The Midwest Leadership Institute has developed a new metaphor to describe how effective leadership increases the performance and value of organizations: it’s a matter of breathing life into an organization. This metaphor is reflected in a new section of MLI’s web site called LifeBreath Leadership.
LifeBreath Leadership flows out of a realization that every organization is a living organism — and that to think of organizations as mechanical realities, like a watch, obscures more than it reveals.
Like any organism, an organization relies on various metabolic processes to maintain life and health and to achieve growth — and many of these processes involve exchanges with the external environment.
Perhaps the most basic exchange for higher organisms is the process of breathing — obtaining, in some way, the oxygen needed to support all essential life processes.
At a deeper level, the Judeo-Christian tradition has recognized that all life is a gift of God, graciously given to us over and over again in each moment with each breath. So we read:
The Lord God formed man out of the clay of the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and so man became a living being.
- Genesis 2:7 (NAB)
As disciples, we are called to be an instrument of God’s life-giving breath for individuals and organizations that we encounter.
Copyright © 2006 Yeshua Catholic International Leadership Institute, 208 E. North St., Durand, IL 61024. Any part of this newsletter may be reproduced so long as there is full attribution, our web site is listed, and any electronic reproduction includes a link to our site: http://www.yeshualeader.com.