Profound Leadership

For nearly two years, essays here at Profound Living have been exploring what it means to live lives of depth, substance, meaning. and joy. Many of these have focused on the practices of profound living, such as gratitude, generosity, humility (including intellectual humility), living in the present moment, solitude and silence, and contemplation; the experiences of profound living, such encountering the beauty and awe and wonder of nature, paying attention to our senses, along with both deep suffering and deep love; and processes of profound living, such as attending, vasting, centering, simplifying, and profundifying (that is, to recognize the importance, history, potential, interconnectedness, and usefulness of even the seemingly mundane in life). Much has focused on how qualities of profundity develop over time with attention and intention and practice, while paradoxically being experienced in the “sacrament of the present moment” as de Caussade and others have described being totally aware and present.

Our times, with the overwhelming push to “the shallows” (see Carr, 2011) of the peripatetic internet instead of reading deeply, multitasking instead of concentrating on completing one task well, mass production instead of craft, the need for recognition over character and consumption over simplicity and…well, the list goes on…our times cry out to us as individuals and as a species to attend more seriously to how we live our individual and collective lives.

This, without even addressing the existential threat of climate change looming over us or the increasing risk of unnecessary and perhaps even nuclear wars and certainly cyberwars, or the ethics of medical advances or…well, you can continue to make your own list, each of which is seemingly out of our immediate, individual ability to affect significant change cries out for leadership and, what I would call, profound leadership , at all levels of our society.

Several faculty and doctoral students in our Adult/Organizational Learning and Leadership program here at the University of Idaho are just beginning to explore what it means to be a profound leader. Next week Davin Carr-Chellman (my partner in this work of researching and exploring profound learning) will share an essay about profound leadership, and the week after that an essay about the work he and his students have been exploring about profound leadership.

I believe the times call for profound leadership, if we are to thrive and have the deepest, richest quality of life over generations. To accomplish that, humanity will have to work together. And that will require substantive leadership at all levels – home, work, community, state, national, and global – to achieve. That will require sacrificial, humble, values-based, ethically grounded, moral, paradoxically open-minded yet purposeful, continually learning, strategic, courageous, and caring leaders.

Profound leaders.

That is asking a lot.

But each of those qualities can be taught and learned, each can be encouraged and reinforced by parents, organizations, churches, and others throughout the spectrum. Each can return to take a prominent place in the values of our society.

How do I know that? Because my grandfather Milton was such a person. He was a humble Kansas farmer who read poetry and took my dad to see Carl Sandburg. He won a conservation award back before environmentalism was a thing. When he died, farmers came to harvest his crop for my grandmother. I know that because he and my grandma Hazel lived very simply, used everything they had until it couldn’t be stitched together one more time. My grandma Hazel, after my grandfather died, lived in a little apartment and spent very little money just so she could leave her grandkids – that’s me and my sibs – just a little bit money, I think it was $5,000 each, she had made when the farm had to be sold. They went to a little Methodist church, Grandview, every week and my grandpa served on the local school board.

They, along with so many others of their time, were the salt of the earth. They led their lives, their family, and in their community, with character, sacrificially, with the idea of making the world just a little bit better for my dad, his kids, and our kids.

Profound leadership. It is a sacred trust.

We will continue to explore this idea over the next couple of weeks and then as we move forward with Profound Living in the future.

References

Carr, N. G. (2011). The shallows: what the Internet is doing to our brains (Norton pbk. ed. ed.). New York: W.W. Norton.

Caussade, J. P. d. (1982). The sacrament of the present moment (1st Harper & Row pbk. ed.). San Francisco: Harper & Row.