Leadership Journal

In the year 1801, William Wilberforce, a member of the English Parliament and leader of the anti-slavery forces in the British Empire, passed through a severe spiritual crisis.

The core issue? Political ambition. Had he mishandled the experience, it is possible that the history of 19th-century England would have been quite different.

Wilberforce's struggle began when a general election produced a new prime minister, Henry Addington. The banter in the streets was that Wilberforce was on Addington's A-list of possible cabinet members. Biographer Garth Lean writes that Wilberforce was sucked into the speculation and, for a while, could think of nothing else. Later, recounting those days, Wilberforce described himself as "intoxicated (with) risings of ambition."

Many of us who have experienced the privileges of leadership understand such "risings" well, and ambition is just one of them. You can put abuse of power on a "risings list" along with anger, competitiveness, integrity issues, and moral temptation. And that's just the beginning. When we leaders get enamored by a fantasy or an egregious attitude about someone or something, it's hard to stop them. They almost never stop by themselves.

For Wilberforce, the great seduction was ambition. Many leaders know what it is like to be mesmerized by the lure of something bigger, more influential. Usually it's followed by the temptation to manipulate people and processes to grasp for whatever it is that the ego desires.

It was on a Sunday when Wilberforce finally confronted his ambition. At the end of a day of worship and solitude, Wilberforce wrote, "Blessed be to God for the day of rest and religious occupation wherein earthly things assume their true size. Ambition is stunted." The crisis was addressed.

In this brief comment, William Wilberforce references one of the great secrets of his personal life: his commitment to weekly withdrawals from the wild scramble of public life so that he could engage in worship, connection with a small circle of close friends, and quiet reflection.

It's the third of these three activities—reflection—that fascinates me most about Wilberforce. Reflection is an inner conversation—discourse one generates with oneself and with God. During inner conversation, your engagement with other people is suspended. There's a time to love, to serve, to care for other people. But a time of inner conversation is personal and private.

Withdrawal for inner conversation parallels the priority flight attendants express when passengers on a plane are told that, if the oxygen masks appear, they should put theirs on first before helping others. Counter-intuitive, especially for mothers, but thoroughly logical.

Writer Anthony Bloom described his father as a man who knew inner conversation well. When he felt the need to do his own soul-work, he would sometimes tack a sign to his front door: "Don't go to the trouble of knocking. I am at home, but I will not answer the door."

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