Servant Leaders!
With a Quiet Grace
Mar 3rd
The very best leaders are servants first.
Not so long ago, Martin Luther King, Jr., taught, “If you want to be important—Wonderful! If you want to be recognized—Wonderful! If you want to be great—Wonderful! But recognize that he who is greatest among you shall be your servant. That’s a new definition of greatness … Everybody can be great because everybody can serve … you only need a heart full of grace and a soul generated by love and you can be that servant.” By extension, you can then be a leader—a servant leader.
Jim Collins, author of Good to Great, and his team prove the point. In their research, companies that made the leap from good to great, led by Level 5 leaders described as “self-effacing, quiet, always courteous, gracious, modest and willful, humble and fearless, reserved, even shy,” attained what Collins called “extraordinary results, averaging cumulative stock returns 6.9 times the general market in the fifteen years following their transition point.” “Furthermore,” Collins notes, “if you invested $1 in a mutual fund of the good-to-great companies in 1965, holding each company at the general market rate until the date of transition, and simultaneously invested $1 in a general market stock fund, your $1 in the good-to-great fund taken out on January 1, 2000, would have multiplied 471 times, compared to a 56 fold increase in the market.”
Level 5 leaders—individuals who blend extreme personal humility with intense professional will—were at the helm of every good-to-great company during the transition era. “Those who worked with or wrote about the good-to-great leaders,” Collins points out, “continually used words like quiet, humble, modest, reserved, shy, gracious, mild-mannered, self-effacing, understated, and did not believe his own clippings” to describe them. “Despite their remarkable results,” Collins highlights, “almost no one has ever remarked about them!” How many of these character-based, other-centered, servant leaders—George Cain, Alan Wurtzel, David Maxwell, Colman Mockler, Darwin Smith, Jim Herring, Lyle Everingham, Joe Cullman, Fred Allen, Cork Walgreen, Carl Reichardt—do you know?
You likely know few, if any, of them because, to an individual, these leaders, Collins tells us, “never wanted to become larger-than-life heroes. They never aspired to be put on a pedestal or become unreachable icons. They were seemingly ordinary people quietly producing extraordinary results.” Such is the essence of servant leadership.
But you don’t have to be an extraordinary executive to be a servant leader. You don’t have to lead a movement to be a servant leader. Remarkable results can be achieved one person at a time. As you watch the video below, some may scratch their head and ask, “What does this have to do with leading a company to greatness?” It’s simple. Nothing changes when these leaders go home.
Every good-to-great leader, as Jim Collins and his team discovered, live humble and simple lives in the board room AND in their private life as well. What they are willing to do for one million people, they are willing to do for one. Let us recall what Dr King said: If we want to be important, recognized, and/or great—Wonderful! But first, we must nurture a servant’s heart.
Did you notice how the street performer—yes, a street performer—connected with the girl, without as much as a single word, in the beginning? He sees in her something she cannot yet comprehend. When she returns years later, he has not forgotten her, or her love of music—her destiny. In the metamorphosis of this girl’s life, we see how the servant leader, like the Level 5 leaders of good-to-great companies, quietly goes about the work necessary to transmogrify the ordinary into the extraordinary, giving fully and completely of himself expecting nothing in return.
Servant leadership is funny that way. Like the man in the arena, perhaps marred by dust and sweat and blood, it spends itself in a worthy cause, an other-centered cause, and it does so with a quiet grace, always embracing those served with love.
Mix a little love with that flour and sugar!
Aug 20th
Let me encourage you to visit Sarah’s website, Maverick Mom. One of her recent posts, Cake, is especially scrumptuous. Her post exudes wisdom as she teaches us the value of being present in the moment, even if alone while baking a great cake!
Sarah’s post brings back a flood of wonderful memories! My fondest relates the persistence and patience of my great aunt to her love for others and her desire for us to never stop learning. As a youngster, I would watch in awe as she would shake and shift, blend and stir countless ingredients to create the perfect cake—a peppermint candy cake (made from hand-crushed soft peppermint candy sticks)! Times deep in the hills of Tennessee were tough in those days; the family didn’t have much but you were certainly welcome to whatever was there. Peppermint candy sticks were a luxury. Perhaps for this reason her cakes were all the more delicious. No one loves peppermint more than me but I suppose the real reason those cakes tasted so good was because you were sure to find a generous helping of love mixed in with all of the flour and sugar.
I learned much from my great aunt during those infrequent visits to her rustic home in the hills. Among other things, I discovered the Joy of baking. More importantly, from her example, I learned to sift out the finer moments in life. There is a serenity of sorts concealed in the hustle and bustle of baking. In these precious moments, she reflected … and she shared. Serving others, even if it was with a piece of peppermint candy cake, took priority over her personal needs—she could always tend to those later.
Baking, I’m sure, gave her a way to find herself again, and to find her perpetual strength to continue lifting everyone else above the fray in their lives. My great aunt faced many struggles herself along the way (she is in her eighties now), but she always comes through with a smile and a warm heart—and, at times, a very yummy peppermint candy cake!
Thank you, Sarah for the warmth and love you cooked up in this post! I can’t wait to bake Miss Prather’s Pound Cake … and teach my own little girls a few lessons a very wonderful lady taught me long ago; among them, the importance of a smile and a warm heart filled to overflowing with love for others.
Eyes on the prize
Jul 14th
Great leaders possess high ethical standards; they assume responsibility and set the example for followers who do the right things (Hesselbein, et al, 1996, p.xii; Phillips, 1999, p.24). There is “nothing to be afraid of if you believe and know that the cause for which you stand is right” (Phillips, 1999, p.300). In general, leaders must understand human nature if they are to better understand themselves. And, as agents of change, leaders must understand human nature if they are to move the multitudes down the straight and narrow path—a path toward a new destination. In brief, “we are coming to believe that leaders are those people who “walk ahead,” people who are genuinely committed to deep change in themselves and in their organizations. They lead through developing new skills, capabilities, and understandings” (Senge, 1996, p.45). Such leaders are those individuals who inspire confidence, undermine hopelessness, confront fear, cease the day, promote positive and productive actions, light the candles, establish goals, and paint brighter tomorrows. They “have a dream.” A contemporary advertisement for such a “dreamer” might read:
Wanted: Corporate executive to lead Fortune 500 company into the twenty-first century. Must be visionary, authentic, courageous, and a global citizen. Workaholics need not apply (Bolt, 1996, p.161).
Although twenty-first century leaders are expected to be visionary, they must also be courageous. People expect their leaders to stand for something and to have the courage of their convictions. Dr. King exuded moral fortitude; he was a leader who marched, both literally and figuratively, headlong into history as the man who led America’s “third revolution” (Phillips, 1999, p.23). Addressing an audience in April 1959, Dr. King’s leadership is evident: “As I stand here and look out upon the thousands of Negro faces, and the thousands of white faces, intermingled like the waters of a river, I see only one face—the face of the future” (Phillips, 1999, p.275). A major part of Dr. King’s leadership style was to keep hope alive among the masses. “We must accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinite hope” (Phillips,1999, p.278). “The American people are infected with racism—that is the peril. They are also infected with democratic ideals—that is the hope” (Phillips, 1999, p.281). “All the darkness in the world cannot obscure the light of a single candle” (Phillips, 1999, p.280). Such are the words of a transformational leader.
In the final analysis, the courage to lead means standing up for what you believe in, acting when you know you’re going to be attacked for doing so, and continually trying to do the right thing. “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us” (Oliver Wendell Holmes). “Character,” Helen Keller once wrote, “cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved” (Phillips, 1999, p.306). Bolman and Deal (1995) suggest that “the signs point toward spirit and soul as the essence of leadership” (p.39). “Leaders with soul bring spirit to organizations … Leaders of spirit find their soul’s treasure store and offer its gifts to others” (Bolman & Deal, 1995, p.10). The essence of leadership is “offering oneself and one’s spirit. … Gifts [that affirm the fundamental moral precepts of compassion and judgment such as] authorship, love and caring, power, and significance only work when they are freely given and freely received … transforming a place of work to a way of life” (Bolman & Deal, 1995, p.102). Dr. King led with soul and he practiced what he preached. Dr. King was always about the business of his people. “I question and soul-search constantly into myself to be as certain as I can that I am fulfilling the true meaning of my work, that I am maintaining my sense of purpose, that I am holding fast to my ideals, and that I am guiding my people in the right direction” (Phillips, 1999, p.77). His principles of leadership are appropriate for all times, for all leaders in any situation with any organization. “Will we continue to march to the drumbeat of conformity,” Dr. King asked, “or will we, listening to the beat of a more distant drum, move to its echoing sounds?”
The choice is ours. Lao Tzu reminds us that “the leader teaches by example” (Heider, 1988, p.3). Our example is vividly illustrated in the life and times of one of the world’s greatest transformational leaders, Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. His example is expressed in the principles he embodied. Principles are “deep, fundamental truths, classic truths, generic common denominators. They are tightly interwoven threads running with exactness, consistency, beauty, and strength through the fabric of life” (Covey, 1989, p.122). Dr. King also taught us the significance of a vision if we are to lead effectively. Good leaders will have their own dream. Great leaders will share Dr. King’s dream—a dream deeply rooted in the American dream … a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”
The United States, after all, was founded on self-evident truths. Almost all of our greatest achievements have resulted from battles waged and won over moral issues and involving our understanding of right and wrong. Moral courage is a hallmark of great leaders. Abraham Lincoln was unwilling to accept “a house divided against itself,” a nation half-slave and half-free. Lincoln dreamt of “a place and a time where America will once again be seen as the last, best hope of earth.” As President, during a civil war that wrenched the soul of the country, Lincoln’s commitment to preserve the Union ensured the continuation of the uniquely American ideal of a truly “United States.” Similarly, Martin Luther King, Jr. led America’s revolution of the twentieth century on a campaign for justice, the redemption of a “promissory note” signed by the architects of our Republic who promised that all would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
If there is but one piece of advice he might give today, Dr. King would tell us the great leader constantly keeps his “eyes on the prize.”
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