GERMANY, fma. “Colleagues differ … some greatly,” reflected one of the participants late in the afternoon of 26 November, as they looked at the almost untouched buffet supper. “Fortunately!” remarked a neighbour and both laughed heartily. Then they turned to take in the comment of another participant, “But it is true, isn’t it, that for an arch-choleric character it is a difficult process if someone is slower than I am.” Fr Kentenich’s pedagogy is both practical and applicable in leading staff – that was the experience of many leaders.
Wherever his pedagogy is lived, a climate of joy, freedom and growth comes into existence. As a result of this basic experience, the International Kentenich Academy for Leaders (IKAF), which was founded in 2009, started the project “Jour fixe for leaders” last year. On the Saturday before the First Sunday of Advent the third “Jour fixe” took place in Memholz with 16 participants from Switzerland and Germany. Its subject was “Quality through originality. Because everyone is different.”
The Jour fixe for business people and leaders with the motto “How we shape the future” is an initiative of the IKAF. It offers leaders time and space for talks on subjects based on Fr Kentenich’s pedagogy as applied to leading a business and staff. It closes with a discussion and exchange during a light snack.
A business lives from planners and doers, anarchists and organized types, nomads and sedentary people, knowledge managers and creative workers
Only what is genuine lasts, and only what grows is alive. It is just as useless to nail a few branches to a too small Christmas tree, as to classify colleagues in an Excel spreadsheet. Even if it is easier to work with an Excel spreadsheet than to cope with a conversation with colleagues. This is how Christine and Erwin Hinterberger opened their keynote address – filled in the usual IKAF (i.e. Kentenich) manner with observations of everyday life in a business and the family. A business develops around a business idea and lives from the people who work there. The more different the colleagues, the better we can serve the very varied customers. A key qualification for leaders, according to the speakers, is the ability to marvel at the colleagues, each of whom is one of a kind, a custom-made item, unique and with a unique mixture of abilities, talents and qualities. Reverence and respect bring out the greatness of a colleague, allowing him or her to grow, and awakening the best in them; a critical gaze (“you may not be as you are; you have to become what I want you to be”) inhibits and creates pressure. “People can’t bear a ‘must’ for long. Momentum is lost, along with what is most beautiful and fine”, is how Fr Kentenich put it. Colleagues who enjoy their work, are also prepared to think of the business as a whole and to commit themselves to it. This joy grows, as simple as it may sound, also through, and possibly above all through, the respect with which the leaders approach the originality of the individual colleague. A business lives from planners and doers, anarchists and organized types, nomads and sedentary people, knowledge managers and creative workers.
People differ…
It is something you learn from Fr Kentenich to see people in all their difference as potential for growth. People differ in the way they search for happiness, in their pace of life, their basic mood and sensitivity to values.
The “conqueror” feels happy when he or she shapes the world and lives for (the largest possible) task; the “giver” when they can live in another person and can do something “for the boss”. “Now I can understand it…”, one of the leaders remarked, “each is different”. “And I also know what I have to change.”
“Quick people can slow down, but slow people are never quick”: a glance round those present showed how suddenly how a whole row of “Christmas trees” lit up. In their reaction and its duration people are quick or slow and enduring. The classic division of the temperaments is based on the four combination possibilities. It is obvious that business people usually show the combination “quick and enduring” (choleric). “The problem is that we always think we have the best solution. Usually that isn’t the case!” Such was the comment in the final and most important part of the Jour fixe, the discussion between those who gathered spontaneously because they felt so strongly addressed by the same subject.
“What’s the use?” one asked. “Is it nice?” questioned another. “Why is it,” a third wanted to know, and, “How and who does it connect?” the fourth. What is good, beautiful and one: God himself is all these things. On their way to this goal the characters who stress usefulness, truthfulness, beauty or unity follow their central values.
Then there are so many other possibilities – the way men or women think, people who are spontaneous or planners, practical types or thinkers, people who need security or adventurers, ad infinitem … Successful teams require a mixture – they need visionaries and organizers, experts and networkers; and yes, it is much more difficult than having visionaries (we could immediately reshape the whole world) or networkers (we get on so well that we don’t need any other work) on their own.
But it is only together that we can create something great. In order that something can grow in the midst of this multiplicity of originalities, something or someone is needed where all can latch on, where they are valued and complemented. A centre is needed, a person at the centre, a business person as the author of autonomous life…
Time for discussion
“At the last two Jour fixe the discussion was really animated and lasted long after the official close. Also on this occasion the exchange on the subject was immediate, but so were the questions about the personal centre. Many participants wanted to go into this more deeply,” Melanie and Ulrich Grauert related that evening in a letter to the members of the IKAF. It was clear that in order to keep a “grip” on the multiplicity and plethora of originalities, someone has to be at the centre who can reverently and respectfully connect the characters with their quirks, visions and plans, their speed and values, to form a whole. This was the tenor of the lively and long-lasting discussion, because in such a climate the process of change can be more individual, and helping to shape things becomes more than a nice saying…
If you would like to attend a Jour fixe, the next will take place on 31 March at Memholz. From 2012 it will also take place in Quarten, Switzerland. Details can be found on www.ikaf.de and www.schoenstatt-memhoelz.de
PHOTOS
Translation: Mary Cole, Manchester, England
