GOLD Award Winner – 2020 Kops-Fetherling International Book Award for Leadership.
Award-winning author Peter Darcy offers the leaders of church and charity a book for leadership wisdom in the non-profit arena. No-Nonsense Non-Profit is primarily a leadership book for new leaders who are unsure of the basics of organizational behavior or the disciplines needed to conduct a successful mission through a non-profit., but it is also for those who are currently in leadership positions and want to be more effective in their mission.
This Christian leadership book for men and women will give you:
• New leadership advice and self-help for beginners
• Real tools for managing people and organizations
• A leader’s guide to storytelling as an effective communication strategy
• Ways to ask for buy-in from your team
• Insight into why the Titanic failed (hint: epic leadership fail), and
• The basics about who was Joan of Arc and why she was the most effective leader of her day.
No-Nonsense Non-Profit will teach you the primary leadership trait: giving hope to others.
The focus on leadership in the non-profit realm (church and charity) makes this book rather unique among leadership books. It a nice blend of stories, practical wisdom, and solid principles that anyone can implement in the work of serving others. It comes out of the author's own lived experience in the diverse field but reads more like a conversation between colleagues than like an instruction manual. All in all, it's a great resource and very well organized for easy reference.
The book begins and ends with two "bookend" chapters, which is my favorite aspect of the book. The opening section about the failures of leadership on the Titanic is meant to contrast with the ending section about Joan of Arc's astonishing leadership virtues.
Here is the concluding chapter on Joan of Arc:
Conclusion
Potestas and Auctoritas
“Don’t be Rambo. Instead, be as subtle as you can – until you can’t. And then lead.”
~Jocko Willink
Speaking of subtle, a great way to showcase an education is to start throwing around Latin terms, so here goes: Potestas and Auctoritas. You may never have heard these words, but they have everything to do with leadership and also are a good way to tie together all we have discussed in this book.
To boil them down to their clearest definitions, potestas means “power” and auctoritas means “authority” (that one was pretty easy to translate). Potestas was used by the Romans to describe the political, legal power of the Roman Emperors and their deputies, or the power implicit in military rank. It is coercive power, by its very nature. auctoritas, on the other hand, was used to describe the influence that derives from striking personal characteristics like robust intelligence, virtue, charisma, dynamism, vitality, spiritual giftedness, etc. It has no sense of coercion attached to it but of attraction and persuasion.
For our purposes, these terms are useful in describing two types of human power, two qualities of a person’s influence, both of which have their place and proper roles in leadership.
The Role of Potestas
If someone hires you for an executive position (in business, government, no-profit, education, etc.), you receive automatically some measure of potestas over the institution you lead. A CEO, as noted in the last chapter, inherits a full measure of legal power to run his organization on the day he assumes office: he can hire and fire; he can sign checks and freely use the assets of the company for business purposes; he controls the day-to-day operations and the employment fortunes of his associates, etc. Potestas goes with the territory of holding an office, as do the burdens of responsibility. A leader is judged to be competent if he lives up to these responsibilities, or at least if he doesn’t drive the organization into the ground, legally or financially.
On the plus side, people with legal/coercive power can create change quickly in their environments: when an organization is in distress; if certain operations or programs need immediate overhaul; when incompetent managers have to be removed from entrenched positions; to meet powerful external threats, etc. Law enforcement, security guards, military forces, and courts all use coercive power to protect human society from its worst members. We should be glad when responsible people in authority use this type of power correctly – for service and protection.
A leader who wears his potestas on his sleeve, though, can be one of the worst people to work for, as witnessed by the countless employees who have had to endure overbearing personalities, arbitrary decision-making, manipulation, bullying, yelling, and the like from bad bosses.
Whenever you are put in charge of others, you have potestas, even if you are just the church choirmaster or the head of the maintenance crew. An insecure, self-important person with a bit of power can be the bane of our existence if he runs an organization that provides services we need, like the local driver’s license bureau or the controlling condo association.
Didn’t Jesus Himself note such a tendency when He told his disciples not to be like the pagans who “lord it over others” (Matthew 20:25)?
There are many more modest forms of potestas too. Parents have authority/power to get children to do things and to punish them if they misbehave. Supervisors watch over us in most areas of life: schools and sports, jobs of all types, anything with an office, rank, boss or board. All exercise potestas.
The Role of Auctoritas
This is where auctoritas becomes relevant. Defined as persuasion or influence, auctoritas doesn’t need an official commission of any type. It operates in any environment and has a very human face. I call it the soul of leadership because, as I’ve taken pains to emphasize in this book, leadership is all about people, and human beings are more readily influenced into doing something than coerced into it. They want to be inspired to action, not told what to do. They can also be discouraged or scandalized by negative or failed influencers.
By its very nature, auctoritas radiates from a person as an aura or deep sense of confidence that appeals to the minds and hearts of others. It doesn’t force behavior; it motivates people to take action and inspires them to make their own decisions. This is what makes influencers so powerful.
Advertisements claiming that “9 out of 10 doctors recommend” such-and-such a product; celebrity endorsements for a cause or product; top performers promoting something in their area of expertise: these are what we call arguments from authority. They marshal the aura, feeling, excitement, confidence, expertise or inspiration of influential people or groups to get you to buy what someone is selling, literally or metaphorically. It’s entirely natural for people to use influence this way. Virtually everyone exercises a degree of influence over others, whether that is giving professional advice to a client, exhorting one of your children to do better in school or selling Girl Scout cookies door to door. It’s all influence.
That last example reminds me of one of my friends in Scouting when I was a teenager. He was a chubby, freckle-faced kid with dimples, a perennially bad haircut and a winning smile. His personality was effervescent to the point of annoying because he never stopped talking or dreaming up wild projects, which he dragged me into, whether I liked it or not.
Nevertheless, when it came time to sell tickets to the Boy Scout jamboree or chocolate bars for a troop fundraiser, my friend shattered all sales records every year. People just loved him and opened their wallets to buy whatever he was selling. My friend had some serious auctoritas (and is probably a very rich man today.)
On the other hand, auctoritas can also be abused: for evil or immoral purposes; for manipulation and deception; to take advantage of the ignorant or vulnerable. History has its share of cults and sects, charlatans and shysters to paint the downside of auctoritas in living color.
Finding the Right Balance
Some people can’t be coerced but everyone can be influenced. A leader who is in a position to exercise potestas must do so with the moderating power of auctoritas or his leadership will lack strength and end up as a destructive force. At the same time, someone who lacks potestas may still be an effective leader over his own area of influence if he has strong auctoritas. Like my annoying friend.
Which type of leadership authority is more essential? Neither. Both are equally important for healthy human communities and organizations. Which leadership power is more effective in creating change? Potestas in the short-term, auctoritas in the long-run. However, when a person integrates both qualities of power into his leadership, he is someone who can bring dramatic, transformative change to his sphere of influence.
The key leadership challenge, therefore, is to learn to integrate the two types of power into one’s personal leadership style. Both powers must be held in a balance within the leader himself, which means that his own inner transformation – through self-awareness and mature understanding of how these powers operate – is a prerequisite to changing anyone or anything outside of him.
Let’s conclude our book with the example of one effective leader who integrated these powers into an amazing life and mission that changed history.
The Leadership Competence of Joan of Arc
One of the most extraordinary leaders of all time was Joan of Arc, the 15th Century maiden who took up arms to liberate her country (France) from the occupation of a foreign power (England) and to put an end to the Hundred Years’ War.
She was only eighteen years old when she did that. Imagine.
Auctoritas in Action
Joan of Arc had no official status for most of her short life but was full of the radiating aura of a personal and almost mystical auctoritas. She was a farm girl from a backwater region of France that was fervently loyal to the French monarch while deeply resenting their English occupiers. At age fourteen, she began to experience spiritual visions of St. Michael the Archangel, who told her that she was the one chosen by God to free her country from the grip of the English.
Over a three year period, St. Michael’s messages took on the character of a specific mission for Joan: she was to go to the crown prince of France (referred to as the dauphin) and urge him to appoint her as head of the army. Then, she was to lift the English siege of the city of Orléans in north-central France to prevent the enemy from taking control of the whole country. After that, Joan was to bring the dauphin, Charles, to Rheims Cathedral to be crown the rightful king of France. That was all.
Nothing difficult about that assignment, right?
The full story is extremely complex, and we cannot enter into more than a few details here. I encourage the reader to do his own research into Joan’s fascinating story. I highly recommend starting with Mark Twain’s novel, Personal Reflections of Joan of Arc, which is brilliant.
It is enough for our purposes to say that, while still in her late teens, Joan set out on her mission to urge the political and military leaders of her day to give her command of the army so that she could drive the English out of France. This was something even the greatest military leaders of the age had been unable to do for nearly a century!
Whenever I think of Joan’s fearlessness in this mission, I often wonder: What persuasive power must it have taken to convince the politicians and military men of her day to give command of their army to an illiterate teenage girl seeing visions? It’s hard to imagine powerful men of any time or culture agreeing to an arrangement like that. The whole venture is astonishing on its face. That Joan was successful in her quest was first and foremost a miracle of grace but also a testimony to the extraordinary personal auctoritas borne by that young woman.
Postestas in Action
Within three months of setting out on her mission of persuasion, Joan entered upon her mission of power. She received from the dauphin the potestas to lead the armed forces of France for the purpose of driving the occupying English forces out of their country.
Without delay, Joan launched into the campaign to lift the siege of Orléans, and everyone, from the monarch to the lowest peasant, held their collective breath to see if she would succeed. Not only did she succeed, but she scored a decisive French victory over a more powerful English force in just one week.
She then led her troops to an open field north of Orléans, where the two armies fought what is known to history as the lopsided Battle of Patay. In a surprise attack, the French killed as many as two thousand English soldiers in one day while losing only three sons of France in the fighting.
From there, Joan and the victorious French forces blazed a trail through 165 miles of enemy-held territory, liberated cities under English domination and successfully saw to the crowning of the dauphin, Charles VII, as the rightful King of France. That’s as awesome an expression of sheer potestas as there ever was.
It’s not hard to see that Joan of Arc wielded her military authority with lethal effectiveness, although she herself never killed anyone. She also bristled with personal authority in carrying out her mission, which is why so many soldiers joined the effort to liberate France under her leadership. The integration of both types of authority in the inner life of one dynamic personality profoundly changed the political relations between two nations and had an enormous effect on the future of an entire continent.
The Leadership Fusion
We cannot imitate Joan of Arc’s example of heroism, and we shouldn’t try. Few people in history could reproduce Joan’s perfect synthesis of influence and power in the fulfillment of her mission. Yet, we can strive to achieve our own unique integration of virtue and authority to have an effect on our God-given missions.
To assist our efforts, let us consider a few aspects of Joan’s mission, which confirm many of the lessons in this book.
● Joan of Arc believed, without question, in the goodness of her cause, and she sacrificed everything – comfort, home, family, her reputation, and ultimately, her life – to accomplish it;
● Prior to her arrival on the scene, the fighting forces of France were in complete disarray and on the verge of losing both war and country to a bitter enemy; Joan rallied her disconsolate troops to heroic nobility and sacrifice in the service of a worthy cause;
● The French kingdom had been impoverished by the Black Plague and nearly eighty years of war, but Joan used the meager material assets at her disposal to carry out bold, unprecedented campaigns and achieve the most astounding victories;
● Her leadership revivified an entire nation; prior to Joan, the French culture and traditions were merging with the dominant English culture; after Joan, the monarchy was confirmed, the unique French identity restored, and the people were once again unified.
Most importantly, Joan of Arc faithfully accomplished what she was asked to do by God and thus fulfilled her unique calling. In that sense, Joan of Arc was one of the most unifying spiritual figures in all of Western history, despite being a controversial figure of her day who was hated by many. Unconcerned about her own reputation, she allowed God to work through her. She also brought to His service a personal dynamism the likes of which has rarely been seen in the annals of warfare and culture.
Joan of Arc symbolizes, in heroic terms, the main lessons of leadership we’ve been examining. It’s good to have heroes!
Our book began with an epic failure and ends with epic leadership success. To summarize what should be obvious by now, Joan nurtured within herself the perfect fusion of potestas and auctoritas. In contrast, Captain Smith had potestas but lacked auctoritas. In contrast, most of the real heroes of the Titanic lacked potestas but exercised auctoritas to a heroic degree in the service of others. The 1,500 passengers who died on the Titanic might never have been lost if Captain Smith had internally synthesized both dimensions of leadership. Saying this is not a judgment on the man but a leadership warning for each one of us, myself above all.
A leader can do much with potestas alone or with auctoritas alone, but it is infinitely better that a leader fuse both powers of leadership into a personal integration of virtue and action that always changes the world for the better.
That’s why we got into the incredible enterprise of non-profit work in the first place, isn’t it?
Go, be Joan.