Leaders in the World

Attending a fine institution like Loyola, the student body is privileged to be subjected to speakers such as Chris Lowney. The lecture he presented did an incredible job of giving me a perspective of my life. Being a college student at an expensive school, it is easy to lose sight of things that are truly important. Things like our Evergreen account and meal plan make it easy to forget how lucky we are to have money to spend, and the difficulty of classes and work load make it easy to just focus on ourselves and tasks set in front of us. However, Mr. Lowney expressed in his presentation the importance of the Christian message, which he defined as “the world is not about me, there’s something greater.”
With the Christian message conveyed to the audience, Mr. Lowney began to stress the idea of heroism and how to act as a leader. One reference he made to the Jesuits was their process of training, where for thirty days they are removed from everything that can be seen as a distraction in order to reflect on their vocation and reason for being there. This includes cell phones, television, and computers. The idea of a college student giving up those major distractions are mind boggling, and show the true difficulty of their entire training. He continued with talk of the corporate world, where very smart people learn how to do school and do not learn about social interaction or to have balance in their life. The idea of learning agility seemed very important, which was the ability to rebound from a failure and learn new things from one’s mistakes. People who experience a challenge or a set back and failure are more experienced for the next time it happens. A very interesting point he also communicated was that of a CEO being twice born. A crisis or setback in early adulthood leads most CEOs to use that experience and contemplate who they are and what they want, giving them drive for the rest of their lives. A very interesting point that was made was the simple practice of the Examen, which is a process that the Jesuits practice two or three times a day, where they take time just to consider and reflect on what they are grateful for, or what failures they have encountered and need to work on. The purpose for this exercise is to help a human being to get refocused over the course of the day. Quoting Saint Ignatius, Mr. Lowney said how love ought to manifest itself in deeds and not in words, since actions are the true way of knowing someone’s intentions. Continuing his lecture, he broke down the idea of a company and what the Jesuits consider a company opposed to what most other people think. Coming from the Latin words for “with” and “bread”, a Jesuit perspective of a company is “those you wish to share bread with”, opposed to today most people would not take on that particular view.
Closing his lecture, Mr. Lowney summarized the idea of what he though of leaders as. Since all people are made in the image and likeness of God, everyone should be treated as equals. Another quote he used was “when pupils love their master, they will love his teachings”, with the idea that caring about the person will lead to more interaction with his teachings. Everyone has a requirement to lead and anyone can lead. Leadership is ordinarily associated with being in charge, but leadership does not equal status. A higher status gives people a chance to lead, but leadership is a part of who we are.
The talk that Chris Lowney presented truly gave me a fresh insight on ideas that I had previously and have come to think differently about. Anyone can be a leader, not any one person is more a leader than anyone else. Since we are all leaders we are all individually responsible for ourselves and for each other, which Mr. Lowney did an excellent job of conveying.