The Narrow Path to Expansive Vision

In the course of my career as a leader in healthcare administration in various communities in our country, and currently as the President and CEO of a national health and well-being organization with more than 40,000 employees serving communities in 28 states, there isn’t any education out there I know of that helped us effectively translate Christian belief into a leadership approach that works at the office and keeps faith tenants unchallenged. I know that may sound critical, but my experience with multiple churches, pastors, and the endless content on podcasts, news articles, the Internet and social media, and other media, all seem lacking when helping to make meaningful connections between our faith and leadership.
There was an occasion a couple of years ago when I was working on several presentations at one time. I had a presentation to a business community in one neat, tall pile, and a stack of files for my Bible study group in another neat, and very tall, pile. And then the two piles teetered and fell onto one combined mess. I was immediately upset that the piles had fallen together, but as I sat back in my desk chair, it struck me hard how these two piles were really one. The Good to Great philosophy of leadership from Jim Collins collided with Jeremiah’s scribe, Baruch, who In Jeremiah 45:5 was charged to “…seek great things for yourself? Do not seek them.” This was not the orderly world from my youth.
What had happened seemed like a tremendous metaphor for the separateness of leadership and faith that has frustrated me throughout my career, and it struck a chord.
This epiphany is one main reason for this book. It is about my life’s journey in trying to balance and apply the foundation of taking the narrow path in a secular world and a misguided church, and how to follow the leadership example of the greatest leader in history: Jesus Christ.
So where do we turn to find a leadership example in an “all about me” world? There are a ton of leadership books out there – by both secular and Christian experts. It can be overwhelming for anyone to sift through all the literature on how to develop and create a leadership approach. It’s even more challenging for those who are trying to weave their faith into their leadership style. The Christian books on leadership seem to be focused on how pastors and other Christian leaders can enhance their leadership approach with their members. But there is not much available for business leaders or even community leaders to find inspiration. Over my career and particularly as I became President and CEO, I tried to follow the approach of many secular leaders since that seemed the modern thing to do, yet, while the expertise and advice provided in these books and articles has been interesting and useful, something essential was missing.
At a church where I was attending several years ago, we had a group of people who had formed a book club focused on leadership. We challenged the group to look at famous secular experts on leadership and leading change, and then we compared key principles in these venerable books to the leadership example of Christ. What we found, over and over, was that Christ lived these leadership concepts thousands of years before some of these experts were even born.
The more we dug into the comparison, the more we found similarities, and served as another inspiration for the creation of The Narrow Path to Expansive Vision, I realized that only way to make sense of it all was to base my leadership approach on Jesus Christ. It is a path that leads to true meaning, a path of faith, and a path that leads to salvation…
Taking the narrow path does not mean you are rigid and narrow minded. It is the opposite of that. It provides you a framework, a context, a lens for your life narrative that will allow you to have a broader, more inclusion vision for your life purpose. And that is Key! It is the ultimate purpose…
Taking the narrow path is about having the discipline and the strength to truly try to follow a Christ-inspired life and leadership approach. It is a life of servant leadership, the last is first and first is last. Not a world of the “gospel according to me.” It is looking at Christ’s example of leadership in everything we do. Understanding, of course, that this is aspirational as we are all incomplete as people and leaders…
How do you live a narrow-path life in a wide-path world and society? Where do you make compromises? Are there topics you just don’t talk about? How do you refocus after you fail? What boundaries do you draw where you say, I am just not going there? This book will hopefully help answer some of those questions…
For the last several years, I have given a leadership lecture at a local university which includes a very diverse audience of mostly younger people, business majors as well as liberal arts majors, Christians and non-Christians. In my most recent leadership academy lecture, I have increasingly talked openly about the connection I have with my faith, and how that impacts my work, as well as the importance of having a true balance between your work and you home life. I was curious how talking about these connections would go over, but I was pleasantly surprised at the reaction I got from the students; they were very positive about my willingness to talk about the connection between my work and my faith and home life. And I was humbled honestly that they were finding the words I offered to be in some fashion inspiring, and that this could be an approach that they should take as they entered the real world…