Effective Leaders: Serving With Purpose: Faith to Lead

'Effective Leaders: Serving With Purpose' profiles five leaders who bring wisdom, compassion, and a servant's heart to their positions of authority.

Being a true leader is not the same as just being the one in charge, but instead means guiding with wisdom, compassion, and a servant's heart. On May 27, the series Effective Leaders: Serving With Purpose premieres on Family Theater Productions' YouTube channel, profiling five leaders who do just that.

Who Are the Effective Leaders?

Those featured in the series come from a wide variety of organizations, from education to ecclesial to community service to scouting and nursing. What they have in common is not just a desire to issue orders but to lift up all those around them.

Effective Leaders launches with a profile of Derry Connolly, PhD, the Founding President of John Paul the Great Catholic University.

Future weekly episodes feature Bishop Matthew G. Elshoff, OFM Cap. (Episcopal Vicar for Our Lady of the Angels Pastoral Region of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles); Rev. Gregory J. Boyle, S.J. (Founder and Director of Homeboy Industries); Scouting America scout leader Pierre Landry; and Mary Lynne Knighten, DNP, RN, NEA-BC (DNP Program Director, Associate Professor, and DNP Clinical Residency Coordinator for Azusa Pacific University).

The Faith to Lead

Several of the participants also share how their Catholic faith has helped them find the best way to show the way to others.

In particular, there's Father Greg (as he's commonly called), who's known nationwide, if not worldwide, as the founder of Homeboy Industries. He's an example of someone who saw a problem, sought a solution to it, and created something of great impact and lasting value -- while staying humble and grounded.

As the website says:

A native Angeleno and Jesuit priest, from 1986 to 1992 Father Boyle served as pastor of Dolores Mission Church in Boyle Heights, then the poorest Catholic parish in Los Angeles that also had the highest concentration of gang activity in the city. 

Father Boyle witnessed the devastating impact of gang violence on his community during the so-called “decade of death” that began in the late 1980s and peaked at 1,000 gang-related killings in 1992.  In the face of law enforcement tactics and criminal justice policies of suppression and mass incarceration as the means to end gang violence, he and parish and community members adopted what was a radical approach at the time: treat gang members as human beings. 

As a result:

Homeboy Industries is the largest gang rehabilitation and re-entry program in the world. For over 30 years, we have stood as a beacon of hope in Los Angeles to provide training and support to formerly gang-involved and previously incarcerated people, allowing them to redirect their lives and become contributing members of our community.

The Inspiration for Effective Leaders

Producer for the series for Family Theater Productions is Digital Content Creator Jay Cooney, who drew inspiration for the series from his early year in scouting.

He recalls,

I kept thinking to myself, is there any consensus any longer on what a good leader is, and was there ever a consensus?

And the idea of leadership started to ruminate, and then I thought about growing up, going through Boy Scouts, and how I had the good fortune of having good scoutmasters.

I had good teachers growing up. Those people I always looked to, as leaders.

And so the initial idea was more of the community leader, the volunteer leader, the scoutmaster, or the teacher. But then as we developed it, our team, and our group, decided that we wanted to also go after some leaders who were kind of in the top of their field, if possible.

And so we did reach out to some people who are leaders, not just in the community, but also in places of power. And so hence interviewing the bishop, and some of the other folks.

Cooney then asked himself:

What are the qualities, and who's the type of person that's going to step up and raise their hand and say, "Yes, I will do that difficult task that is often not being thanked."

And so looking at what those people do, and saying what is the value they bring to these community organizations, to the Church, and how do they navigate the challenges?

The Leaders Speak

You'll have to watch the full episodes to hear all the leaders have to say, but here's a sample of each's philosophy.

• Dr. Derry Connolly: “If you’re not failing, you’re not trying hard enough. But in failing, God is humbling you, I think. I just don’t beat myself up anymore if we fail. I think the worst failure is not trying.”
• Bishop Matthew Elshoff: “I would go to the Gospel of John, Chapter 13, which is the washing of the feet. That’s how I would look at Jesus as the ultimate servant leader, as the model for leadership.”
• Father Greg Boyle: “Jesus ... as a model leader, He invited us to take four things seriously ... inclusion, non-violence, unconditional loving kindness, and compassionate acceptance.”
• Pierre Landry: “Opportunity is my favorite word in Scouting. You become a leader in a couple of ways. One is by studying it, but really you learn how to become a leader by doing.”
• Mary Lynne Knighten: “’Nurses lead from where we stand.’ I coined this phrase, because I believe anyone can be a leader. Leadership occurs informally and as the result of positional authority. Staff nurses can be leaders when they identify better ways to provide patient care, and they share the evidence with their peers and management.”

Takeaways for Current and Future Leaders

Asked what he hopes leaders will take away from watching the series, Cooney says:

My hope is that, if any leaders watch this series and have a takeaway, that it might be an increase of compassion. Having the compassion to listen to your followers, to listen to the people that you are serving is important, because over time, people's needs change.

Over time, we can learn things about various communities, that we may not have known when we started out.

And having that additional knowledge can only help us to be more equipped, and more prepared for the challenges facing us, in times that are also changing.

The show's official website is at EffectiveLeaders.org. Click here for the YouTube playlist.

Leadership in Action in Playing Like a Girl: The House That Rob Built

And if you want to learn more about how leadership can change everything, check out our feature documentary Playing Like a Girl: The House That Rob Built.

The story of how Coach Rob Selvig transformed the Lady Griz basketball team at the University of Montana over his 38-year tenure is available on Prime Video (for digital rental/purchase, and streaming for PBS Documentaries Channel subscribers), at PBS.org (for Passport members), and is airing on PBS stations nationwide.

Cooney also drew inspiration for his own leadership style from the world of college basketball.

He says:

It was a book I was reading while making the series. It was Leading from the Heart, by Coach [Mike] Krzyzewski from Duke. And what I learned from Coach K, was that there is a level of performance necessary from a leader, to put on the right face, the right tone towards the people that are on your team, or towards your players or followers, in the sense, so that they see the confidence that you have, to do the task.

Image: Family Theater Productions

Based on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, California, Family Theater Productions makes Emmy, Gabriel, and Christopher Award-winning stories that unlock hearts to the possibilities of love, family, and faith. Founded by Venerable Patrick Peyton in 1947.

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