Some weekend entertainment

Via Powerline......If you have not seen this man perform before, it is well worth it. You will be AMAZED!

Have a great weekend!

Abilities not learned in the classroom

Yesterday I wrote about Greenleaf's ideas on leaders and genius. He indicated that there are two intellectual abilities that are not addressed in the classroom, but that a leader must possess. Those two qualities are:

Leaders need to

• Know the unknowable; and
• Forsee the unforeseeable.

Greenleaf says "The leader knows some things and forsees some things that the people he is presuming to lead do not so well know or so well foresee. This is partly what gives him his "lead," what qualifies him to go ahead and guide the way. And this may be why the genius-level people must sometimes accept the leadership of people who are simply wise."

Greenleaf goes on to speculate about these two leadership necessities within a framework of natural law - something we will come back to soon.

A Greenleaf Leadership Quiz

The book On Becoming a Servant-Leader includes a series of lectures that Greenleaf gave back in 1969 at Dartmouth Alumni College. These include some of my favorite writings of Greenleafs, packed with a combination of straight-forward wisdom and amazing depth beyond the mere words.

In one of the lectures he talks about leadership and geniuses:

Leaders often are not geniuses. One of the problems that geniuses have in the world is that they are sometimes led by people who are less developed intellectually. In fact, those of us who are not geniuses have some of the same feelings as we do toward the mayors of our cities, our governors, the presidents of our country, the heads of our firms, the presidents of our universities. They sometimes do not appear too intelligent by the usual standards; yet they are able leaders. Clearly, the requirements of leadership impose some intellectual demands that are not measured by IQ or academic intelligence ratings. The two are not mutually exclusive, but they are different things. The leader needs two intellectual abilities that are usually not formally assessed in an academic way: he needs to ________ and to ________.

Anybody want to take a guess as to what Greenleaf suggests that leaders need that they don't get from a classroom? Don't limit yourself to just a word; each blank represents a couple of words.

In case you don't know, I'll provide the answers tomorrow!

Reasons for Embracing Servant-Leadership

I read this quote yesterday over on the Fast Company Blog:

Businesses can talk all this social responsibility stuff, but they are likely to do something about it only if there's an economic reason for them to do it."
---Bill Joy, founder, Sun Microsystems

My first reaction was to think of all those organizations out there practicing servant-leadership (and there are far too many to list) who are socially responsible first and foremost because it is the right thing to do. 'Ha, Mr. Joy,' I thought, 'you are wrong!'

My second reaction, a little more delayed, (probably because it was Monday - or perhaps because I'm just a little slow every day) was to wonder if all those practicing servant-leadership and who try to be socially responsible are doing so because they do see economic reasons/advantages in the practice. So perhaps Mr. Joy is not that far off after all. Perhaps by just removing the word 'only' from the statement it makes perfect sense. HMMMM.

What do you think? How far along would servant-leadership be if it had absolutely no economic impact on an organization? In other words, if institutions would not be any better or any worse off financially by embracing servant-leadership would there be any interest in it at all? Does it need to improve the bottom line for institutions to jump on board?

A Milestone

Well, not a real large milestone.......but it is a milestone!

This is post #250 on this blog. We started out back in late July, so we have been blogging now for eight months. We have well over twice as many subscribers than site visitors, which is something I never really suspected when I first started out. In addition, there are a couple of great fellow bloggers that have come on board since we started: Don Frick, who not only wrote the biography on Robert Greenleaf, but more importantly has become a good friend; and Tom Jablonski, an alumnus of our Master's program and who always brings a wonderful depth to our conversation.

As we head into the last few months of our first year on the web we will continue to look for better ways to be a megaphone for, and foster conversation about, servant-leadership which is inclusive and respectful. We hope that this site will continue to provide resources, insights, and thought-provoking ideas about servant-leadership and its role in our homes, churches, organizations, and communities. I hope to do some much-needed updating to the website, as well as reach out and invite others to the posting "table" who understand what S-L is all about; I hope to provide the blog as a vehicle for them to communicate and clarify their thoughts and ideas, and also give the readers more variety in the voices you hear/read every day.

Thank you for taking the time to read our posts. And as always, we are always open to hear from you about how we can make this your first stop each day when looking for ways to become a more effective servant-leader.

Links for Monday, March 27th

Here are two articles that I came across that you may enjoy:

1) Meaningful Work - Jack speaks abouts, and quotes, Greenleaf and his idea that business exists as much to provide meaningful work for the employee as it does to produce a product for the customer. A wonderful post that contains some nuggets that I will return to soon.

2) A philosophy of servant-leadership - The president and the CEO of Summa Health System in Northeast Ohio are both interviewed for this outstanding article that every servant-leader should read! These are two guys that I definitely want to meet!

It's about.......

RELATIONSHIPS!

What are the qualities that you would use to define an "ideal" doctor? Think of your best experience with a physician - why was it such a great experience? Conversely, why was your worst experience with a doctor so bad? Did it have anything to do with their technical expertise?

A recent study, published in the March issue of Mayo Clinic Proceedings, indicates that expertise is rarely mentioned in patients' assessments. Rather, patients think that the qualities that make an ideal doctor are: honesty; compassion; and respectfulness. And when there are problems, it is usually due to the physician's arrogance, dismissive attitude and callousness.

You can find the news story here.

Women, Work, Family & Servant-Leadership

The lead story in Sunday's NY Times Business section asks "Why Do So Few Women Reach The Top Of Big Law Firms?" It is a great question, with a lot of answers. It should not be surprising that the "maternal wall" is mentioned as one of the most prevalent:

Research conducted by the New York City Bar Association and other groups indicate that women who temporarily give up their professional dreams to pursue child-rearing or other personal goals have a difficult, if not impossible, time finding easily available on-ramps when they choose to re-enter the legal world.

Perhaps it is just the Catholic theologian in me that finds numerous questions here. Yet I also see these same questions as relevant to servant-leaders: 1) What are we called to do when the demands of the marketplace drive so much of our lives?; 2) What is the proper priority of family concerns?; and 3) How can we place more importance within the marketplace on having women in positions of influence in economic and public life?

If part of the role of being an effective servant-leader is removing barriers so that everyone can reach their potential, then these questions are ones that must not only be asked and fully explored but work must be done so that the question asked in Sunday's NY Times no longer appears.

Gems From Down Under

Two of my all-time favorite people are the dynamic Feldman sisters – Diann and Ali – who founded and head up the Greenleaf Centre, Australia and also operate a successful consulting firm based on servant leadership. In a recent exchange of emails, Diann shared some gems about their approach to evoking others' understanding of what it takes to be a servant-leader.

"We talk a lot about what has to be given up to be a servant-leader and what is gained; that it takes time, courage and a deep desire to see real change – deep change from within the servant-leader, not some pseudo action that won't last.

Then, conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead – but why does one aspire? [We] explore the idea that 'aspiring to lead' is about seeing the opportunities we are given to serve others, to take the lead to ensure that their high priority needs and ability to grow are foremost in our actons.

Servant-leaders aspire to lead because they see leading as another opportunity to influence the growth of others. It is likely that everyone can be a servant-leader if they raise their consciousness to the growth of others, serve this growth effectively, and also consciously choose to take the lead as a way of being able to serve others more fully."

"Listening must come from two places – a genuine place of not knowing, and from an attitude of undefended receptivity. We talk about listening to, listening for, and listening with . . ."

There is much to ponder here. The question about what one needs to give up to be a servant-leader, for example, is not popular and not often asked, but it speaks to the heart of the matter. I recall a question asked of me during a presentation in Dallas some months ago. A woman wondered how I was personally changed by doing Greenleaf's biography. I tried to reply honestly, even though it wasn't much fun: "I had to start giving up some of my grandiosity, and there are days when I really miss it."

If you go to the Greenleaf Center's Annual Conference in Indianapolis this year (June 2-4) you can look up the Feldman sisters. I'm going a day early just for the chance to "shoot the breeze" with them, as we Yanks say.

"Breathtaking Possiblities" of Servant Leadership

On March 16th, 2006 Don Frick wrote an inspiring comment on my ramblings on “Kleptocracy” that seemed worth delving into. Don wrote, “For me, one of the most breathtaking possibilities offered by servant leadership is the idea that, because humans share an impulse to serve, we can also imagine ourselves as part of a global tribe of humankind. Enlightened artists and mystics have always done this but the shift in mass consciousness began in December, 1968 when astronauts on Apollo 10 sent back the first picture of an "earthrise." Exactly one year later Greenleaf was at work on the first draft of "The Servant As Leader."”


It seemed interesting that I noticed a couple of articles in newspapers the next day from a news release about the findings from NASA’s Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe(WMAP) satellite mission designed to study the primordial burst of energy that gave birth to the universe in the “big bang”, which the NASA diagram above depicts. (See the article in the Christian Science Monitor or NASA’s WMAP site for more information and the source of the graphic above.)

One of the most interesting things I have learned about Greenleaf (via Don's great biography of Greenleaf) was that this guy who had so much to do with servant leadership was originally studying astronomy. Could it be that “servant leadership” is indeed related to our “recent” understandings about the origins of the universe and ourselves? If Greenleaf might have been inspired to write “The Servant as Leader” from the images of earth from space, what inspiration might come from these “new images” of the "birth" of the universe? And how about the team that is conducting the WMAP research, I wonder if this is a team that naturally practices servant leadership? Or do I need to lay off the coffee?

Meeting the needs of our customers

Yesterday the Fast Company Blog had this post about a hair salon in Washington, D.C. The article, located in yesterday's Washington Post, describes how the salon opens every morning at 5 A.M. to meet the needs of this on-the-go town.

While there is something a little bit skewed in the idea that people's lives are so busy that they have to go to the salon at 5 A.M., the fact that the salon owner realizes that there is a need and is willing to do something unique is commendable.

KLEPTOCRACY

I recently finished reading Jared Diamond’s book “Guns, Germs, and Steel.” A chapter that I found quite interesting from a servant leadership prospective was the one called “From Egalitarianism to Kleptocracy”. The chapter basically is about how our human societies evolved from small bands of closely related groups of people that naturally interacted with each other in caring ways, to huge populations that were “lead” by leaders who dictated and controlled the citizens to keep the peace and profit from the masses at the same time. One major reason for this change in leadership style had to do with the number of people that began to exist in communities because of the change from hunter gathering societies to societies sustained by agricultural practices.

Diamond writes about the smallest unit of organization, the tribe, where “the number of people is still low enough that everyone knows everyone else by name and by relationship.” He goes on to write, “One reason why organization of human government tends to change from that of a tribe to a chiefdom in societies with more then a few hundred members is that the difficult issue of conflict resolution between strangers becomes increasingly acute in large groups. A fact further diffusing potential problems of conflict resolution in tribes is that almost everyone is related to everyone else by blood or marriage or both. Those ties of relationship binding all tribal members make police, laws, and other conflict-resolving institutions of larger societies unnecessary, since any two villagers getting into an argument will share many kin, who apply pressure on them to keep it from becoming violent”.

Later in the chapter Diamond writes, “chiefdoms introduced the dilemma fundamental to all centrally governed, non-egalitarian societies. At best, they do good by providing expensive services impossible to contract for on an individual basis. At worst, they function unabashedly as kleptocracies, transferring net wealth from commoners to upper classes. …The difference between a kleptocrat and a wise statesmen, … is merely one of degree: a matter of just how large a percentage of the tribute extracted from producers is retained by the elite, and how much the commoners like the public uses to which the redistributed tribute is put.”

Not to pick on Wal-Mart, but since Trevor has posted several times on the organization it seemed fitting to fit that organization into this discussion. In Trevor’s March 7 post, he mentioned Wal-Mart recently hiring a Director of Global Ethics to be responsible for "ensuring that ethics is embedded into key business processes." When I hear about such ventures I am skeptical that real change can come about until an organization realizes that until it attempts to scale back the size of its organization and services, it will likely just be one more attempt at kleptocracy.

The other challenge this concept brings out for me is how do we go back to the natural more caring egalitarian relationships we used to have before we forgot how to interact with each other in our large organizations?

My thoughts on my new word for the day, kleptocracy.

Values and employee cynicism

The word 'values' is popping up everywhere in mission statements these days, and many companies seem to be working harder than ever to create a specific culture within the organization. But what happens when organizational leaders are seen as breaching the very values that they had developed?

A recent study published in The Leadership Quarterly discussed how values must be handled with great care - and the cynicism and charges of hypocricy that result when they are not. The two women who did this research were recently interviewed about their findings here. The research they have done within organizations has led to further theories about leadership strategies and minimizing the appearance of hypocricy among employees. While the study is a very technical read, I recommend reading their interview for some great insight into a problem many organizations struggle with on a continual basis.

(Hat Tip: Sue S.)

A Special Week

This week, March 13-17, 2006 is designated as National Multiple Sclerosis Awareness Week. My saintly wife is blessed with/struggles with MS, having been diagnosed at age 19 and already in a wheelchair when I met her at age 24. She still works full-time, driving herself to work each day and always full of hope for what the future may hold. Her biggest complaint in life is often that she is stuck with me for eternity! :-)

Affecting 400,000 Americans (2.5 million worldwide) with 200 new people diagnosed each week, it is likely you know someone who has MS. If you have a chance, visit the Face of MS website to see examples of people affected by MS - it is both informational and moving.

Another Invitation. Is it a Shamless Plug?

Since starting this blog just over 7 months and a little shy of 250 posts ago, I have been very careful to make sure that it is not a megaphone for our Master's program in Servant-Leadership. I went back and checked and I have linked only 6 times to our program. Even though the blog is written by faculty and alumni, I want this to be a gathering place for ideas around servant-leadership and not about recruiting students into our program. I'm sure we wouldn't be consistently gaining 25-35 new readers each month if that was its goal.

Well, this is the one time that I will break this rule. Every year here at Viterbo we have a Summer Institute. It allows participants from all over the country to obtain an MA in Servant-Leadership. Students come to campus here in La Crosse, WI two weeks at the end of June each summer for four years. Some students finish in as few as three! We literally do have students here from all over the United States. We are located right on the Mississippi and several participants even bring their families and make a vacation out of it!

The dates for this year's Summer Institute are June 18 - 30. If you would like to join us, or know anyone who might be interested, we will be accepting applications until around May 1st. Please e-mail me for more information.

Love, Honor and Courage: An Invitation

In case you haven't heard, the Greenleaf Center for Servant-Leadership will be hosting the 16th annual International Conference June 1-3 in Indianapolis. The theme this year is Love, Honor and Courage. You can find more information here.

I highly encourage you to attend this year's event. Some friends of ours, Dr. James Sipe and Jeff Pauley, co-founders of Magellan Executive Resources will be presenting on Saturday; another presenter will be a participant in our Master's program beginning this summer! It will be another fantastic conference and I encourage you to consider attending. If you have any specific questions, please contact the Greenleaf Center. If you have some general questions about the conference, feel free to contact us via e-mail or leave a comment.

Does faith go to work with you? An Interview

Ken Melrose, former CEO of Toro, who I mentioned before will be speaking at a 'Leader as Servant' breakfast in the Twin Cities on March 16th, recently gave an interview with Christianity Today. It is an excellent interview - one of the most enjoyable that I have come across. I think the reason that I enjoyed it so much is because Mr. Melrose's language meshes almost perfectly with the work we are trying to do in our Master's Program.

You can find the article here.

Can a company change how it does business?

They sure can! I see it all the time - in small businesses. But what if the company is the largest of the large: Wal-Mart? I written about Wal-Mart before (see here and here), including a recent post about the man who said 'no' to Wal-Mart (see here).

The Fast Company Blog will have a guest host blogger this week, who will have a series of posts on Wal-Mart. Why? Wal-Mart is adding a couple of positions that have gotten them quite a bit of attention recently: 1) The Director of Global Ethics will be responsible for "ensuring that ethics is embedded into key business processes."; and 2) the Senior Director of Stakeholder Engagement will "help pioneer a new model of how Wal-Mart works with outside stakeholders resulting in fundamental changes in how the company does business." The first post, definitely worth the time to read, can be found here.

As the guest blogger correctly points out, it seems like Wal-Mart is beginning to think about something other than just price. Will the regular shoppers notice much difference? Doubt it. Will the folks who don't like Wal-Mart begin to change their minds? Probably not. But it is a good start for the company many consider to the destroyer of small-town businesses. We'll see where it all leads.

In the meantime, follow along this week's conversation about Wal-Mart on the Fast Company Blog.

Servant-Leader vs. Service-Based Leader

I recently ran across a website for a nonprofit that offers a credential in servant leadership. In their mission statement they call this philosophy "Servant (Service-Based) Leadership." I admit to being a cranky old purist (emphasis on "old") when it comes to defining servant leadership, but Greenleaf could also be a curmudgeon at times. On the other hand, one of the skills of a servant-leader is the ability to frame honest questions rather than preach answers. So I put the question out there: Do you think "service-based leader" is a fair morphing of the concept of "servant-leader?"

I have my own take on the answer based on Greenleaf's life and writings but maybe I'm full of beans. What do you think?

Don Frick

Where in the world is........

Time to write posts, for one. Whew! There are a 4-5 times a year that life becomes very hectic, this being one of those times. Students are working on mid-terms before taking off next week for spring break. In addition, I have two classes that end this week, and another one that has just started.

It means I'm working through almost 80 research and mid-term papers, along with some final papers/projects for the classes that are finishing. I'll be back posting on a more consistent basis next week.

Enjoy the weekend!

Awareness Revisited

Monday evening was the last night for a class I teach in the School of Adult Learning titled Servant-Leadership in Practice. As we were synthesizing the ideas discussed throughout the course, a student mentioned (perhaps as a way to schmooze the instructor, although it did seem genuine) how much they enjoyed the recent post on awareness and the Greenleaf quote.

I pointed out that, as he often does, frequent contributor Don Frick added a comment expanding on my post. Don talked about how most people think of awareness as ego awareness, as OUR place in the environment. Of course Greenleaf had a much different idea; an idea that awareness is the "acceptance of What Is, in all its booming richness and paradox."

A great discussion of awareness followed. One student mentioned that if they received a call that their spouse, heaven forbid, was suddenly missing that they would have no idea what to tell the police their spouse was wearing that day! That was followed-up with a discussion about our own children as well.

Consequently there are now 15 students and a professor that have Greenleaf to thank for opening our hearts and minds to becoming more aware. It is very easy to "substitute routine for awareness." We must find ways to awaken our inner spirits and become more aware. For those that are interested in the topic, I recommend this book.

One final thought: What is your spouse/children/those you love wearing today? What were the two or three big stories on the front page of the paper you read this morning? Are you slipping all too often into routine?