12 (Thomistic) Rules for Managing Appearances and Making Yourself Miserable I Sr. Anna Wray, O.P.

The Thomistic Institute

Christianity, Religion &Amp; Spirituality, Society & Culture, Catholic Intellectual Tradition, Catholic, Philosophy, Religion & Spirituality, Thomism, Catholicism

4.8 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 15 September 2025

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Sr. Anna Wray, redefines leadership as the practice of initiating genuine collaboration by rational wishing, deliberation, and action, exposing twelve common pitfalls that distort true agency and offering practical guidance for more authentic, freeing teamwork and spiritual growth.

This lecture was given on June 26th, 2025, at Dominican House of Studies.

For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events.

About the Speakers:

Sister Anna Wray is a native of Connecticut and a member of the Dominican Sisters of Saint Cecilia of Nashville, TN. Sister received her PhD in philosophy from The Catholic University of America, having written her dissertation on Aristotle’s account of the activity of contemplation. Sister is an assistant professor on the faculty of CUA's School of Philosophy in Washington, DC, where she regularly teaches courses in rhetoric, philosophy of religion, and philosophical psychology. She is also an adjunct professor for Aquinas College, where she teaches metaphysics and epistemology to her sisters in formation. Her research and conversational interests include imagination and attention in human agency and speech, the effects of technology on human agency, and form as function and unifying activity.

Keywords: Accountability, Agency, Aristotle, Collaboration, Emotional Connection, Leadership, Politics, Practical Wisdom, Rest, Virtue

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Tomistic Institute podcast.
0:06.2	Our mission is to promote the Catholic intellectual tradition in the university, the church, and the wider public square.
0:12.7	The lectures on this podcast are organized by university students at Temistic Institute chapters around the world.
0:19.3	To learn more and to attend these events, visit us at Thomisticinstitute.org.
0:25.0	The title of this talk is 12 Thomistic Rules for Managing Appearances and Making Yourselves Miserable.
0:35.3	Although it might not be obvious from the title, the topic that I was given to speak on is leadership.
0:42.3	I opted for the snarky title rather than something straightforward like a tamistic account of leadership for three reasons.
0:50.3	First, I couldn't resist some harmless, superficial imitation of Jordan Peterson.
0:57.0	Second, I didn't want to use the word leadership because it seems to me that very few of us know what we mean when we use that word.
1:07.0	We probably have a handful of slogans that we associate with leadership, but we also probably
1:12.5	haven't thought about what acting on those slogans would really look like. More on that shortly.
1:19.2	Third, St. Thomas doesn't explicitly mention anything about leadership. And even if the T.I.
1:25.7	does permit people to say things that aren't explicitly to mystic,
1:30.3	I still feel obliged to ground my remarks somehow in St. Thomas.
1:35.3	This brief backstory behind the title is also a kind of menu for the talk itself.
1:41.3	Thus, after distinguishing between what's commonly referred to as leadership
1:47.0	and what I'm going to insist on calling initiating working well with others, in part one,
1:54.0	I'll give an account of what it means to work well, first on our own and then with others.
2:08.8	In part two, I'll note 12 reasons why we fail to work well with others, or 12 ways we fall into managing appearances and making ourselves miserable.
2:13.3	And then in part three, I'll suggest a few things we can do to secure ourselves against those
2:18.8	12 failures, or at least against some of them. Without further menuing, here's the longer explanation of
2:27.3	why I'm using the awkward phrase initiating working well with others rather than leadership.
	...

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