Heroic Leadership: 2008

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Heroic Leadership: Leadership for the 21st Century

27 May 2008
Edgewater, NJ

Much has happened in the past year since my last blog entry. My decision to pursue graduate studies in Georgetown University Law Center this 2007-2008 has taken me on a journey that has changed both my professional and personal life in so many ways. I am still trying to make sense of all the changes in my life, but suffice it to say, things are at least stable enough for me to start blogging again.

So many insights over this past year that I don't know where to begin. But for now, I'm happy to upload my paper on Heroic Leadership which was presented during the Women's Leadership and Empowerment Conference held in Bangkok, Thailand last June 2007 and was published in the Journal of Global Management Research in December 2007. Just click on the title, or go to http://www.gmrjournal.com/issues.asp.

Heroic Leadership: Leadership for the 21st Century

Ever since I was a teenager, I had read countless books on leadership and management, searching for the elusive leadership paradigm that personally made sense to me. I read Sun Tzu, Stephen Covey, John Maxwell, Niccolo Macchiaveli, and practically all the books and materials on leadership that I could lay my hands on. But none of them seemed to fit.

Then I discovered Chris Lowney’s book Heroic Leadership while browsing the shelves of one of the on-campus bookstores of Ateneo de Manila University, my college alma mater, in May 2004. The title Heroic Leadership leapt out at me, and I decided to purchase the book right there and then. But for various reasons, the book just sat on my bedroom bookshelf unread for almost a year.

When I finally got around to reading Heroic Leadership the following year, I was blown away. Here at last, was the leadership paradigm that I had been searching for all these years.

Heroic Leadership discusses the leadership paradigm modeled by one of history’s most successful companies – the Society of Jesus founded by St. Ignatius of Loyola – from a business management perspective. An unlikely treatment for a religious organization, and an unlikely model for business and lay leaders.

But that, perhaps, is precisely what makes Heroic Leadership so charming and so potent. When the Society of Jesus was founded, all that its founders had originally planned was to simply “save souls” and to do what was needed to achieve that objective. There were no deliberate plans for corporate longevity and world domination. But out of that seemingly simple plan evolved a paradigm and principles that have ensured the continuing success of the Jesuits, which, for all intents and purposes, is the world’s first and oldest multinational company, being 450 years-old and still going strong.

But more importantly, despite its masculine, Catholic, and Western/European origins, Heroic Leadership is a leadership paradigm that transcends gender, religion, culture, nationality, and class, and can be embraced and applied anywhere in the world by anyone. Heroic Leadership is a very practical, effective approach to leadership that could very well have been developed by women for women, and I am sure that it will strongly resonate with you, as it has with me.

This blog is my modest attempt to share the paradigm of Heroic Leadership with a wider audience, and to articulate my thoughts and insights on leadership, empowerment, and development in my context as a young woman from a developing country that is in need of heroic leaders at this point in its history.

Heroic Leadership

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Heroic Leadership: Leadership for the 21st Century

The Book that Started It All

Heroic Leadership: Leadership for the 21st Century

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