A New Breed Of Leader: Servant
Posted: Thursday, April 23, 2009
by Len Strickler
Len Strickler Motivational Seminars
Never before in the history of our country or the workplace has the concept of leadership been more necessary. In today's ever-changing business environment we are seeing unprecedented global economic pressures, global competition and outsourcing. Our country is now in two wars with security challenges and threats on multiple fronts. John W. Gardner, former Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare said, "The prospects never looked brighter. And the problems never looked tougher. Anyone who is not stirred by both of these statements is too tired to be much use to us in the days ahead." We need a new breed of leadership that will bring our country and our companies back to a place of respect, through simple "golden rule" practices that are derived out of a genuine unselfish servant hood mindset. Leaders who operate with a servant hood mindset are unselfish. Servant leaders: -Promote others over themselves -Give instead of take -Collaborate with others instead of competing against others
Unfortunately, over the past decade we have had a generation of leaders who have been trained to be self-promoting, get their piece of the pie at all costs, focus on the IPO, get in and get out fast, and get the attention of Wall Street instead of motivating and caring about employees and customers. They have been trained to find those under-performing companies and take them down through mergers and acquisitions, whereby someone must lose instead of viewing the opportunity as a win-win. Advertisers have caught on as well with slogans like "Have It Your Way," "You Deserve a Break Today," "You Owe It to Yourself."
We have gone so far that ethics and the basics of simply doing what is right no longer matter. Rather, the thinking is "win at all costs," no matter the outcome or who gets hurt. Examples are easy to find: Enron, WorldCom from earlier in the decade, and now most recently everyone from banks, car manufacturers, and states looking for a bail out during our financial crisis. Many leaders of these troubled organizations were focused on greed and self-promotion. As John Gardner puts it, "Most of us plateau when we lose the tension between where we are and where we ought to be." We need leaders who know where they ought to be.
One example of such a leader is the late Darwin Smith, who served as Kimberly-Clark's CEO for 20 years before retiring in 1991. In "Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap ... and Others Don't," author Jim Collins writes about Smith, who managed to transform Kimberly-Clark into "the leading paper-based consumer products company in the world," by blending "extreme personal humility with intense professional will." Smith and other leaders in Collins' book "displayed the fierce resolve to do whatever needed to be done to make the company great."*
I have spent more than 25 years as a sales executive helping global companies empower, motivate and coach high-performance sales teams. The number one thing I have learned from my experience is that as the leader you must be totally unselfish and willing to serve others. A great leader also must model that behavior to the organization or team. Leaders who give openly from a servant hood mindset set the stage for your organization or team to be collaborative not competitive, to be trusting not suspect, and to be highly communicative not hoarding, which will increase productivity and add to the organization's bottom line.
Being open and giving builds trust and honesty. Trust and honesty brings about a team that will follow the lead of the servant leader and sacrifice to succeed. Teams with a servant leader at the helm will look for little ways to win, will become energized, will follow your game plan, and will help others in the organization or team. They will now have hope because the servant leader has set the stage and modeled unselfishness. The servant leader knows that he or she will not stay at the top unless he or she helps others get to the top. Norman Schwarzkopf said, "You can't help someone up a hill without getting closer to the top yourself." The difference between a boss and a leader is that the boss says "go" and a leader says, "Let's go."
Yes, we need leadership and we need it now, but we need a new breed that will take us back to some basic principles and disciplines that are derived from the creator of the universe, by God himself from the golden rule: to do what is right at all costs. The new breed of leaders must direct from a position of servant hood that promotes unselfishness, integrity, honesty and trust. We need servant leaders who are not afraid to give to their teams, to be open and to communicate the good the bad and the ugly and show they are willing to pitch in and be the first on the scene of crisis and the last to leave.
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Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)Hi Len. Welcome to searchwarp. This is a well-written and inspiring piece. Excellent job - now if we can pray it will come to pass. Life would be so much better if we all lived by the golden rule. Keep sharing, you have great things to say! Blessings to you! TeresaThanks so much for your comment!Len
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