Middle Leadership: A Lesson from Homer Smith

You may have heard leadership is based on position or is only for the gifted, the charismatic, or the skilled. The fact is, leadership is a process, and anyone who engages in that process is leading, regardless of skill, position or personality. 

But why engage in leadership in the middle in the first place? Remember, middle leaders frequently face limited resources, long hours and few accolades. One good reason is: engagement in the process of leadership is a transformational process. Engagement in leadership transforms the leader and the led. Peter Northouse gives insight into the transformation that takes place as one engages in the process of leadership.

Defining leadership as a process means that it is not a trait or characteristic that resides in the leader, but rather a transactional event that occurs between the leader and the followers. The term process implies that a leader affects and is affected by followers. It emphasizes that leadership is not a linear, one-way event, but rather an interactive event.

This transformational process is brilliantly illustrated in the 1963 movie titled Lilies of the Field. The protagonist Homer Smith, a traveling construction worker, unexpectedly finds himself building a chapel in the middle of the Arizona desert. Traveling in Arizona, Smith’s car overheats. Needing to find water, he drives down a dusty road heading toward a well and a small house. While filling the car radiator with water, Smith meets three Catholic nuns from whose well Smith was drawing water. The nuns had escaped over the Iron Curtain and had come to Arizona to serve a small community. After convincing Smith to repair the roof on their home, the Mother Superior asked Smith to build a chapel for the community. At first, Smith resists the idea but finally agrees to build the chapel.

(Spoiler Alert)  

In the pivotal scene in the movie, we find Smith exhausted and discouraged from trying to build the chapel alone. He doesn’t want others to help him because he wants the honor of building the chapel himself. In a desperate moment, when Smith is about to quit, one resident convinces Smith of the benefits of allowing others to help. If he allowed others to help him, together they could build the chapel.

Persuaded by the argument and his exhaustion, he agrees to let others help. But, Smith becomes discouraged because everyone had a different vision of what the chapel should look like. There was complete confusion at the work-site. Smith didn’t yet realize that there was no single leader and therefore the project was moving backward instead of forward.

At this point, the transformation begins. Smith realizes that if he brings the workers together under a common goal and vision, and then helps them move forward together with him, they can build the chapel. And it worked. Not only did the process of engagement transform Smith into a middle leader, but it also transformed the workers and the whole community. What was it that changed Smith? He engaged in the process of leadership. What was it that transformed a whole community? A person who engaged in the process of leadership. 

Smith is a middle leader because he served in the middle of an organizational structure. Though the organization was relational, Smith displays all of the hallmarks of a middle leader. In his role as builder Smith acted as a follower. He followed the vision and direction of the Mother Superior. In his role as project director he acted as a leader. Smith led the community of workers and even the Mother Superior herself. Because he was a follower and a leader he had a responsibility to navigate relationship both upward and downward in the organization. Smith had all the hallmarks of a middle leader.

Leadership is transformational for all those involved. As middle leaders, we are a part of a transformational process that can change others, change us as leaders and, hopefully change the world!