Like the book on KingSolomon that Manz has in the works, Wisdom of Jesus applies the insights of a great religious teacher to the requirements of the business world: Especially to business leadership and motivation, a subject that's fascinated Manz since he was a young man. At his first job in business, for an Ohio department store, he was amazed at the degree to which people were "compliant, but not committed." It was all too reminiscent of summer jobs where he watched disaffected workers channeling their "primary creativity into creating the illusion that they were doing their jobs."
Thus, pursuing a doctorate in organizational behavior at Penn State with his mentor and later collaborator Henry Sims Jr., Manz "latched onto the idea of self-leadership." He's been pursuing it in various forms ever since. His popular titles include
For Team Members Only: Making Your Workplace Team Productive and Hassle-Free, and Company of Heroes.: Unleashing the Power of Self-Leadership.
Our excerpt from The Leadership Wisdom of Jesus is from "The Golden Rule and Beyond."
THE GOLDEN RULE IS PROBABLY the most powerful human relations strategy in the history of the world. And although it has been around for thousands of years and was prescribed by such spiritual leaders as Confucius and the Buddha well before Jesus prescribed it, it is still a sound principle today. Its practice can indeed produce valuable, golden results. The aim of treating people as we would like to be treated is to honor others as inherently valuable [spiritual] beings, as miraculous unique creations, no matter how seemingly imperfect and unworthy they are in their humanity. Each person is one of a kind; there are no duplicates.
Think for a moment about the ways you have been treated by various authority figures throughout your life. I suspect that you will recognize the simple fact that when you were treated disrespectfully, as an unworthy person of little value, not only did your view of yourself suffer but so did your view of the leader. The leaders for whom you were willing to go the extra mile were likely the ones that went an extra mile for you, the ones who believe in you even when you screwed up, the ones who recognized your great potential, your full value as a unique person.
Southwest Airlines CEO Herb Kelleher has openly demonstrated a willingness to go the extra mile for Southwest employees. He has made it a priority to learn their names and to chip in and work alongside them when the situation has demanded his help. He has been observed lugging baggage and greeting customers in an Easter Bunny costume. He has repeatedly demonstrated a truly exceptional level of caring and compassion for his employees, and his employees have responded in kind. Perhaps the most dramatic example of their commitment to their beloved leader occurred when they pooled their own money and ran a $60,000 ad in USA Today recognizing him on Bosses Day. In the ad they thanked Kelleher for being a friend, not just a boss.
The way you treat others can become self-fulfilling. As a leader you will usually find what you look for in others; they will live up or down to your expectations. The Golden Rule challenges us to give others the same chance, the same respect that we wish to receive. A great deal of research has confirmed the power of the Pygmalian (self-fulfilling prophecy) effect. Perhaps the most famous of this research was conducted in the classroom by Harvard psychologists Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson. They randomly labeled students as either bright or slow, based on fictitious IQ scores. When teachers were told which students were the brightest and the best (even though the designation was actually made randomly), the teachers treated the "special" students specially. They asked them more questions, waited longer for their answers, and generally paid more attention to these students. As a consequence these students actually became the better students the special ones. Imagine what would happen if all students were treated as special? Imagine if we treated all of our followers and co-workers in fact, everyone as though they were special (which they are), just as we would like to be treated (because we're special too)?
Jesus did indeed advocate the Golden Rule, but he went even further. He suggested that we should treat people well, as we would like to be treated, even when they don't deserve it, and even when they act in ways that are harmful to us. He went so far as to suggest that if they attack us (strike us on the cheek) we should not fight back but allow them to attack (turn the other cheek). "If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also" [Matt.5:39]. This passive but powerful approach has withstood the test of time, resurfacing in dramatic passages of history, such as in the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi. His similar philosophy, many years later, resulted in a tremendous revolutionary shift of power that changed the shape of India forever.
In the end, Jesus went far beyond any normal interpretation of the Golden Rule. He sacrificed his very life for others an act that is beyond our ordinary comprehension of what the Golden Rule means for our daily lives. Nevertheless, living and leading according to the Golden Rule at a more modest level offers us the potential to reap some very powerful results.
From The Leadership Wisdom of Jesus: Practical Lessons for Today, by Charles C. Manz, Berrett-Koehler. Hardcover $20.00.
Transforming Madness: New Lives for People Living with Mental Illness, JAY NEUGEBOREN, William Morrow.
A remarkable example of literary imagination
making itself literally useful, Transforming Madness is
a sequel to the 1997 memoir Imagining Robert. Called an
"invaluable state-of-the-art report," by Publishers
Weekly, this non-fiction book by the acclaimed novelist and
UMass writer-in-residence, published this spring, is already
being used by professionals in the mental health field.
A Name On the Quilt: A Story of Remembrance. JEANNINE
ATKINS '80, Atheneum books for Young Readers.
"Lauren misses the feeling of Uncle Ron's
hand in hers as they skated across the ice together." A
portion of the proceeds from this sweet book about a little girl
remembering her uncle goes to the NAMES Project Foundation, guardian
of the AIDS Memorial Quilt. The founding of the NAMES Quilt Archives
by UMass colleagues and alumnae KAREN LEDERER `81 and LOUISE
BLOOMBERG `73G, says the author, inspired her third children
book.
Animal Husbandry , LAURA
ZIGMAN `85, Delta Trade Paperbacks.
A hit when it appeared in hardcover from Dial Press in 1998, this comic novel is a tribute to the research skills inculcated in humanities students at the former Mass Aggie: late-night-TV producer Jane Goodall, the author's fictional heroine, "armed only with a rudimentary `cow meets bull' theory and a file full of scientific articles," turns to "Freud, Darwin, and the entire history of animal and human behaviorist theory in order to understand the men who leave without explanation."
