I would rather fix my attention on one fault that I had committed than on all the evil that might be said of me. – St. Ignatius of Loyola A woman, Isabel Roser, once wrote to St. Ignatius because she was troubled by criticism from her neighbors. She and her husband were generous givers. But that prompted their neighbors, driven by envy, to spread lies about them. Ignatius told her not to be troubled. “I am not at all surprised at this, not even if it were worse than it is,” he replied. “For just as soon as you determined to bend every effort to secure the praise, honor and service ...

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  Joel Garfinkle, writing for the SmartBlog on Leadership, says losing good people is usually not the result on underpaying them. Usually the reason they leave is because of “the environment at work.”  The executive coach and author of “Getting Ahead: Three Steps to Take Your Career to the Next Level,” says: “There are many factors that contribute to an undesirable work environment, but they all have one thing in common: It’s the manager who creates the environment who is ultimately responsible for driving employees away.” In a report called ”People don’t...

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  Dr. Michael Cieslak, a Yeshua Fellow and Director of Research & Planning for the Catholic Diocese of Rockford, has produced a new training video called Foundational Principles of Parish Pastoral Councils. The 42-minute video outlines:   the various purposes of parish pastoral councils; norms they adopt to achieve their purposes; processes they can use to reach recommendations; and, different procedures used to select members for the council. It also discusses common indicators of parish vitality – measures to use in evaluating a parish’s service to its members.  I...

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  When Bob De Lorenzo left El Tesoro de los Angeles Retreat Center in Woodland Park a year ago, he took with him a passion for helping others learn to be Jesus-like S3 Leaders. He had just spent two days participating in a Catholic Leading Like Jesus Encounter and Facilitator Training, and he was eager to share the experience with others back in his home parish and wherever else he might be needed. A retired nuclear engineer with extensive military and civilian experience, he found that the principles of leading like Jesus happily integrated much of what he knew about his Catholic faith and had learned about lea...

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  The Catholic vision for leading like Jesus stresses that Jesus-like, selfless S3 leadership inspires great loyalty to mission. In contrast, self-serving leaders inevitably, if inadvertently, encourage their followers to mimic their self-serving behaviors — and then no one is looking after the mission. Jesus’ patient but persistent and visionary leadership helped his apostles grow from naïve, often bumbling and less than loyal followers to people who were willing to give their lives to serve the mission he gave them — to make disciples of all nations. And the power of that leadership is sti...

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  If you’re interested in leading like Jesus and in helping others to do so too, you may want to download a free a document offered by the Committee on Evangelization and Catechesis of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Disciples Called to Witness: The New Evangelization is a 31-page PDF file that can assist you in several ways.  It provides brief, but helpful background about the church’s teaching on discipleship and evangelization, from the Gospels, Acts, the Second Vatican Council, and the writings of Popes Paul VI, John Paul II and Benedict XVI.   It describes the r...

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  "Nothing should be said to lessen the good name of others, or to complain about them," St. Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits, advised his followers. Obviously, he was setting the bar plenty high. And some of us might wonder if we would be doomed to a life of silence if we and all our friends consistently followed this advice. After all, we know that a little complaining can even be therapeutic -- especially if we choose our listeners carefully, confident in their compassion and discretion. But complaining about and disparaging others can also become a habit -- a lens through which we unne...

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  Chery Gegelman, president of Giana Consulting, tells a story dating back to her first days of trying to make herself at home in a large corporation after working for nonprofits and small businesses. The transition was challenging. She felt very inadequate. But then the CEO of a client firm wrote a note to her regional manager, calling her "a diamond in the rough." Her boss shared the note with her. "What is interesting to me today," she says, "is that the customer who wrote the note was an incredibly successful and busy CEO. In spite of his schedule, he intentionally chose to invest hi...

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  The latest edition of the prestigious CARA Report highlights research conducted by Dr. Michael Cieslak, a Fellow of the Yeshua Institute, on why people both leave and return to the Catholic Church. Dr. Cieslak's paper, Why People Leave the Catholic Church and Why They Return: Data from the 'Catholics Come Home' Online Survey, was presented at the annual meeting of the Religious Research Association/Society for the Scientific Study of Religion in October, 2011. His research found that many people leave for no specific reason -- they just drift away. And most of those who later return fall into th...

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  Create in me, O God, a pure heart; give me a new and steadfast spirit. Psalm 51:12 By Owen Phelps, Ph.D. Director, Yeshua Catholic International Leadership Institute This verse, from the readings at Mass on Ash Wednesday, remind us of the paramount consideration in leading, living and loving as S3 Jesus-like leaders. We must constantly strive to align our hearts with Jesus' own -- focusing our lives as he focused his own always and everywhere doing the will of our Father. This is a journey of a lifetime. We can always do better. The Paulist Press Ordo says "the purpose of the first part of...

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