On Meaning and Spirit in Leadership

Abstract

October 2008 This article in unlike anything I have written before. Now, near the end of my career, I finally wish to tell you what has been in my heart all of this long journey, some of which has since been substantiated by science. And, as I am hardly the first person to think these thoughts, I will include many references. In fact, I will start with a quote from Karl Meninger: Time was when a hospital was a place in which to die. It was not a place of mercy and of healing, but one of endurance, charity, and pity. But the meaning of the modern hospital is quite different. It is no longer an asylum, no longer a pest house, no longer a hotel on the way to God. It is a beacon, a lighthouse, and for all the scenes of suffering, it is a place of joy. It is a place in which people come not to die, but to cease dying; a place in which to get well. Temporary refuge it may be, and in another sense from the original truly a hotel of god. A way station on the way not to death but to life. Even as we sit and look at these walls, and touch them with our hands, walk upon the solid floors and admire the physical beauty, we know, that all this is not a hospital. Like the corrupting mortal flesh in which eternal spirits are housed, a hospital building is only a shell in which the meaning of a hospital can be realized. So, what is the meaning of a hospital? The meaning of this hospital is embodied in the fabric of the personalities, the human beings who work together in it. In the end, the ultimate meaning is to be found in the character of each individual working in it, and in the kind of relationships that constitute that individual’s life.1 What, indeed, is this thing called character? And how does one inspire and form relationships worthy of someone’s life effort? For almost all of my professional life, I have addressed the subject of ethics: a discipline in which one attempts to identify, organize, analyze, and justify human acts by applying certain principles to deterOn Meaning and Spirit in Leadership