articulating the Vision Empowering for Service Building Trust Listening

The Skill of Listening: the key is trust “The best CEOs know how to take polarized cultures and create healthy organizations. What do they do? They listen, they form relationships, they build trust, they bring people together to discuss and debate and they create a climate of problem solving.” Dr. Thomas Saporito

Contemplative Listening Contemplative listening “requires focus on what is being said, an ability to separate one’s personal needs and interests from those being expressed by the speaker, a mind open to new or different possibilities, and interpersonal trust.” John C. Cavanaugh

Active Listening “Active listening requires a disciplined effort to silence all that internal conversation while we’re attempting to listen to another human being. It requires a sacrifice, an extension of ourselves.” James C. Hunter

The key to trust is to listen Service Serve one another RB 35 Vision Listening Spiritual discipline Consult the Community RB 3 Relationships Community RB 72

Are you a servant leader? The best test is to ask: “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…?” Robert K. Greenleaf The Servant as Leader