Thank you for dropping by! Thursdays are Servant Hearts day. Gracious leaders around the world guest post to NorthFork’s blog, A Servant’s Heart, sharing their fabulous insights regarding the serving nature of leadership. We’re delighted you’ve joined us. Be prepared for a variety of experience!

Today, we are happy to welcome Thomas Harper from America’s Midwest. Thomas hails from the University of Michigan; he later obtained his law degree from the University of Indiana at Bloomington. Like many of our Servant Hearts friends, I met Thomas on Twitter, and I am grateful we crossed paths. In a few short minutes, I believe you will see why. When he is not busy trouble shooting and solving complex problems, Thomas enjoys sports (esp Tae Kwon Do, racquetball, and running), travel, cooking, reading, and music. Thomas’ bio tells us he “thrives on difference makers;” seems to me Thomas IS a difference maker. His is a heart that knows how to serve. In so doing, love blossoms.



Engaging Creativity, Growth, and Contribution with Servant Leadership
by Thomas Harper (Indianapolis, Indiana)

One person can do great things; however, the greatest accomplishments cannot be achieved by one, alone. Young and emerging leaders must learn to embrace courage while letting go of bravado, and must learn to have faith, trust, and confidence, while releasing ego, to serve and to lead.

When I received Dr. Jack’s invitation to share a post for NorthFork’s Servant Hearts series I was genuinely excited and grateful. I knew it represented an opportunity to engage, create, grow, and contribute. And although the focus of this post is fostering engagement, creativity, growth, and contribution through servant leadership, we should also remember that being grateful is most important to humility, humanity, and servant leadership.

The most effective leadership removes obstacles instead of placing obstacles or causing resistance. At our heart and soul we each want to be engaging, creating, growing, and contributing to something larger than ourselves. The greatest leaders have not “managed” or “controlled”, but have served, their followers, subordinates, colleagues, and peers. “Management” and “control” foster the status quo, and result in continued mediocrity. On the other hand, great leadership achieves excellence through dynamic growth and development toward a shared vision and purpose. The greatest leaders have served and engaged their followers, subordinates, colleagues, and peers in their desire to create, grow, and contribute; and in their passion for purpose. Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Nelson Mandela (even from prison) served and led in this way. In short, such leaders motivate us. We learn from them, and others like them, our world can be a better place if we but treat people like, well, people! [At the end of this post is a great 11-minute Youtube video, viewed almost 2 million times, that helps us better understand "Why."]

Individually, what holds US back from engaging, creating, growing, and contributing is the fear of mistake, the fear of failure, or the feeling that we are inconsequential or unworthy. I recently read a blog reporting a CEO who refused to allow e-mail in his company because it had the side-effect of causing delegation upward (by e-mailing or cc-ing one’s supervisor or manager with problems to be handled by the employee), a direct result of the fear of making mistakes and a failure in properly handling the problems that arise. Likewise, we’ve learned procrastination and perceived “laziness” are mostly products of feelings of unworthiness, fear, and/or anxiety.

But we also know the servant style and serving nature of leadership requires trust, faith, vulnerability, caring, courage, and placing reliance and value on and in others. These are the values and character traits that overcome the obstacles presented by fear, anxiety, and feelings of unworthiness or inadequacy. These are the values and character traits that release us to fully commit to being engaging, creating, growing, and contributing; passionately. These are the values and traits that allow us to fully challenge our outer bounds. When we challenge our limitations, “mistakes” are inevitable; but so are growth, expansion, and creativity. These values also foster contribution, as well as feelings, experiences, and expressions of ourselves as valuable pieces of the overall purpose and vision.

Responsibility then arises from the reliance placed on us. Each piece has responsibility for the whole. And, in turn, this responsibility causes us to own, blamelessly and fearlessly, our choices and the results of our choices; creating empowerment and choice; instead of feelings of victimization, dread, or entitlement. We can only grow by challenging and exceeding our current limits; and, so, mistakes are inevitable, but also acceptable. Every great leader knows there are not great rewards without great risk. Every great leader has made mistakes; mistakes which have not detracted from the message, vision, or purpose. Mistakes have instead led to further growth and strength.

All of us, and our followers, subordinates, colleagues, and peers, are there for a reason. We want to be engaged. Servant leadership doesn’t maintain, “manage,” or “control” our obstacles and limitations; it removes them. Ask yourself, for every challenge you’ve faced, was facing the challenge easiest alone, with people watching for your mistakes, or with people encouraging you to “go for it.” The essence of servant leadership is engaging others to “go for it” and being there for them unconditionally to support their passion to create, grow and contribute. Sharing in and inspiring the values and character traits of trust, faith, vulnerability, caring, courage, and placing reliance and value on and in others creates this unconditional support. We are all both leaders and followers; when we lead effectively, we serve from our heart and soul.

Incidentally, there is an added bonus which results from what I refer to as the Platinum Rule (the corollary to the Golden Rule): ultimately, you will treat yourself the way you treat others. When you foster engagement, creativity, growth, and contribution in others, you foster it in yourself. And when you create trust, faith, vulnerability, caring, courage, and reliance in others; you create and enhance it in yourself as well. When you are a servant leader you have love and care for others, you have love and care for yourself, and you cannot help but serve.

In closing, please permit me to borrow a relevant John Quincy Adams quote posted earlier in this series by Christopher Zaucha as he was helping us better understand a True Leader Serves Their Constituency; indeed, they are difference makers:

“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more, you are a leader.”