We have never needed good leadership more than we need it right now. The COVID-19 pandemic is begging for excellent leadership in every sphere of life: Government at all levels, business, education, sports, all the way down to our own family systems. If you’re tasked with leading anything in any way these days, you’d be smart to draw some lessons from the 500-year old wisdom of St. Ignatius Loyola.
Our guest, Fr. David McCallum, SJ, has devoted much of his life to mining the Jesuit tradition for leadership principles that we can apply in the world today. He puts Ignatian spirituality into dialogue with cutting-edge leadership research from “secular” sources like the business world and academic fields like sociology and psychology. Fr. McCallum puts his thought into action as LeMoyne College’s vice president for mission integration. He also leads the Institute for Discerning Leadership out of the Jesuit Curia in Rome, which is a formation program for senior church leaders. He joins host Mike Jordan Laskey to talk about which principles dear to St. Ignatius are most relevant for pandemic-era leaders today.