Locke’s A Letter Concerning Toleration… at work

How does philosophy inform our behavior at the office?

What did A Letter Concerning Toleration attempt to do?

Let’s just consult Wikipedia for this one:

A Letter Concerning Toleration by John Locke was originally published in 1689. Its initial publication was in Latin, and it was immediately translated into other languages. Locke’s work appeared amidst a fear that Catholicism might be taking over England, and responds to the problem of religion and government by proposing religious toleration as the answer. This “letter” is addressed to an anonymous “Honored Sir”: this was actually Locke’s close friend Philipp van Limborch, who published it without Locke’s knowledge.

Wikipedia

Why are we highlighting this work?

Locke is the first and most notable “modern” empiricist. While continental European culture has been indelibly influenced by the rival rationalist philosophies, the United Kingdom and virtually all of the North American continent are empiricist down to their bones.

This viewpoint encompasses every aspect of our culture, from the way we think to the way we work.

What could A Letter Concerning Toleration do to inform our work?

I suppose the lessons inveighed against intolerance presented toward different 16th century religious sects do have certain applicability to any sort of schisms. A company is an insular community and society, which normally establish a mission, a vision, and several organizational values. This is a religion of sorts, and each company has its share of evangelists and zealots.

I myself am an evangelist for several ideas at work, but I am no zealot.

In recent centuries, most modern religions have turned from proselytizing by the sword and/or disenfranchisement, in favor of evangelizing through conversation. Not that I am a supporter of either in a religious sense, but they are worlds apart in acceptability.

Anyway, Locke makes certain arguments:

• Civil powers have no control over people’s souls
• While civil powers can only exercise outward force, religion is primarily concerned with inward persuasion

This effectively creates a new sort of separation of powers – the entity with the command of body can only exercise command on the body. The authority over the soul can’t exercise command, as that is the exclusive domain of the corporeal authority. This means that any sort of shifting of a mindset can only occur through reason, as corporal penalty is off the table.

We also see links to the modern world of management and variations in leadership style. Like Locke’s definition of church, companies and agencies are “free and voluntary” societies. Those societies do demand a form of leadership, and I think like Locke that an organization will collapse “unless it be regulated by some Laws, and the Members all consent to observe some Order.”

Regarding the sense of leadership, of which there are million different rubrics, a simple breakdown is:

• Autocratic
• Democratic
• Laissez Faire
• Transformational

First moral among those applications: coercion doesn’t work. The type of command leadership that autocratic leaders attempt only results in miserable morale, low creativity, malicious compliance, and a lack of buy-in.

Autocratic leadership assumes a “rule of body” mode, while democratic and transformational leadership adopt an almost-religious persuasion — the democratic and transformational managers rely on a sense of evangelism to enlighten the path forward.

It would be really interesting to try to apply a sort of compass with four quadrants with spiritual authority running along one axis and bodily authority running along the other. In the max spiritual and max bodily quadrant, you’d have the Autocratic leader. In the min spiritual and min bodily, you’d have the laissez faire leader. The min spiritual and max bodily would contain the democratic leader, while the max spiritual and min bodily would have the transformational leader.

Just some thoughts

Evangelism, whether of a business or religious nature, recognizes individual human agency, simply because it would be tyrannical if it attempted to control mind and body. Evangelism puts the burden of the argument on the speaker.

Harvard Business Review did a solid write-up about a former authoritarian manager who was forced to change his strategy to find success. HBR suggested that the manager’s transition to a post-heroic leader – marked by a shift from directive to inquisitor – allowed him to become successful.

As I read the HBR article and try to apply it here, he gave up the extremes of his corporal power and, instead, took on spiritual leadership. This give him transformational leadership authority.

Likewise, I think there’s a lot of applicability toward “true believers” in an organization. Locke inveighs against excommunication for non-believers.

We have all experienced, at work, the issue of sectionalism. One group in an organization may be fastidious planners, while another may believe in a more laissez faire policy toward “taking on issues as they pop up.” The change in management may bring one favor than another.

An autocratic leader may want to purge the members of the other clique from the company (or create a full turnover in management). This would be a clear violation of Locke, if you were to try to tie this Letter to the working world.

Corporeal authority and control over belief cannot intersect. The only determinant of a person’s continuing status as an employee can be those things that relate to the corporeal – their work product, the number of employees that are “right” to get the job done, their actions and professional demeanor, etc.