Spiritual change helps corporate leader work with priest

Writing in the newsletter of the Archdiocese of Wellington’s Launch Out formation programme, Margaret Bearsley said she took up her first chief executive role in a public sector agency in 2011. She did some training on the use of authority.

“There was a lot of blatant sexism in the 2010s, and I don’t mean the traditional kind in which women are put down or made to feel second class. It was the opposite, with everything male being denounced, especially ‘their’ leadership style,” she wrote.

On the other hand, a “servant leader shares power, puts the needs of the employees first and helps people develop and perform as highly as possible”.

Ms Bearsley joined her parish in the early 2010s, and for the first few projects “it was about getting the priest to ‘let’ me do the project. That involved meetings and explanations and clear outlines of what would be involved, including assuring him there would be no demands made on his own scarce time”.

“But it was a change in me that has resulted in the parish priest doing projects together with me. I can only say it was the movement of the Holy Spirit in my heart,” she said.

“I stopped doing, in my heart, the 2010s criticism of men’s (i.e., priests’) leadership style, and I started praying for my parish priest. Really praying, with love in my heart. This has to have changed my demeanour in subtle ways. My current parish priest seems to be at ease with me, and not at all threatened. I guess I no longer behave in ways that may seem threatening.”

Insights gained from the Enneagram “also enabled me to find appropriate and genuine ways to relate to my parish priest. I think this has helped him to trust that I am on his side. And he’s right; I truly am”.

“And when we work together, we are totally a team,” she said.

“To sum up, pastoral leadership seems to me to work well when the Holy Spirit is at its heart. The only authority the pastoral leader has is that of submitting to the power of the Holy Spirit. Recognising my parish priest’s strengths and vulnerabilities, and authentically supporting him, has been just about all it’s taken to be able to achieve projects, programmes, liturgies and meetings together in a real partnership. The rest is just good skills and doing the hard yards.”

FULL STORY

July Launch Out Letters (Archdiocese of Wellington)