"Servant-Leaders in a Workaholic Society.”
Diane Fassel’s essay is the eighteenth from the book Insights on Leadership and addresses the ever-prevalent disorder of Workaholism. Webster’s defines a workaholic as a compulsive worker. Whenever we become compulsive about a task; our believe that the task is a means towards an end and then acting accordingly, results in our lives becoming unbalanced.
Fassel’s essay is appropriately titled “Lives in the Balance: The Challenge of Servant-Leaders in a Workaholic Society.” In her essay she reminds us about the words of Robert Greenleaf regarding the true test of servant leadership, namely do “those served grow as persons… become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants.” Greenleaf’s test should guide us in determining if the tasks we practice are indeed worthwhile, or rather a way to avoid our true calling.
She goes on to give her working definition of Workaholism as “an addiction to incessant internal and/or external activity with the belief that if I were not active, I would have no right to be or exist”; it is the obsession with activity that too often keeps us from getting in touch with the deeper meaning of our lives. It is the failure to maintain balance in our lives, the balance between activity and quiet that keeps us from the true practice of servant leadership. A key reminder of this comes when Fassel writes, “When Robert Greenleaf advised servant-leaders to withdraw, it was not just to recoup strength, but to realign with the core principle. When we put our work before ourselves, we lose ourselves to work. Ultimately we lose the meaning of work itself.”
To be effective at work one needs to be a whole person; seeking wholeness by focusing mainly on work is not wholeness, but unbalance.
Fassel’s essay is appropriately titled “Lives in the Balance: The Challenge of Servant-Leaders in a Workaholic Society.” In her essay she reminds us about the words of Robert Greenleaf regarding the true test of servant leadership, namely do “those served grow as persons… become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants.” Greenleaf’s test should guide us in determining if the tasks we practice are indeed worthwhile, or rather a way to avoid our true calling.
She goes on to give her working definition of Workaholism as “an addiction to incessant internal and/or external activity with the belief that if I were not active, I would have no right to be or exist”; it is the obsession with activity that too often keeps us from getting in touch with the deeper meaning of our lives. It is the failure to maintain balance in our lives, the balance between activity and quiet that keeps us from the true practice of servant leadership. A key reminder of this comes when Fassel writes, “When Robert Greenleaf advised servant-leaders to withdraw, it was not just to recoup strength, but to realign with the core principle. When we put our work before ourselves, we lose ourselves to work. Ultimately we lose the meaning of work itself.”
To be effective at work one needs to be a whole person; seeking wholeness by focusing mainly on work is not wholeness, but unbalance.
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