Focus on the Leader

Michael Short

Dowling College

Abstract

Dr. Scott Morris is the founder and director of the Church Health Center in Memphis Tennessee; America’s largest faith-based clinic. Dr. Morris is also the associate minister at St. John's United Methodist Church in Memphis. Dr. Morris’s ministries provide health care for the working poor and uninsured in Memphis and promote both a healthy physical body and a healthy spiritual body. Dr. Morris as a pastor and a medical doctor has written a new book, Health Care You Can Live With: Discover Wholeness in Body and Spirit in which be provides a unique view of the church and the medical industry and how they can each be a place of healing. He is a firm believer that health care through the government will not work, but has proven through his Church Health Center in Memphis that there is a real way for health care to work. See figure 1 in the appendix for a picture of Dr. Morris.

Focus on the Leader

The GOOD

Dr. Morris’s leadership of the Church health Center in Memphis is outstanding. When the governments’ health care program is incapable of functioning effectively, from Dr. Morris’s book, Health Care You Can Live With, (see Figure 2 in the appendix for a view of the book’s cover), we have learned that his nonprofit health care center is treating 55,000 patients a year with only a 13 million dollar budget. This is equivalent to 100 million dollars a year that the government would spend for the same services provided by Dr. Morris’s Church health Center. The Church health Center focuses on prevention of illness. For every dollar, Dr. Morris spent on health care their goal is to spend a dollar on prevention of illness. From Dr. Morris’s book, Health Care You Can Live With, Phyllis Tickle, author of The Great Emergence, is quoted, “Nobody is better positioned to speak with both informed authority and compassion about the wrenching problem of establishing genuine health care for all Americans. His lively and seasoned presentation will appeal to every interested reader. More to the point, perhaps, is the fact that Morris s words should be required reading for every single person politician, cleric, social worker, insurance executive, physician or medical administrator whose work in any way impacts health in this country.”

The Five Factor Model (FFM) of Personality as defined in Leadership Enhancing the Lessons of Experience (2009) consists of surgency, agreeableness, dependability, adjustment, and intelligence or openness to experience. Dr. Morris, based on the results of his life in the ministry and that of director of the Church Health Center, can be assigned several of the traits the FFM uses in determining leadership potential. Being a spiritual person in modern America is not the most common area we would think of for leadership. Now we think of religious people of all faiths as having a calling since they have proclaimed in most cases Jesus as their savior. If they go into the ministry, you might think of them as being intellectual. They will have to study all of the Bible and many other theological texts. Still unless, religious leaders in America become a Billy Graham, or Martin Luther King Jr., we may not be familiar with them or think of them in terms of leadership. So when ministers and priests exhibit leadership at this lower level of Church hierarchy, we do not think of it except as a calling from God. Certainly that is appropriate, but does cloud the sight of leadership. From the article, History's Major Religious Leaders, Time Magazine did a poll to find the person of the century. The magazine's Web site invited readers to vote. Results varied based on the background of those responding to the poll, and this can be seen based on who they felt was of most impact. Quoting the results from the article, History's Major Religious Leaders, “ It's clear from this poll that many individuals voted for the contemporary major religious leader who represents their own faith (Protestants voted for Billy Graham, Catholics voted for Pope John Paul II, Latter-day Saints voted for Gorden B. Hinckley). Other people voted for an ideological leader important to them (Martin Luther King Jr., Mohandas Gandhi or Ronald Reagan). Jews and Israelis voted for Yitzhak Rabin. People who value pop culture put Elvis Presley at the top. Adolf Hitler's third place ranking is probably a result of people trying to make an accurate historical assessment of who had the most impact. They certainly don't endorse his actions, but recognize his importance.”. So we can see that, at the highest level, many people can see leadership in religious leaders, but they look at this in relationship to their own beliefs first. I feel that a Methodist would, therefore, see leadership qualities in Dr. Scott Morris quicker than someone of another religious belief such as a Catholic, Muslim or Buddhist, or an atheist. Continuing with how this applies to Dr. Scott Morris and the Five Factor Model of surgency, agreeableness, dependability, adjustment, and intelligence or openness to experience we should relate more to Leadership either based on religious observations or more practical organization leadership. Dr. Morris may be best described in my vocabulary as a benevolent dictator. He controls all financial decisions at the Health Care Center “Personally”. So he is controlling, but he obviously does this with the best interest of his yearly 55000 patients that he served, in his outreach medical program, for the unissued or under insured working poor. I believe that he shows a great amount of surgency, with a benevolent ambition to lead or help others while being very sociable with a large number of people who admire and respect him. He has a passion that is driving him to provide help to others as spoken of in the Bible. Many other cities have copied the Church health Center as it obviously works. Whereas most government and private insurance systems are faring badly in comparison. Dr. Scott Morris also shows strong agreeableness. He obviously has great interpersonal skills. He is a practicing family doctor; in his own book he relates several amusing scenarios of how this works such as the mideastern female patient who under her burke had on a I’m Irish T-Shirt. Dr. Morris has proven he is able to help peoples of all races and religions with very little or no negative consequences. Dr. Morris is a great dependability leader. This may be from his religious background. He basically practices what he preaches. Dr. Morris is a very sympathetic person which works well with his “calling” to help others, especially those that are poor and can’t help themselves or the working poor people struggling greatly to help themselves. He never gets into trouble as far as I have been able to research which puts him higher on the religious leadership scale than many others, who have let their personal dark-side cause their down fall. Dr. Morris is also very intelligent. He has shown this in his multifaceted approach to his life. He is a minister, a calling which requires theological degrees and years of education. He is a doctor, who as we all know, is a profession that requires a lot of education and then additional studies, internship, and training practices on an ongoing basis to keep current on medical information and techniques. He is also a director of what is basically a small to mid-size multi-million dollar company. Dr. Morris is keeping up with many divergent duties and diverse topics, but still manages to publish to the Commercial Appeal Newspaper in Memphis on a frequent basis. It is my belief that Dr. Scott Morris may be one of the rare level 5 leaders as described in out text, Leadership Enhancing the Lessons of Success, in Highlight 7.2 on page 211. He displays all of the characteristics of FFM but in a positive manner which motivations others and builds teamwork. The outcome is an overachieving organization that is an example of how to do it right.

The BAD

Just as Dr. Scott Morris defined what the GOOD might be we know that there is cosmic balance and that evil does exist; sometimes known as the battle of light versus dark. So we need to look at a little of the bad which exits in everyone to some degree. These bad traits are called the Dark-Side Personality Traits. These consists of some degree of, in a negative aspect, of being excitable, skeptical, cautious, reserved, leisurely, bold, mischievous, colorful, imaginative, diligent, dutiful as it relates overall to Dr. Morris’s leadership traits. For this discussion a city leader in Memphis whose infamous deeds are still discussed is … drum roll… Edward Hull "Boss" Crump. He was better known as E. H. Crump. He was even better known as “Boss” Crump, which is what I will refer to him as. (See Figure 3 in the appendix for a picture of “Boss” Crump.

Even though “Boss” Crump grew up poor once he moved to Memphis he soon began to climb the ladder of success. He was described by David Tucker in the biography he wrote for Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture., Edward Hull "Boss" Crump as being an “ambitious seventeen-year-old bookkeeper, married the daughter of a wealthy merchant, and bought the carriage manufacturing firm where he worked.”. Marrying money is the quickest way to success that I know of; but maybe, just maybe, that was not by intent but love.

In 1905 “Boss” Crump entered politics winning election as a councilman. In 1909, he won the mayor election and began the commission form of government. He had great management organization skills but none of the oratory prowess of a modern politician like Barrack Obama, which is now a major requirement due to television. He did not do a single political speech but relied on his understanding of human nature and organizing others who could make speeches for him and negotiate deals on the back streets of Memphis where saloon keepers and ward bosses support was critical in the early 1900s in Memphis. “Boss” Crump ran an efficient city government, getting more effort from the health, fire, and police departments. He built a personal political power machine that is famous to this day in Memphis. However, there was the Dark-Side to be award of; “Boss” Crump conducted a brief publicity war on vice, but then permitted the underworld to run wide-open. We are still doing this each election year in Memphis with our pre-election anti-adult bar efforts that disappear immediately after the election. Back in the day, the “Boss” allowed gambling, prostitution, and alcohol which all contributed protection money. In fact , David Tucker’s biography of Crump reveals that “Police Chief William J. Hayes later testified in court that underworld figures contributed as much as eighty thousand dollars in a single year.”. “Boss” Crump used this dirty money for his own private purposes and also paid poll taxes to control elections which were still allowed in those early twentieth century years. Just as with Memphis’s most recent ex-mayor Mayor, Willie Wilbert Hereton; municipal corruption never led the voters to throw “Boss” Crump out of office. Concerned citizens turned to the courts to oust the “Boss” Crump machine. In 1909 Tennessee adopted a statewide prohibition law. When Crump refused to enforce the law in Memphis, the then Governor Ben Hooper pushed an ouster law in 1915 which provided the judicial method for removal of public officials from office who refused to enforce state laws. Crump resigned his office just ahead of court action but he never admitted guilt. Instead, he presented himself as a victim of conspiracies by evil private power corporations that feared his plan for public power corporations. Crump's public relations campaign succeeded so completely that his fabrication was accepted as true even though no evidence supported the alibi. This, amazingly enough, sounds exactly like what W.W. Hereton had said many times except with slick Willie it was usually done as a racial conspiracy theory. Crump remained out of politics a decade until returning in 1927 as a political boss and then won a single congressional term. But “Boss” Crump ran the Memphis based machine and in 1932 his candidate for governor, Henry H. Horton, won. “Boss Crump” influenced and controlled state wide politics for the next sixteen years. Crump, always very cordial, he worked hard over the course of many years to oblige the demands of individuals and groups. He commanded absolute authority in Memphis and Shelby County. During the Great Depression those who needed work or feared they might need assistance could not afford to oppose the political machine. Again this sounds very much like the modern era where we are facing a worldwide financial crisis and are told we cannot afford to stand in the way of government bailouts and increased deficient spending. Perhaps then as now the truth is the individual cannot afford to speak the truth or make a stand at the expense of their personal security. Under Crump's absolutism, which is defined by the American Heritage Dictionary as a form of government in which all power is vested in a single ruler or other authority, garbage was picked up daily, the streets were cleaned, the fires put out, and criminals arrested. “Boss” Crump kept the taxes low and even reduced property taxes a few pennies a year. Actually, in retrospect, it looks like “Boss” Crump did a much better job that W.W. Hereton at running an efficient government even though both of their tenures as Mayor produced many corrupt political actions. Crump's absolutism, eventually was ended by Estes Kefauver's 1948 Senate race. Crump's absolutism was broken with the election of Kefauver, but his control over Memphis government continued until his death on October 16, 1954. Memphis honored the Boss with an eight-foot-tall statue in Overton Park, making him the only political leader (the others are a Confederate warrior and two entertainers) memorialized by the city in bronze. I suspect that one day soon we will have one made for our other great Mayor W.W. Hereton.

The UGLY Since this is not a spaghetti western we have chosen not to define the ugly. We leave that up to you to determine who might be controlling the vertical and the horizontal of the Dark-Side.

Between these two mayors we can see many of the Dark-Side traits. With modern television providing recordings of voice and video it is easier now to document these tendencies. At least one of them was known as having an excitable nature with emotional outbursts. Both of the mayors seemed to possess the same skeptical nature. They were both distrusting of others and changed the integrity and loyalty of their followers. They were both bold leaders who took all the credit for the wins and passed the blame for the failures leaving many in the dirt after they ran over them. They were mischievous gentlemen. They could be very charming but obviously did a lot of breaking of rules, policies and laws. They were both colorful and were the center of attention. However, W.W. Hereton would be a major versus the minor of “Boss “Crump who was not a public speaker. They were diligent. Both men controlled the show and made the decisions. In summary Dr. Scott Morris possesses the positive traits of a true leader where as in the political arena, and each was successful for many years, both “Boss” Crump and W.W. Hereton share many of the negative Dark-Side Personality traits. References

Amazon.com: Health Care You Can Live With: Discover Wholeness for Body and Spirit (n.d.). Retrieved April 12, 2011 from http://www.amazon.com/Health-Care-You-Can-Live/dp/1616262478

American Heritage Dictionary (d.n.). Retrieved April 12, 2011 from http://www.answers.com/topic/absolutism

History's Major Religious Leaders. (n.d.). Retrieved April 12, 2011 from

http://www.adherents.com/adh_leaders.html

Hughes, Richard L., Ginnett, Robert C., Curphy, Gordon (2009) Leadership Enhancing the

Lessons of Success. Published by McGraw-Hill/Irwin

Jones, Lindsay. (February 4, 2011) Q&A with Dr. Scott Morris. MBQ. Retrieved April 12, 2011 from http://www.mbqmemphis.com/qa-dr-scott-morris

Miller, William D.(1964) Mr. Crump of Memphis. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1964. Reprint, Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press. Downloaded from the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress April12, 2011from 1981 http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=C000955

Morris, Scott.. (2009) Health Care You Can Live With: Discover Wholeness in Body and Spirit. (n.d.). Retrieved April 12, 2011 from http://www.christianbook.com/health-with-discover-wholeness-body-spirit/g-morris/9781616262471/pd/262471

Time Magazine Poll “The King of the Century". (December 27, 1999) San Jose Mercury

News; URL: http://www7.mercurycenter.com:80/premium/nation/docs/timebox27.html

Tucker, David. Edward (December 25, 2009) Hull "Boss" Crump. Tennessee Encyclopedia

of History and Culture. Retrieved April 12, 2011 from

http://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entry.php?rec=334

Appendix

Figure 1. Dr. Scott Morris (MBQ February 4, 2011) [pic]
Figure 2. Dr. Scott Morris on his new book Health Care You Can Live With: Discover Wholeness in Body and Spirit (Q&A with Dr. Scott Morris)
[pic]

Figure 3. E.H. “Boss” Crump from [pic]