The 8 Core Practices of Leadership
as Cultivated through Jewish Practice
Self-Discipline through the Holidays
The Jewish holidays offer us an opportunity to cultivate our individual middot (virtues or character strengths), such as courage, compassion and curiosity, which are the foundation of leadership. Cultivation of middot begins with self-reflection and a belief in the possibility of self-growth. We then realize our potential through learning from our failures and by becoming self-disciplined. A musar approach to the Jewish holidays provides a temporal scaffolding to engage in the disciplined practice of virtuous leadership growth.
Improvisation through Creative Ritual
Families are creatively re-crafting traditional rituals to meet their particular needs and embody their shared aspirations for their families’ future. In doing so, they are developing their capacity for collaborative design thinking. This involves deep empathy, questioning our mental models, redefining the challenges before us, and prototyping our next moves in leading. With our world increasingly in flux, we can no longer lead through the “tired and true” nor rely on multi-year, strategic plans. Crafting our own rituals cultivates the creative skills and comfort with flexibility that we will need to co-design leadership as a group improvisation in response to our adaptive challenges.
Emergence through Communal Singing
As leaders and participants in communal, prayerful singing, we cultivate our ability to attune to one another and to align our voices in common purpose. We balance our individual intentions with being present for the whole. Eventually, we let go in order to see what comes. And, then we respond intuitively. In the sacred community of singing, we are presencing in the world the emerging future we seek to bring forth. In so doing, we may come to hear the Divine call and learn to lead from the emerging future.
Promise through Covenanting
At Mount Sinai, the Jews entered into a covenant with the Divine, which bound them together in obligation to the commandments. In contemporary society, these traditional bounds no longer hold and prior commitments lack the force of obligation. Though, if we hear the call of the Divine today, we may choose to renew our promise to walk together on the journey of responsible leadership. This involves leading with others who bring differing, but valued, perspectives, skills, and middot. We learn to craft brave spaces where all feel safe though stretched in their abilities to lead together. Emerging in Jewish life is a new practice of covenanting, through which we nurture partnerships with the promise of fulfilling our sacred aspirations.
Hope through Creative Interpretation
Today, everyone can become a midrashist – a commentator on Jewish text. Instead of just consulting traditional, rabbinic commentaries, we are empowered to bring meaning to the text and author new interpretations by connecting it to our own life. In so doing, we re-enchant our lives through re-telling our personal stories in the tropes and metaphors of Torah. During the long journey of leadership, we can despair and falter without a sense of collective achievement and future possibilities. Through collective and creative drash-ing, our seemingly insignificant, daily efforts take on existential significance as part of the intergenerational journey the Jewish People.
Interdependency in Walking the Land
When we walk the land, we develop a situated awareness of our self in relation to others and the natural environment. We come to see ourselves as embedded in webs of relationships that continually influence our own behaviors and through which we can best exert influence in the world. We learn to get in sync with the groups, systems, and global whole of which we are a vital but small interconnected part, as they organically respond to change. More so, we discover that we can often be the problem we seek to solve. We learn to let go and trust in what is emergent. As we walk the land, we awaken to its blessings and to ourselves as a source of blessing.
Wholeness through Shabbat
More than any other mitzvot, Shabbat has become both common and diverse. Today, the forms of our observance vary as we each seek a personally authentic experience, mindful (but not beholden) of that which is religiously authentic. Yet, regardless of the particularities of our observance, Shabbat is a discipline that requires practice, if we hope to bring forth a Shabbat that offers to us that elusive taste of the wholeness that redemption ultimately promises. It offers a dojo for the disciplined practice of cultivating our own authentic leadership. Through practicing Shabbat, we come to understand how to embody the future in our present actions, and thus how to become unique and exemplary models of Jewish leadership.
Dialogue through Text-Study
In a havruta approach to text study, we seek to learn about our study partner as much as we do about the text. In so doing, we develop our ability to be fully present, to deeply listen, and to engage in inquiry. We cultivate our capacity to hold opposing ideas (without immediately needing to reject one or the other) and to discover a third way forward. Mostly, we come to value the unique perspectives and virtues that others bring. While leadership begins with us, it always engages others. Through havruta text study, we foster fellowships of dialogue, along with cultivating the middot needed to sustain them.