Chris Lowney- Blog 2

On Monday night, Chris Lowney held a speech for Jesuit Identity Week in McGuire Hall, expecting it to be another drab, carried-out speech I sat down and attempted to convince myself that it would not take too long. When Chris Lowney stepped up to the podium he immediately grabbed my attention by saying that he had worked as a general manager for J.P. Morgan, being that I am possibly going to be a business major, I listened carefully to what he had to say. He started out by asking us to take a moment and think of two current leaders, who are alive today. I immediately thought of my parents and how they were the ones who raised me and made me who I am today. Believing that I had a legitimate response to his opening question, I waited as he asked if any of us had chosen ourselves as a leader. This surprised me to say the least, because the thought had not even come across my mind. He explained that our view of a leader was based on a broken idea of what it means to lead and that the notion of leadership is the problem.
Chris Lowney has been a Jesuit for seven years in places in the United States and Puerto Rico, he has traveled far and wide to help the fight against AIDS, and he has even published a book called, A Vanished World. He has had a vast amount of experience with leadership, and he preaches that leadership is not based on your status but on who you are as a person. He went on to quote General Eric Kumsomey, “You must love those who lead, before you can be a leader.” This quote has a lot of relevance in our world today; if you do not have respect and love for those who lead now then you are not worthy to lead yourself, you must give everyone their chance to lead and learn from them.
Lowney went on to say that the three dimensions of leadership are first, to point out a vision or sense of future, second was to help people buy in, and third was to help the group to get past the problems. Lowney wanted to express the fact that we are leaders; all of us in form have led before, and we do so subconsciously. He had a special way of grabbing the audience’s attention and intriguing them to think about their lives and to reflect on how they live their lives.
He related leadership to the Jesuit education we receive here at Loyola, by saying that it is not about status and power, but “as possible and the very best.” This implies that only the most devoted should lead in a Jesuit society, because they are the ones who truly want to be there and help. When it comes to a Jesuit education and our world today, Lowney says that you must learn how to do school and life before you enter the world; you can’t expect to live off of just school, because you simply can’t. He gave four ideas involving leadership which were: self-awareness, ingenuity, heroism, and love. These four qualities altogether make up the best leader. Although, the most interesting part of Lowney’s speech was when he mentioned the heroism of a teacher. The heroism of a teacher is showing up everyday for work and trying to achieve a goal of educating students; now that is what a try leader is. He went on to say that everyone must “get over themselves” and start acting like a team in which every person gives a little part of themselves to make up the whole group or in this case life.
At the conclusion of Lowney’s speech, he challenged us to learn, lead, and serve. We must spend more time thinking about ourselves, and we must stop thinking about leadership in terms of “being in charge.”