Blog #2: Chris Lowney Lecture

Chris Lowney was a very influential speaker who helped me to think outside of the box. He tied together leadership in the business world with leadership in the Jesuit community. Leadership in the business world is not solely determined by the grades one receives during his or her college career or by one’s monetary standings. It is based on the person he or she has become. We become this person through the leadership values we receive from our Jesuit education. It is the Jesuits that educate the body as a whole.
Chris Lowney was a Jesuit in formation for seven years. During this time he taught and studied at Jesuit institutions in both the United States and Puerto Rico. He is an alum of Regis High School and Fordham University. Lowney holds Doctoral degrees from both Mary Mount Manhattan University and the University of Great Falls. He holds positions on the Board of Directors at Nativity Middle School and on the Board of Regents at St. Peter’s College. Lowney was also a Managing Director for JP Morgan and held senior positions in Tokyo, New York, London, and Singapore. He currently lives in New York and serves on the Catholic Medical Mission Board. Lowney has traveled to various parts of the world such as South Africa, India, Kenya, and Zambia to introduce the CMMB’s ideas for preventing AIDS. He is also the author of Heroic Leadership which is ranked #1 best seller of the CBPA as well as the author of A Vanished World.
The overall theme of Lowney’s speech was leadership in our lives as well as in society. The first question he asked his audience was “Who are your leaders?” Right away my parents came to mind. Many of us associate leadership with being in charge. However, this is not the solution to anyone’s problems. The next question he asked us was “What do good leaders do to motivate the people they work with?” A claim to leadership is not your status but who you are as a person. To support his question he quoted General Eric Kaminski stating, “You must love those you lead before you can be an effective leader.” Lowney believes that are three dimensions of leadership, the first being you must make sense of the future that lies before you, the second is you must help people buy in and the third is you must work as a whole in order to pass the problems that come up when trying to accomplish something. In order to lead well one must be purposeful.
Lowney believes that these characteristics of leadership in the business world serve in a similar way as the foundation for the Jesuit community. When the Jesuits began to form their society what they needed was as many as possible of the very best leaders. However, at this time there were not a lot around. In Lowney’s opinion peoples’ main strive in life is to become rich and happy. The main focus of the Jesuits is to educate ordinary people. The four main goals in the lives of Jesuits are self-awareness, love, ingenuity, and heroism. In order to be self-aware one must know their strengths and weaknesses. One must love in order to unlock potential and treat others equally. Lowney quoted St. Ignatius saying, “Love ought to manifest itself in deeds, not words.” Everyone must have ingenuity because if we like it or not the world keeps changing and it is our responsibility to keep up with it. Each individual must have a sense of heroism and to have this we must motivate ourselves with courage and belief. Everyone must deal with reality, hold onto a vision of what we are going to do with it, and do it well. The only this we are capable of controlling are our actions. If we get over ourselves and be who we really are we can see how the whole project is capable of working. In order to do this we must remind ourselves what we are grateful for and what we have to work on.
Chris Lowney’s talk on leadership and its four main characteristics are equivalent to those of Kahu’s in The Whale Rider. Kahu knew that she was meant to be the next whale rider even though Koro would not admit to it. Kahu was self- aware; she realized that she was a girl who had the power to do what she believed in. In Koro’s eyes that was her weakness. However, she knew she had the strength to overcome that weakness because she was determined to prove to Koro she was the one. Kahu had a love for her people and for the whales. She grew close to her family and treated everyone equally. Kahu had a special love for Koro. She would go above and beyond to prove her love for him. “She ran into Koro Apirana’s arms whenever he had time for her and took whatever he was able to give. If he had told her he loved dog’s, I’m sure she would have barked “Woof woof.” That’s how much she loved him (47).” Koro made Kahu jump through many hoops in order to prove herself to him. Her ingenuity helped her to keep up with his large ego. Kahu’s self-awareness, love, and ingenuity helped her heroism to grow stronger everyday. Her heroism allowed her to leave reality and become part of the myth. Kahu knew that the whales needed her. She was the only one capable of communicating with them. Once she saved the whales, Koro realized Kahu was placed on this earth to be the next whale rider. At the end of each day Kahu was who she was and continued to fight for her leadership role.
Every individual in the world has a different concept of the word “leader.” In order to discover that we are our own leaders as well as leaders for others we must update ourselves everyday. Those who taught us have made themselves into leaders. It is not only the male gender that is capable of being today’s leaders. Lowney said truthfully the best managers he worked with at JP Morgan were women. He said they were self-aware and loving. At the end of the day you must be who you really are.