Strategic Monk
The Value of Handcrafted Leadership
Some people have questions when they hear me talk about leading like a monk. It can be a challenge for them to see what monks have to do with the way we lead today.
The monks I know work hard to put their values into practice. They struggle to find an effective balance between time for reflection and time for daily work. Each monastic community, and each member of the community, looks for ways to fit things together.
Monastic communities value being self sufficient and self reliant. Each monastery works to develop its own revenue and its own leadership.
Monks understand we are each crafting our own understanding of leadership. No matter how we are behaving, we are creating our lives.
The leaders who inspire me appreciate the effort it takes to create handcrafted leadership. Each experience we have, each lesson we receive contributes to what we are crafting.
We craft our leadership like a master carpenter making a table or an expert weaver creating a sweater. Using the best materials we can find, we develop our skill through practice.
Our leadership is neither a theoretical nor an academic pursuit. We are each building our own way of expressing the leadership within us in the world around us. Like monks, we are working to fit things together in balanced ways.
We may practice leadership with an intricate structure or a utilitarian simplicity. Each of us desires to create leadership which expresses who we are.
As we work to build our own handcrafted leadership we begin to see a pattern emerging.
We share our leadership with the people around us, creating a network of trust. As we practice our craft we become more skilled practitioners.
Giving the Gift of Handcrafted Leadership
I value the skill and time it takes to make something by hand, maybe because I am so inept at making things with my own hands.
Art and design are not really my areas. I know what I like, which is often whatever I take the time to recognize and appreciate. The most important thing about making art, for me, is actually making it.
For me, creativity is not so much about coming up with an idea. I can understand things conceptually. The challenge for me is turning my concepts and ideas into something real.
It may be I am not patient enough. Maybe I am too much of a perfectionist. It could be I am afraid of committing myself. The process of getting what I see in my heart and mind out into the world through my hands is difficult for me.
I appreciate people who are better at art than I am, who can express their ideas and feelings in tangible, sensual ways. It is as though they see or hear, or taste or feel, more clearly or deeply than the rest of us, and then clear away the things that distract other people.
The monks I know craft lives seeking a balance including prayer, reflection, and labor. Like Medieval monks who illuminated manuscripts, monks today create works of art that share their true selves. These works include painting and musical compositions, baking bread, and even brewing beer. Their art, and the ways they create it, reflect the clarity of their lives. They craft things by hand to shape their life in the monastery, and share that life with the rest of us.
In the same way, each member of the community crafts their own leadership and shares it. They develop the leadership within them as a gift.
Developing Our Own Handcrafted Leadership
Our leadership does not arrive in a box, ready to assemble. It does not have its own illustrated checklist of instructions. We cannot order the leadership we want online.
Leadership does not develop in us because we choose the options we want it to include. We do not become the leaders we study in school or read about in books. In many ways, we cannot think our way into becoming the leaders we would like to be.
Like the monks I know, our leadership comes from within us.
More than trying to fit into someone else’s idea of leadership, we are crafting our own.
The essence of our leadership is our personal core values. We need to know ourselves well to discover and explore our own personal leadership.
As we become the people we have the potential to be we begin to recognize our leadership. We develop our own handcrafted leadership through practice.
Many people have contributed to how I craft my leadership. Some have tried to share the wisdom they have discovered. A few have wanted to push me into becoming someone I am not.
We worked to find ways to display our handcrafted leadership in the same rooms.
The Challenges of Handcrafted Leadership
Creating our own handcrafted leadership takes hard work. We need to overcome and set aside our assumptions about what makes us leaders.
It can feel like we are building a boat and sailing it at the same time. The process we have started will never truly be finished. There is always something new to learn and always more depths to explore.
As we create anything of value, we cannot be certain about where our creativity will take us. Creativity and handcrafting, by definition, mean we are going somewhere new. We are not merely repeating what someone else has already done.
Like any good craftsperson, we draw our craft from our own core values. Other people may help us see more clearly, but they cannot tell us where to go next.
There will be times when we feel discouraged or when we will wish we could start over. The benefit of handcrafted leadership, though, is it reflects who we are. We are creating it for ourselves as a gift to the people around us.
How are we creating handcrafted leadership today?
Where will our handcrafted leadership take us this week?
[Image by Toolstotal]
Greg Richardson is a spiritual life mentor and leadership coach in Southern California. He is a recovering attorney and university professor, and a lay Oblate with New Camaldoli Hermitage near Big Sur, California. Greg’s website is StrategicMonk.com, and his email address is [email protected].
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