Introduction
Gravitas is the playbook for those committed to developing spiritually and emotionally healthy cultures in their spheres of influence.
~ MIKE MATZINGER, PhD, president of Burlington Chemical Co.
In Gravitas, Jerome has bridged the gap between spiritual leadership and business leadership. Combining ancient principles with business practices gives confidence on Monday morning to marry the two realities.
~ BOBB BIEHL, presidential mentor at Masterplanning Group
Marketplace leaders often feel that leadership success and Christlikeness pull in opposite directions. But what if leadership is the perfect setting for Christlikeness? It can be, and this book illuminates a compelling path for anyone who wants to grow deep to lead large.
~ CHAD HALL, MCC, director of coaching at Western Seminary
In Gravitas, Jerome Daley outlines the process and practices that give a leader true weight. A must-read for anyone ready to deepen their roots and extend their reach.
~ ANGIE WARD, PhD, leadership author and teacher
Stirring yet practical, drawing on ancient yet relevant principles and practices that are transformative.
~ FIL ANDERSON, author of Running on Empty
With beautifully constructed prose, a passion for leaders to become their best selves, and deeply rooted spirituality, Jerome Daley has created a guidebook that invites engagement with age- old spiritual practices, resulting in real character in the real world.
~ TINA STOLTZFUS HORST, founder of Coaching Mission International
I wish I had read this book forty years ago!
~ ED GORE, president and executive director of Fairhaven Ministries
At the beginning of every major spiritual shift in history, God invites men and women into the desert to develop what Jerome Daley refers to as gravitas—a spiritual authority gained mostly by enduring loss in God’s presence. If you’re ready to abandon the endless frenzy of ministry expansion and willing to embrace the quiet rootedness of spiritual substance, Gravitas will lead you there.
~ STEVE WIENS, author of Shining like the Sun, Beginnings, and Whole
This in-depth, captivating book looks into the profoundness of making a mark in the world with the strength of God-sized leadership and authority—the kind of leadership that stems from concentrated time in the presence of God, enabling you to lead with the virtues and lens of Christ.
~ MARY VERSTRAETE, PCC, leadership coach and consultant
A warmly insightful invitation and guide for living and leading in the real world from a place rooted in true desire, faith, and purpose.
~ CLIF van PUTTEN, MD, anesthesiologist, and DESRIE van PUTTEN, branch sales manager at Guarantee Real Estate
A profound and highly practical read. A call to become a leader of weight and depth. Gravitas is a game changer.
~ STEVE KELLER, lead pastor at Cornerstone Community Church, Greeley, CO
With refreshingly clear insight and rare vulnerability, Jerome Daley calls us to a place of spiritual centering for the fruitful and flourishing life that we leaders long for.
~ STEVE HASE, chair of the Greater Charlotte C12 Group
Surprisingly fresh, modern, and entirely impactful in today’s workplace.
~ JEFFREY BRAMS, ESQ., GC and VP, science and international, at Garden of Life
Well written and challenging in the best of ways, this book is invitation more than admonition; and therein lies its beauty and power.
~ JEFF HARRIS, president of Jeff Harris and Associates
Succeeds beautifully in helping business leaders create an environment of transformation that our broken world needs so desperately.
~ DAVID HUGHES, ambassador at the Transforming Center
This book will yield a life of spiritual authority with the ability to swim in an enticing way against the nonstop, depleting world we are living in.
~ ROY KING, adjunct professor of ministry studies at Columbia International University
This is a valuable and practical guide for deep spiritual-character formation. Daley builds on ancient Christian disciplines to provide insights and inspiration to anyone in Christian leadership who wants to heal and strengthen their soul.
~ ROBERT A. FRYLING, author of The Leadership Ellipse
Who do you know who carries substance as a leader? Not extraordinary talent or compelling charisma or impressive expertise, just substance. Weight of character. An unusual presence.
We might call it spiritual gravitas. Such men and women rarely seek the spotlight or dominate the room, but when they speak, you sense that their words rise from a deep core. Intuitively, you know they carry a tensile strength forged in the heat of both victories and defeats. They have paid the price for the truths that now flow from their mouths, words that in turn evoke depths of trust and confidence. You feel drawn to them and secure in their presence, quietly inspired by something that’s hard to name.
Other leaders take up an impressive amount of space in a crowd. A commanding voice. Unshakable confidence. Some type of magnetic personality. All eyes turn when they rise . . . and they rise often. You feel drawn to them as well, maybe even electrified by force of personality. But at the end of the day, you’re not sure how far you could trust them, not certain you would put your life on the line for them.
Years ago, I attended a small conference. The speaker had a modest following and a few books, but he was only really known within a fairly tight circle. Yet there was something I felt instantly. Gravitas. Spiritual authority. I was captivated, and I listened to him for hours without losing interest. Even more, I felt like something deep and true was being mysteriously established in me as he spoke.
The word gravitas might evoke images of somber faces and dreary tones, maybe even an intimidating aura, but none of that was true of this speaker. With an easy smile, he spoke softly in slow, thoughtful sentences with very little drama of presentation. It was not exactly a TED Talk, yet I sat rapt with attention, content to let his words wash over me and seep inside.
I think that’s the thing about gravitas: It begets more gravitas. I have sometimes imagined myself becoming a dashing, charismatic speaker who could stir crowds and be much in demand. And while there’s nothing wrong with that, this guy made me want something different. I found myself wanting to speak from that same deep place, to carry a more grounded substance of being. This man will never know that he set my life course on a new trajectory.
Got Weight?
Gravitas is a Latin word that mirrors our English word gravity, anchored in the idea of weight. “Dignity, presence, influence”— these descriptors attempt to capture the effect that such a quality of character has on others.1 In the social stampede for overt power, there is little demand for gravitas. But when you feel this subtle force in someone, you know instinctively that they are anchored to the earth, immune to the winds of fad and fashion. They don’t usually soar in popularity or plunge in ignominy. They are here today and here tomorrow, steadily elevating those around them with kindness and wisdom.
Over the past decade, I have coached many leaders, from starry-eyed entrepreneurs to buttoned-down corporate types, from savvy business owners to burned-out pastors, and all sorts in-between. Each juggles talent and passion; each navigates setbacks and celebrates wins. Coaching is a great job, and I love watching people become the best version of themselves.
Here’s the thing: Almost no one hires me for character formation or spiritual growth. People hire me to achieve something that has dollars attached to it: starting a company, writing a book, training a work group, or coaching a key performer. All of these are good things, and I find joy in such meaningful work. But there is always a bigger story available behind that desire. Achieving an organizational goal or completing a project is the canvas on which the deeper work of formation is being crafted. And it is the soul more than the project that will endure—which brings us to the heart of the matter.
A Marketplace in Upheaval
Leadership development is a billion-dollar industry. New skills, new techniques, new lingo, new assessments, new gurus, and new books swing in and out of our attention every quarter like revolving ads on a website. There are a lot of smart people showing us how to do more, do it better, and do it faster than ever before. And in many ways, we have benefited from their strategic thinking and best practices. Time management, organizational theory, and marketplace scrutiny have made most of us better at what we do.
The axiom goes, “Work smarter, not harder,” but for every leader I know who is absorbing all the “smarts” coming at us so furiously, I see a leader who is indeed working harder. The British philosopher Bertrand Russell speculated in 1932 that if we could merely improve our management expertise in society, the average person need only work four hours a day.2
About the same time, the economist John Maynard Keynes predicted that by the year 2030, a fifteen-hour workweek would be standard fare.3 Despite those rosy images, a recent Gallup poll placed the current average workweek at forty-seven hours,4 and most leaders I know would scoff at such a low number.
How does such a busy world allow for so lofty a concept as gravitas? Seriously, who has the time? But lack of time for gravitas is killing us.
Leaders are burning out and flaming out at an epic rate. The opposite of gravitas surrounds us and blares from every media channel. Moral failures, abuses of power, and ruthless self-promotion are the more obvious symptoms of our anemic national character. In both ministry and the marketplace, we have succumbed to expediency at the cost of integrity. Where is the rootedness? Where is the humility?
We discuss the public falls with dismay and grieve the more private, personal falls. And mostly, we ignore the quieter alternative to burnout and flameout: numbing out. How many leaders have exchanged their passion for disillusionment and slid softly into autopilot?
We must draw the connection between symptoms and the root cause. The cause is a lack of roots. Truly, our culture channels a storm that is uprooting many.
Consider a client of mine. Vince is the president of a small telecom company that, at $25 million in gross profits, is modest within its industry. His company was put on the map by selling and installing pay phones. When is the last time you saw one of those? Material things, even the best and smartest, eventually decay. The only thing that kept Vince’s company from following their phones into extinction was a prudent shift into an entirely different part of the telecom market, where they are now thriving. They survived a potentially catastrophic market storm.
Storms serve a purpose: They expose dangerously weak foundations and invite new construction to our internal worlds. The greater the external pressure on our lives and leadership, the more God whispers to us in those rare still moments. Step off the gerbil wheel. You were made for more than turning the economic flywheel of industry. You were made for me! And only in me will you be useful in the workplace. Can you hear that whisper echo in the subterranean cavities of your soul? That divine invitation hangs in the air, directed to you personally.
Helping Write God’s Story
Whether leading in ministry or the marketplace, the men and women I know want to do more than turn a profit and grow an empire; they want to do good in the world. They want to write a redemptive, God-sized story in their spheres. They want their employees to thrive as individuals as well as contribute to the mission. They want the love of God to extend across the planet in ways that ease pain and establish peace. They want the earth to no longer groan under the weight of poverty and pollution and violence. And while they—and all of us—can’t do everything, we know in a profound way that we can indeed do something.
Another client owns a successful professional business: Janet Ward and fortyish employees bring in about $5 million a year. Commendable, but not necessarily remarkable. But here’s what is remarkable: They give away 10 percent of their revenue! That’s right, they tithe on the gross, putting half a million dollars every year into about fifty nonprofits across the planet that are making life better for tens of thousands.5 That is spiritual influence. That is something we don’t have enough of in today’s marketplace.
Spiritual substance. Depth. Weight. Spiritual gravitas. Where could we possibly turn to find a supply of such intangibles? What ancient cache could we open to obtain a spiritual rootedness that can withstand cultural storms and change the world for good in modern times?
A Wealth of Gravitas
What if there was a whole culture of spiritual substance, carefully cultivated over generations, with intentional practices and dedicated focus on the inner life? A leadership community that was all about going deep, not wide? What if there were cloisters of men and women who had anchored themselves in the life of God so that they could speak the words of God with quiet power?
Actually, this is part of our heritage. In Ireland, they were called Celts; in Russia, they were called poustinikki; in Egypt, they were called desert fathers and mothers. But the most common and inclusive word for these men and women of spiritual gravitas is monks.
The particulars of their lives, the qualifications of their communities, and the emphasis of their spiritual activities were as varied as their times and places dictated. And our own modern world calls for its own applications that relate directly to the needs of our time and place. The lifestyle of the monastery cultivated the very spiritual depth we feel such a dearth of today. We can no longer meet the complexity of today’s leadership challenges from the superficiality and shallowness of today’s leadership culture. We must reach back to a simpler time for deeper resources in order to become “monks in the marketplace.”
My Own Gravitas Failures
Let me get personal for a moment. When I speak of leading from a shallow, superficial space, I mean that I’ve not only seen it in others but have also known it intimately in my own journey. In my career, I’ve experienced two defining twelve-year cycles that mirrored one another as overarching life lessons. They went something like this: exuberance → performance → disintegration → renewal. I guess I’m a tough case; once wasn’t enough!
Straight out of seminary, I launched into the pastorate with my new bride and, although zealous for God and my wife, I promptly displaced both with the mistress of ministry. It’s an all-too- common story, and I detail my recovery from it in my first book, Soul Space. It took a year’s sabbatical in the mountains of Colorado to restore my marriage and my soul, and the reorientation was profound. The crucible had done its refining work, but I was just getting started.
Several years later, a new vision emerged, and I launched my executive coaching business in 2005. Again, I got off to an exciting, profitable start and experienced a steady upward trend for several years. But although my spiritual practices had deepened, they were not yet strong enough to support my growing influence. Over the next several years, my soul began to flounder.
As the recession hit, business took a dive, and I unconsciously correlated profitability with blessing. Like the girl picking petals off a daisy, saying, “He loves me, he loves me not,” my felt experience of God’s affection rose and fell with the tides of my profit and loss statement. Through a long series of humiliations, God began to anchor my feet on the bedrock of his unceasing care for me, and I experienced an upswell of gravitas.
In an intensely personal way, I’ve come to learn that the core truths that comprise our life messages are so precious to God and so fundamental to our callings that many rounds of refining and strengthening are necessary to empower the leadership God intends to bring forth in us. Like layers of an onion, we have to get through one shell to get to the next. In so doing, we pay the price over the course of time and testing to lead with spiritual authority.
This is probably a good time to clarify the sense in which I’m using the expression “spiritual authority.” I do not mean it to refer to positional authority, such as pastoral staff or the C-suite. Instead, I’m referring to what we’ve been talking about in these initial pages—the grace to influence others in redemptive directions by virtue of virtue, as a result of knowing God deeply and walking with God richly so our influence is inherently God-breathed. This quality often coincides with positional authority yet neither requires it nor can be replaced by it (Matthew 20:25-28).
For illustration, we need not go further than Jesus, a man with little cultural position, yet who continually astounded his listeners, contrasting mightily with the positional authorities of his time: “When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed at his teaching, because he taught as one who had authority, and not as their teachers of the law” (Matthew 7:28-29, emphasis added). They seemed even more impressed by the authority he carried in word than in deed; the miracles were the evidence of the authority he carried in his person (Matthew 9:6). And authority was precisely what Jesus bestowed on his disciples as he sent them out to extend what he had begun (Matthew 10:1). Isn’t it time for us to live in the fullness of that calling once again?
How Far Is Your Reach?
So it’s worth asking, what is the sphere of your spiritual authority? How far is your influence meant to extend? Honestly, most of us don’t know—and that’s probably by design. If it were further than seems comfortable, we would likely be intimidated . . . and if it were smaller than our ambition, we might well chafe at the constraints. Most of us simply have to live into our destinies one day at a time.
But the reason it’s valuable to consider our reach lies in the classic illustration of the branches on a tree. Perhaps you know that the network of roots underneath a tree extend horizontally in roughly the same dimension as the branches.6 So a tree with a twenty-foot branch radius, like the weeping cherry in my back- yard, would have a tangle of roots with approximately the same spread beneath the surface. And the towering willow oak just out- side our fence probably has root tendrils that extend almost sixty feet in diameter! Talk about biological gravitas.
The influence of leaders can easily outgrow their character. It happens every day. God-engineered giftedness does what it was designed to do: It grows. Branches spread and influence rises. But what was meant for the glory of God is often undermined by a stunted root system, so we now have a leadership landscape virtually littered with capsized “trees,” men and women of great potential and calling whose spiritual formation in God was cut short in their rush to do great things for God, and maybe even somewhat for themselves.
So how far does your leadership influence extend? How many children rely on your spiritual foundation? How many employees or direct reports? How many in your small group? How many represented by the nonprofit board you’re on? How many read your books or blog, listen to your podcast, or are on your payroll? Frankly, we have little idea of just how much influence we already carry and are usually naively eager for more.
Now think about the roots underneath your tree. How strong are they, and how deep do they run? Can they sustain a class-7 gale with ease, or do they tremble in a summer thunderstorm? Before you grasp after that next promotion or instigate strategic planning for a new satellite office, it might be time to do some root work. This book is all about helping you extend your roots, deep and far. It’s not about helping you be more externally productive but about helping you thrive internally so that you can fulfill God’s greatest purpose through you.
At the same time, you’re busy. The pressure for productivity is a constant in your life. Is rootedness worth the time? In Jesus’ words, “Come . . . and you will see” (John 1:39).
If you’re ready to grow your gravitas, come join those who have gone before. Let’sl earn from the monastics how to go more deep than wide. We don’t have to be the spiritual elite; all we need is desire . . . because that is precisely where God meets us and does extraordinary things. Let’s get started.