Strength.

In her recent posting on the Blog Equip and Empower, Carolyn Towns writes about “Servant Leadership and Setting Boundaries”. She writes about questions that she often receives about Servant Leadership in regards to servant-leaders viewed as “being taken advantage of” or “being thought of as weak or becoming a doormat.” She points out “In our society, leadership typically comes from a power structure, not a principle of service. Servant Leadership turns this notion on its head. It comes from a place of serving those we lead. The first action is the need to set boundaries and limitations.”

I think that Robert Greenleaf addresses this issue in his writings where he redefines the idea of the true strength in leadership.

He begins his essay “A Concept of Strength” (from the book On Becoming A Servant Leader ) with “A WISE OLD LADY whom I knew many years ago ran a farm and loved horses. She once dropped the remark, ‘It is an art to drive hard with a light hand.’ Whenever I set out to do something where I have to drive a little and push a little to get it done (and what gets done without some of this?), I try to remember this bit of wisdom. It gets done better if I can do my driving my pushing, with a light hand.”

He goes on to write about the image that is often associated with the word strength, “Pictures of people who are represented as strong tend to show the set jaw and the unquiet eyes. Grim determination, the head bloodied but unbowed- these are the stereotyped attributes of strength in a person. They seem quite the opposite to cheerfulness and a light touch.”

According to Greenleaf, true strength is “the ability to see enough choices of aims, to choose the right aim, and to pursue that aim responsibly over a long period of time”.

The true power of a servant-leader does not come from the ability to over-power ones followers, but rather to have the wisdom to know how to guide them on the journey. Thanks Carolyn for your thoughts on the topic. So where do we find the strength to practice servant leadership in our own life’s?

Links for Wednesday, July 17, 2007

Hello everyone! I trust everything is going well for all of you. It has been an extremely busy summer and as I get caught up on some things I thought I would share some interesting links that I have been reading lately:

• Lead Quietly has become one of my favorite blogs as of late. Great posts Don!

• Servant Leadership 101 is a well written, thoughtful primer on Servant Leadership.

• An article/summary of James Autry's book The Servant Leader. This book is one of only a few 'must-reads' by all those interested in servant leadership.

• An article titled 'From Servant Leadership to Social Entrepreneurship.' The idea of Social Entrepreneurship, especially as discussed in David Bornstein's book How to Change the World, has been a topic of great interest to me as of late. More on that soon.

• And the most insightful corporate blog out there that gives great insight into how Southwest Airlines has such an amazing servant leadership culture. Make sure this is one you read often!

Have a great day everyone!

Interdependence.

As folks around the nation celebrate Independence Day, it seems fitting to reflect on some of the servant leaders who played a role in Declaration of Independence. Robert Greenleaf mentions Thomas Jefferson and his mentor George Wythe in several of his writings on servant leadership. In his essay “The Servant As Leader” he points out that Wythe was “a signer of the Declaration of Independence and a member of the constitutional congress. But his chief claim to fame is as Thomas Jefferson’s mentor.” His point in mentioning Wythe is to remind us that “old people may have a part to play in helping potential servant-leaders to emerge at their optimal best.”

Regarding Jefferson, Greenleaf believed that his most important acts were not the drafting of the Declaration of Independence, nor his role as president, but what he did during the during the Revolutionary War. He went back to his home in Virginia, got elected to the state legislature and “proceeded to write new statutes embodying the new principles of law for the new nation.” For Greenleaf this showed that Jefferson “knew who he was, and he resolved to be his own man. He chose his own role.” This independence could not have come about without the help of the mentors in his life.

In the essay “The Future is Now” Greenleaf again mentions these two founding fathers and uses them as examples of leaders to emulate. He writes, “Somebody needs to paint the big dream, to give our age a goal that will lift the eyes of young people off the ground and make them want to stretch their horizons. The future is being made now. The future is now!”

So when you hear the explosions and see the fireworks bursting forth, take a moment to reflect on the deeper meaning of Independence Day and look for the interdependence that makes it all possible.