Maintaining Integrity under Pressure
Mark Hatfield
We should be asking ourselves constantly: Are power and leadership things I'm using to promote self, career, and prestige? Or are they being used only as a way of serving Christ?
Mark Hatfield
R
eferred to as "the conscience of the Senate," Mark O. Hatfield is serving his fourth term as Republican senator from Oregon. He is the second-ranking Republican in the Senate and is ranking minority member of the influential Senate Appropriations Committee. From 1980 to 1986 he served as chairman of that committee, the second-longest tenure in U.S. history.
As a lieutenant J.G. in the Navy, Hatfield commanded landing craft at Iwo Jima and Okinawa. He served in the Oregon State Legislature for six years, then became Oregon's secretary of state and later, governor for eight years.
Senator Hatfield holds the M.A. degree from Stanford University, as well as numerous honorary degrees, and is the author or coauthor of seven books, including Between a Rock and a Hard Place and Conflict and Conscience. As these titles reflect, Mark Hatfield has often felt the tension of being a committed Christian in the public arena. During his career he has cast a lone vote several times. In this conversation, the first in a section on the leader's personal challenges, he talks about how to maintain integrity under pressure.
You wrote Between a Rock and a Hard Place, so you've obviously done some thinking about this: What are the toughest pressures leaders face?
I would start with the pressures from our own egos. I think people of the pulpit and people of politics probably fight this problem to the same degree. Parishioners expect to see someone in the pulpit who has it all together. He or she's supposed to be the living example of Christlikeness. What a tremendous ...
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