Shadows

"I am coming from both darkness and light”, says the face, “both out of problems and possibilities. I may even be a little off-center myself in my understanding of these things. But tell me: are you going to do anything about them?” Am I – are we – indeed?”

Photograph of Robert K Greenleaf by Marilyn S. Futterman and quote from Forward written by Peter B. Vaill to the book THE POWER OF SERVANT-LEADERSHIP.

Peter Vaill includes an interesting description of a photograph of Robert Greenleaf in his Forward to the book THE POWER OF SERVANT-LEADERSHIP. Most of Greenleaf’s essays from the book were originally published as pamphlets by the Greenleaf Center for Servant-Leadership and according to Vaill, the photograph of Greenleaf was included in the pamphlets along with a short biography. Some interesting quotes from his description of the photo follow.

Yet I consider it so extraordinary an image – one that stimulates thoughts and feelings in me that are pertinent to the spirit of these essays.

He is turned very slightly to his left from the camera and the effect is to place the left half of his face almost completely in shadow while the right side remains fully illuminated.

It is a striking picture, and made the more so by one final feature: it is dramatically off-center. Greenleaf’s head and shoulders occupy the right half of the picture, but the left half is blank space. This left half is strongly illuminated at the bottom and shades to black at the top, but is completely empty.

The longer I look at this picture the more I am stimulated to think about Greenleaf as a person. There is a darkness running through his writings. He is writing about terribly complex problems which contain the potential for some very bad outcomes – and he knows it. Yet he is not wringing his hands, not paralyzed with alarm.

If you are looking to delve deeper into the shadows of Greenleaf’s servant leadership ideas, pickup a copy of THE POWER OF SERVANT LEADERSHIP and find some illumination.