One of the hallmarks of cult involvement is obedience to authority. If you're a cult member you're expected to obey, no matter what, and if you're a cult leader you expect unquestioning obedience all the time. Deviation from this standard is seen as no less than sin. How does this translate into the non-cult world?
I didn't finish college. I didn't have any technical or vocational skills. In order for me to make a living wage at any job that I had, management was the only realistic path to make more money. Eventually I became good at it, but I first had to unlearn my cult's attitude toward management. As it happens I was first attempting to climb the management ladder while still involved in a cult. I was 19 when I first became involved with The Way International, and in my early twenties when I first became a manager. Add to the mix having grown up in New York City, where being direct is valued more than being "nice", contrasting me with the people I was managing.
One of the core tenets of most cults, and The Way International was no exception, is that the leader is not to be questioned. This, of course applies primarily to a cult's "supreme leader", but it also applies to anyone down the line in any kind of leadership role — local or state leader, even parents. The presumed infallibility of any subsidiary leader is subordinated to the levels of leadership above him, but is considered sacrosanct within his area of responsibility. So much so, that even when a leader is shown to be wrong, or even kicked out of The Way, that leader's previous decisions are considered to be blessed by God and not subject to questioning by the peons.
Shortly before I left The Way Craig Martindale, the Way's President, was forced out following legal action against him involving coerced sex with a follower. My thinking, and the thinking of many Way followers at the time, was that Martindale obviously did not have God's Word foremost in his mind — how could we trust the doctrine in the extensive series of classes that he had been putting together if he thought it was okay to cheat on his wife? His class series, The Way of Abundance and Power contained many novel takes on The Bible that many were unsure of, but the remaining leadership assured us that what he taught was still valid due to some mystical connection due to him being the "Man of God" at the time.
Leadership style was also something that set a terrible example to those of us who had less lofty leadership roles. Martindale's style, as I mentioned before, was yelling. His style could also involve name-calling and insulting those who weren't on board 100%. Think Donald Trump, but spouting Bible verses. This leadership template made its way down the ladder to local leadership, who also got their points across with unyielding bluster and yes, yelling. Even the ones who didn't yell, were inflexibly dogmatic in their approach. These were my examples of how to be a godly leader. Or even a secular leader.
In my work life I gravitated toward management roles — managing people and operations was something I was good at. Each year The Way put on a conference called God's Word in Business and Profession. In its early iterations it had sessions geared toward specific businesses and gave guidance on how to apply Biblical principles at work. There was an opportunity to meet with people in the same line of work and compare notes. Eventually it became just another "teaching" event, with nothing specific to business or profession. But I would attend these conferences and soak up the example of what being a leader meant and became a bit of a yeller myself. (To be fair, my own dad was a bit of a yeller himself. I respected his example as a father and picked up some of his habits in addition to the example set in The Way)
During most of my time in The Way in the nineties (after having been out during the eighties) I worked for the Omaha World-Herald newspaper as a Circulation Manager, but in 1999 I changed companies to become a manager with B&R Stores, a local grocery chain at one of their Super Savers. With the World-Herald my management was mostly at a distance, but at Super Saver there was much more face-to-face management. In my management series I talk about different types of managers, but in retrospect I was definitely a bad one in my first years there. In Managers Part-III - Sources of Power I cover the ways managers can assert their influence over subordinates. I relied upon what is called "Legitimate Power", which is simply the authority that comes with the title, rather than any personal charisma. I was swayed by my Way experience to think all it took was the title and the implied authority that came with it. In a cult like The Way that was all it took; if you're claiming that the title as bestowed by God, then anyone arguing with the cult leader was arguing with God.
Of course in the real, non-cult, world, you can't claim divine favor in order to get people to listen to you. Nonetheless, I had internalized the idea that my job title entitled me to lord it over people. Even in the non-cult world this is not uncommon. There are several sources of management power:
- Legitimate Power: The ability to influence other due to one's position, office or formal authority
- Reward Power: The ability to influence others by giving or withholding rewards such as pay, promotions, time off, etc.
- Coercive Power: The ability to influence others through punishment
- Expert Power: The ability to influence others through special knowledge or skills
- Referent Power: Power that comes from personal characteristics that people value, respect or admire
Many managers, especially inexperienced ones, lead with a combination of numbers 1-3, while effective managers lead from number 4 or number 5. As a new, inexperienced manager I not only harbored the misconceptions about leadership that most rookie managers entertain, but I had the additional burden of years of examples of poor leadership from cult leaders — including the way that information was conveyed — by yelling. Even after I left The Way, the ingrained habits that I had developed didn't disappear. I gained a reputation for being rough on people and stalled in my advancement in the company. It didn't help that my immediate supervisor was a "nice guy" (not necessarily an effective manager, just very likable!) and the contrast between us made me look even worse. Not to mention my very East Coast personality!
This isn't to say that there aren't managers out there who don't have cult backgrounds but are nonetheless dictatorial in their leadership style, I've worked for a few of them in my time. In my case it was the cult influence that molded me into the type of manager who expected unquestioning obedience and who yelled when I didn't get it. Fortunately I had several bosses who recognized my potential and took the time to show me how my approach was suboptimum. They gave me constructive feedback regarding my style and how it was perceived. By this time I was out of The Way and was open to different ways of doing things. By the time the company decided to rotate all the Assistant Store Directors (my position at the time) to different stores, I had rehabilitated my reputation and was viewed as a straight-talker, and was very direct, but a manager who coached and developed younger employees and managers.
As time went by the template of dictatorial leadership started to fade. What really changed my outlook about leadership was a change in my immediate supervisor. The new boss was most assuredly not the same as the old boss! Not a "nice guy" at all. He was convinced that he needed to restore order to a lax work force after the benign leadership of his predecessor. He wasn't all wrong in his assumptions, but he came down hard on the managers and employees. We also got a new Human Resources Coordinator, a former school principal who was every bit as tough as our new boss. The change in circumstance — observing the affect the new guy had on morale, allowed me to see just how toxic my own approach had been. I spent a lot of my time talking people out of quitting in response to the new manager's style and the rest talking my boss out of firing good people. Within a short period of time I became the "good cop".
In response to seeing someone else as the "bad cop", I began to reevaluate my own approach, putting my Way-influenced management style behind me, revisiting the management lessons I learned from "Managing Management Time". By the time I was transferred to another location a few years later I had completely rehabilitated my reputation among the managers and employees. Unfortunately corporate management still saw the "old me" and it was a long time before I saw a promotion.
Cult involvement can be all-encompassing. It can affect everything you do. Even when you get out, it can take a while to flush the toxins out of your mental and spiritual system. What had been impressed upon me as godly leadership poisoned the career path that I had taken. It could have been worse but I eventually changed course.
As part of my new approach I was far from a pushover. I still had employees who viewed any type of correction as getting "yelled at", and I was not at all patient with employees who persisted in arguing about everything. However, instead of yelling, or demanding blind obedience, my goal was to teach employees why they had to do things.
We're all products of our environment, nature and nurture, and my environment for decades was a religious cult, which couldn't help by affect my outlook on life, but once out, I was willing to make changes and put it behind me.
Start from the beginning: Part I
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