Posts tagged heart and soul
The Dark Side
Jul 29th
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 Sharon Eden. Sharon is the “Inner Leadership and Coaching for Purpose” expert. Her bio highlights her role as an exceptional coach with a ‘fire in her gut’ deeply committed to helping executives and senior managers discover their purpose, passion, and power to be happier, more effective, and influential at work with substantially improved performances as leaders and managers. What her bio doesn’t say is this: Sharon is inspiration. There is a simple elegance about her and her work that brings you back for more. She is a lady of grace with a zest for life unparallelled. And she is a wonderful friend who reminds us in a brilliantly refreshing way life can be an adventure …
Dark Side of Servant Leadership
by Sharon Eden (London UK)
You’ve read the definitions. You’ve read the theories. You’ve read the seminal books on serving leadership. So… you know what it is.
Do you? Do you really?
It seems to me that the literature demands that servant leaders be absolutely fully actualised humans. And, as I say to my psychotherapy clients when they ask how long it will take to be cured, “Have you got 3,000 years?”
Here’s a sample of servant leadership characteristics taken from the literature…
Charismatic vision and behaviour that inspires others to follow, capacity to motivate others to commit to the vision, encouraging innovation and creativity, coaching to the specific needs of followers.
Mmm… I think Hitler and Mussolini had all those!
Clear sense of purpose, building vision and goals, value driven with congruent behaviour, strong role model, high expectations, persistent, identify themselves as change agents, enthusiastic, strategic, risk-taking, unwilling to believe in failure….
Mmm… I guess you know the comment I’m about to make here too.
But, what differentiates the servant leader is self-knowing, emotional maturity and the ability to deal with complexity, uncertainty and ambiguity. Oh, those old things… complexity, uncertainty and ambiguity. Piece of cake!
AND true servant leadership flows from the inner spiritual awareness, or presence, which servant leaders acquire in their journeys through this world.
Phew! No wonder they’re few and far between on the ground.
There’s a piece of Zen wisdom that says if you can define a thing, then that’s not it! And that’s the problem when ‘science’ and the intellect get hold of servant leadership. For they literally suck the heart and soul out of it and the nature of its being in action… Servant leadership is not its definitions!
Without heart, soul and action from integrity, your ego can get its rocks off with servant leadership. It can use it to inflate its own grandiosity… ‘How wonderful I am doing good works’… its own sense of absolute rightness and, as if still in the feudal system of kings, its own divine right to rule.
And, for sure, we have modern examples of leaders who purport to serve, from the kitchen sink to heads of nations, for whom ego, egoistic wants and desires are foremost. ‘I only want what’s best for you’ or ‘I deserve fame and lots of money for taking care of my people’… while the family or the nation is ruled by fear and obligation and eventually enters decline.
For me, being seduced by your ego is the most important aspect of the dark side. The aspect which you and I, if we aspire to servant leadership, must hunt out with the vigilance of a starving tiger seeking food.
Because such a travesty of servant leadership is a violent abuse to which any of us, being human, could fall prey.
There’s a part of my personality which I call Genghis Khan. Once upon a time I could castrate a man at 20 paces with the violence of my tongue. That was spawned by my fury and my pain which came from my experience of being a misused female in a male dominated world.
Having worked to expand myself, I no longer choose to hold to the experience or act out the fury and pain. But, hey, given the right circumstances, I know I potentially still could. Any time I’m very tired, feeling down, physically ill or depressed, my personality gremlins can come out and bite me on the butt!
And, if you don’t think that happens to you or you could behave in a similar way to my Genghis Khan, then you most definitely need to wake up to the dark side of yourself. Because, if you don’t acknowledge or work reparatively with it, I guarantee it will most definitely and unconsciously leak out of you and create a huge whack around the head for others and, potentially, yourself.
For how can you and I serve honourably and well without awareness of our dark side and being able to manage and choose our thoughts, feelings and behaviours?… How can you and I serve honourably and well without developing our own inner leadership so as to better lead for ourselves… as well as others!
Servant leadership and its dark side? A work in progress for us all!
Choices
Jul 21st
The Leadership of Eric Duquette
Eric Duquette, a Smithfield High School senior — indeed, the 2010 salutatorian from Smithfield, Rhode Island — is a teenager. What we learn from Eric is that life is about choices. Sometimes, our life is shaped by the choices others make.
In Eric’s particular case, life until now has been shaped in large part by the important choices his parents made on his behalf. As for Eric’s classmates, not to mention the myriad of strangers who since have been encouraged by the opportunity social media has given us to meet Eric, life has been shaped (for some, a little; for others, a lot) by Eric’s choices. You see, his is a journey of will and determination, a journey that teaches us something remarkable: service, the heart and soul of leadership — and greatness — is one of those few far-reaching personal choices that clearly defines our life.
Eric has something else remarkable to teach us. We may choose to serve, but others choose whether we lead. As you shall soon see, Eric’s graduating class makes it clear true leadership is a choice, by and far, others make. Leadership does not hail from power, politic, position, or privilege. We can no more wish it into existence than we can bottle it to be bought or sold. It is not something we demand for ourselves. You see, to lead is not ours to choose. Leadership is a choice wholly dependent on others; it is demonstrated only in another’s willingness to follow.
By the way, did I tell you Eric’s journey begins with a serious learning disability — autism — that many thought would confine Eric to a life’s sentence in an institution? Turns out Eric had other plans! He would not allow his limitations to define his life; instead, he chose to serve.
Let us, like Eric, choose to serve; others will decide soon enough if/how we are to lead.
Something Larger than Me
Jul 8th
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:
