Leadership formation for people who lead things that matter
Most leadership development answers the question of what a leader should do. I work on the question underneath it: who he is becoming while he does it.
That question has no technique for an answer. It requires an account of the human person, and most leadership training proceeds without one. The result is competent people who are not becoming anyone in particular.
I work with dioceses, schools, universities, apostolates, parish staffs, and executive leadership teams. The argument does not change from room to room. The vocabulary does.
Christopher J. Ewing is an educational psychologist, former Air Force officer, and Catholic leadership formation scholar whose work sits at the intersection of theology, empirical research, and practice.
He is a co-developer of the Flourishing Leadership Scale, a psychometric instrument grounded in a Catholic anthropology of the person, and the author of Called to Lead: Vocation, Virtue, and the Flourishing Leader (Spirit of Wisdom Press, forthcoming) and Living Your Leadership (2nd ed., 2022).
He serves as Associate Professor and doctoral chair at Touro University Worldwide and teaches leadership and applied psychology at Divine Mercy University.
↓ Download speaker sheet (PDF)Four ways to bring this work into your event
Keynote
A single argument delivered well: why leadership formation without an anthropology of the person produces competent people who are not becoming anyone in particular. Calibrated to your audience, from executives to faculty to seminarians.
Interactive workshop
Working sessions on discernment, prudential judgment, and the ordering of work to vocation. Case-based, with structured reflection built in. Can follow a keynote or stand alone as the primary program.
Executive or leadership retreat
Silence, conferences, and guided examination for leaders who carry responsibility for other people. Built to be spiritually serious. This is the format that changes people rather than informing them.
Faculty and school formation
Formation for the people who form students. Built around vocation, authority held as a trust, and the ordering of a school's work to the end of the person. Runs as a single in-service or a year-long path with a diocesan office.
Called to Lead: Vocation, Virtue, and the Flourishing Leader
Why leadership formation begins not with what a leader does but with who the leader is becoming. The argument from vocation and virtue applied to Catholic institutional life, for conferences, diocesan gatherings, Legatus chapters, university events, and school leadership days.
Additional talks draw on the same body of work and are built for specific audiences and contexts:
What the argument covers
Each talk is built for a specific audience. These are the themes that run through all of them.
Vocation and leadership
Leadership as a specific form of the call to serve rather than a career achievement. What changes when a leader understands authority as entrusted rather than acquired.
Virtue and the formation of character
Why character is not a personality trait and formation is not training. The Thomistic account of virtue applied to the daily decisions of institutional leadership.
Discernment in leadership
Practical wisdom as a learnable discipline. How leaders develop the capacity to judge rightly in conditions that resist clear answers.
The dignity of those who are led
Authority exercised as a trust. What the Catholic account of the person demands of the leader in relation to the people whose work and formation he shapes.
Catholic institutional identity
What it means for a school, diocese, healthcare system, or apostolate to be genuinely Catholic in its leadership culture rather than in its marketing.
The Flourishing Leadership Scale
Original research and instrument development: what we are trying to measure when we measure leadership formation, and what honest measurement requires we say we do not yet know.
Who books this work
Twenty readers across Catholic education, ministry, and leadership
The manuscript has been read and endorsed by the following. They represent the range of audiences this work is built for.
"The book demands integration, not tips. It is not for readers looking for shortcuts; it is for leaders serious about forming themselves and building cultures where people flourish."Andreas Widmer — Professor, The Catholic University of America
"It is a work that is intellectually rigorous, theologically rich, and eminently practical."Bishop Robert P. Reed — Rector, St. John’s Seminary; President and CEO, CatholicTV Network
Check availability for your event
The most useful first message includes the date or timeframe, the audience, roughly how many, and what you are hoping the talk accomplishes. I will tell you honestly whether this work fits.
Or write directly to chris@vocationandvirtue.org · Schedule a call