Leadership
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Leadership
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To exercise authority is to feel truly responsible for others and their growth, knowing too that the “others” are not property, are not objects but people with hearts in whom resides the light of God, and who are called to grow to the freedom of truth and love. The greatest danger for someone in authority is to manipulate people and to control them for his or her own goals and need for power.
Many people seem to have a strange concept of authority. They are afraid of it and of taking it on. To them authority seems to lack tenderness and relationship. They see it only as bad and bullying. Perhaps they had an authoritarian father who was neither tender nor trusting. Perhaps, too, this is one of the ills of our times: the tendency everywhere seems to be to separate authority from love and to make it legalistic.
True authority is exercised in the context of justice for all, with special attention to the weakest people, who cannot defend themselves and are part of the oppressed minority. This is an authority ready to give its life, which does not accept any compromise with evil, deceit, and the forces of oppression. A family or community authority, as well as having this sense of justice and truth, needs personal relationships, sensitivity in its action and the ability to listen, trust, and forgive. None of this, of course, excludes moments of firmness.
At the same time, and perhaps for the same reasons, many people confuse authority and the power of efficiency, as if the first role of people with responsibility is to make decisions, command effectively, and so exercise power. But their role is first of all to be people to whom others can turn for help and advice, to provide security, to affirm, to support, to encourage, and to guide.
The people who carry responsibility best are those who receive it as a mission of God and lean on his strength and the gifts of the Holy Spirit. They will feel poor and incapable, but they will always act humbly for the good of the community. They will have the community’s confidence, for it will sense that they trust not in themselves and their own vision but in God. The community will sense that such leaders have no need to prove anything, that they are not seeking anything for themselves, and that their vision isn’t clouded by their own problems. It will sense that they are willing to disappear when the moment comes.
The leader is the guardian of unity. He or she must thirst for unity and work for it day and night. For this, the leader must not fear conflict, but rather accept it and strive to be an instrument of reconciliation; the leader must be in contact with all the different elements in the community, and particularly with those who are in pain or who are angry with the community.
I see increasingly how difficult it is to exercise authority in a community. We are so inclined to want authority for the honor, prestige, and admiration that comes with it. Inside each of us is a little tyrant who wants power and the associated prestige, who wants to dominate, to be superior, and to control. We are frightened of criticism. We feel we are the only ones to see the truth – and that, sometimes, in the name of God. We interfere with the work of others, taking charge of everything and jealously guarding our authority. The others are reduced to simply carrying out our ideas, as if they were incapable of making judgments themselves. We only allow freedom when it doesn’t challenge our own authority and we can control it. We want our ideas to be put into action, and straight away. So the community becomes “our” project.
All these tendencies can very easily filter into the exercise of authority, to one degree or another. And Christians can sometimes hide these tendencies behind a mask of virtue, doing what they do for “good” reasons. There is nothing more terrible than a tyrant using religion as his or her cover. I know my own tendencies towards this and I have to struggle against them constantly.
It is important that the limits of individual power in a community are clearly understood and even written down. A father can so quickly go beyond his proper power over his children, wanting them to turn out according to his own ideas; he so quickly fails to take their freedom and their wishes into account.
It is not easy for people in authority to find the mean between too much command and too little. The dangers of pride and the desire to dominate are so great for all leaders that they need limits set to their power, and systems of control which help them to be objective and remain truly at the service of the community.
There is often the danger of failing to make a decision because we are afraid of making the wrong one, afraid of being unpopular, afraid of entering into conflict with others. And some people just have difficulty in making decisions. They like analyzing a situation, seeing all the pros and cons, but they have trouble in deciding to make changes.
But not to make a decision is in fact to make one. People with responsibility certainly need patience; they should not act in the flush of anger. They have to know how to listen, find out the facts, and take their time. But, after prayer and discussion, they also have to be able to make decisions and not let themselves be controlled by circumstances or past events.
Some communities refuse to have anyone in charge of them at all. They want to be governed democratically, through consensus, with no coordinator or leader. It would be silly to say that this is impossible. But, from my experience of L’Arche, it seems to me that the members of a community need someone to whom they can refer and with whom they can have a personal relationship. . . .
In a community which has to do with the growth of people, it is good for there to be an authority which speaks to individuals and establishes trusting relationships with them. Communities which refuse the idea of a leader are often made up of people who are oriented toward effective and absorbing work, or else to causes and other forms of action. An older community, which knows the weaknesses of its members and which welcomes vulnerable people of all sorts, realizes its need for an authority which is personal, loving, trusting, and confirming.
The quality of life of a community can decline very quickly; weakness, fragility, egoism, and apathy are quick to appear. The role of the “father” or “elder brother” is to nourish, encourage, support, forgive, and sometimes to direct and restore order, so that the quality of life remains high. We enter community not because we are perfect, objective, and intelligent but because we want to grow towards a truer wisdom and love. And if this human growth is to be possible there must be someone who listens very personally, affirms, supports, brings security, and helps people regain confidence in themselves, so that they can walk with greater courage and trust. ◆