Learn Leadership from the Saints. Why Not

For centuries, we have looked to the Saints for prayers, intercessions, healing, and guidance on just about everything in life, from how to worship God to how we must go about our relationships with one another, and even to finding missing keys. But rarely have the Saints been looked to as leadership models. Today’s world can greatly benefit from the leadership examples of the Saints. Their style may be countercultural to the high-powered profit-driven method of today’s corporate boardrooms, which history often tells us is not the most effective and most enduring style of leadership. What we will find in the leadership of the saints are some of the most effective, proven, timeless, and transcendent templates for how to lead.  The Saints model is fundamentally one that resonates with the human spirit as it strives for perfection. There is something refreshing, profound, and extraordinary about the models of the Saints. Something very fundamental. Something very human but at the same time heavenly. Something very holy and set apart but at the same time accessible. Something very good.

Saints are people set apart because they are holy. The word holy essentially means “set apart.” And just like holiness, leaders are also set apart from the rest. We often choose our leaders because they stand out from the rest. If we keep probing and examining the lives of the Saints, we will realize that saintliness (or holiness) and leadership are actually compatible, complementary, and even fundamentally one and the same. God's call for us to be holy comes with the call to lead. The Saints were first responding to the call to holiness before they became leaders. They became leaders on their way to holiness. The pursuit of holiness builds character and character is what we need in our leaders. We don’t just need great leaders, we need saintly leaders.

Even in our profit-driven culture, leadership is more than just meeting the bottom line. It is more than just being able to produce and deliver results. It is more than a positional title. Leadership is more than what we currently perceive it to be. Leadership is about showing others the way.

The word Lead comes from the old English word, laed, which means “path” or “road.” The verb laedan means “to travel.” Essentially, someone who gets on this path to travel and learn the path is a leader who other fellow travelers would then follow. And so from this conceptualization, you can see how the word leader could have evolved. A leader is someone who, essentially, gets on the path, learns the path, and in some way “guides” his or her fellow travelers along this path.

In another ancient context, there is the Latin word, ductare, which has been used to define leadership. It is the same Latin root for education, adducere, which means “to draw out.” The Latin noun ductor means “a leader.” Hence, educators are leaders in more ways than one. They guide and they draw out the best from their students.

With this tracing of the origin of the word for leadership, it is not a huge leap to make the connection between the call to leadership and our call to follow Christ. In our calling to follow Christ is a call for us to lead— to show others the way. We are called to lead one another, to empower one another, and to bring out the best in one another. One of the most influential leadership experts, John C. Maxwell, put it this way: “A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.” For us Christians, we know that way because Christ has shown us the way, the truth and the life (see John 14:6). As followers of our leader, Jesus Christ, we are called not only to go the way of Christ, but to also show others the way.

The Saints have a lot to teach us about leadership. The Saints can teach us how to respond to the call to leadership because the call to leadership is, first, a call to holiness. We can learn about how to develop the most important requirement of successful leadership—character. We can turn to the Saints, our “older brothers and sisters”, for guidance on how to respond to the call to leadership and the call to holiness. Let us pray to them and pray with them. Let us ask for wisdom. Let us ask the Saints to help us ask God to grant us the grace so that we may open our eyes to see what it means to be a leader as well as a saint in His kingdom.

Find your patron saint and ask him or her to guide you as you lead your organization, your community, your family. 

For more about the lessons in leadership from the Saints, read my latest book, as I got to explore and dive deep into the lives of the Saints, looking for examples and models for today's leadership demands.