Cross-shaped leaders are marked by personal humility. This observation is often lost on
groups and organizations, with churches being the most gullible that are desperate for order and the answersto their corporate dilemmas.

The eminent management researcher Warren Bennis declared, The manager does things right; the leader
does the right things. I've always thought that the right thing he refers to isn't so much something a person does as what a person is. Trusted leaders are humble yet strong-willed. Doing the right thing on a regular basis requires of the leader not master plans, but a paradoxical blend of humility and old-fashioned, stubborn resolve.

As we shall see in the next chapter, having a vision is irrelevant unless people first buy into the leader herself. Visions are not self-recommending or self-authenticating apart from established relationships and partnerships. In this regard, the humility of the leader, the knowledge that she is not in it only for herself, is as crucial for the mission as her expertise and vision. Humility is virtually synonymous with the intangibles of character and integrity.
 
The most surprising conclusion of Stanford researcher Jim Collins's groundbreaking study about companies that have made the transition form good to great, and have sustained their performance over the long haul, concerns the kind of CEOs they seem consistently to have. Such leaders, Collins concludes, invariably function with an odd combination of humility and doggedness. They seem to have very few ego needs; they do not seek the limelight, nor are they worried about who gets credit for what. Often, they are all but faceless to the public, known only by industry insiders. They tend not to go on talk shows or to produce inspiring business autobiographies. They direct their professional energy and effort exclusively toward the mission. This kind of leader is a rare breed. From a secular standpoint, the only thing to which I can compare this leadership profile comes from ancient wisdom traditions:

"When the Master governs, the people are hardly aware that he exists. . . .The Master doesn't talk, he acts. When his work is done, the people say, Amazing: we did it, all by ourselves!
--Tao Te Ching

Of this kind of leadership we can rightly say that the doer disappears into the deed. It's like great service at a restaurant whether it's the local greasy spoon or the city's equivalent of the Four Seasons in which the dining experience unfolds with almost no awareness of the comings and goings of the staff. Its efforts are submerged into the proceedings. Of course, such self-effacement is an ideal. Leaders of this stripe arise only once in great while. And then we wonder whether this quality is the result of nature or nurture. My own sense is that these leaders are more made than born. In the political arena, one thinks of a unique person like Harry Truman, who seems to have had few obvious ego needs, but who was dogged in the performance of his duty amid crisis and controversy, and who, when his time in office was done, went home to Missouri to lead an outwardly modest life.

Observation suggests that people have to undergo a sufficient amount of hardship, and to incorporate it into their personhood in a healthy manner, if they are to be shaped into high-functioning leaders whose only passion is the mission and the cause. When we say that someone is integrated in his or her personal development, this is what we have in mind. To be sure, it would be strange indeed if such a person had no natural endowment or talents at all; on the other hand, it would be stranger still if this individual had not been through some refiner's fire of life experience that had reshaped her and her talents. In the end, true leaders are cross-shaped.

Shalom, Don.