One of the most common misperceptions about servant leadership is that it doesn’t contribute to the financial well being of an organization.  Quite the contrary.  The lack of elements of servant leadership actually impedes productivity and financial well being.

When organizations function soley within a hierarchical structure with decisions and information flowing only from the top down, it is easily demonstrated that potential for increased productivity is diminished.  In such an organization, lack of trust is endemic.  And without trust, new ideas, designs, programs and processes are inhibited.  Employees simply await orders and when they are not forthcoming, the organization suffers.

We saw this happen during the Katrina disaster and now in the oil spill in the Atlantic.  While it is not clear what was the cause of this disaster, what is clear is the complete mismanagement of the government’s response-both before and after the incident.   First, it was the government which provided the guidelines for drilling.  The oil rig in question had been approved by the federal government-the current administration which had received substantial campaign contributions.  Second, help from at least 13 nations-including the Dutch who have the state of the art equipment was refused by the administration.  The reason?  The Jones Act of the 1920 requiring U.S. ships and workers! Third, the federal government halted the efforts by Louisiana to capture the oil  before it reached the mainland.  The reason?  Barge operators weren’t wearing life preservers!  Fourth, the government halted  the efforts of Louisiana to build berms to capture at least some of the oil before it reached the mainland.  The reason?  Such efforts might damage the environment!  The government’s response to the oil disaster is the prototype of the top down, bottlenecked organization which become paralyzed when information flow comes only from the top.

Carlton Snow in the book Faith in Leadership, states “By contrast, working on the basis of trust is not only more profitable but also more satisfying and more effective.  When trust is based on shared norms and values, it gives managers an opportunity to mold a work group in a way that will function for a common purpose.  In such a work environment, trust can emerge as a sort of social capital.  . .Work groups rich in the social capital of trust make the work experience more productive and personally enriching and ultimately more effective and profitable.”

In the most recent disaster,  an open and trusting environment would have fosterd greater synergy in responding to the current disaster.  Berms could have been built much sooner, greater resources from the world community would have been available and it is an absolute certainty that less oil would have reached the sensitive wetlands and the mainland beaches.  The lack of a trusting servant leadership approach has resulted in much greater financial losses in the region.

The sixth myth of servant leadership evolves from the idea that people must be coerced to perform.   It differs from that myth in the sense that, as one of my former colleagues put it “You can be selfish and still not be lazy!”  While some may show evidence of selfishness,  as a rule, there is no natural tendency to laziness which must be overcome by the dictates of leadership.

A long accepted truism in the literature on learning and leadership is that expectation determines behavior.  As James Autry puts in Love and Work: A Conversation with James Autry “The leader’s responsibility, or one of them, is to ensure that the people have the resources that they need to accomplish the objectives, and the principal resource is . . .the leader.”  He goes on to say that leaders must think of themselves as a resource.

To do that, leaders must be “authentic,” or so goes the current rhethoric.  It means that leaders must create an atmosphere in which truth can be spoken-a daunting task.

Serving and learning from service requires authenticity-truth flows from top to bottom and back again.  Deception creates roadblocks and bottlenecks and prevents information from getting to those who need it to perform.  A hallmark of deception in any organization is the prevalence of secret meetings. 

So, what does this have to do with the sixth myth-that people are inherently selfish? 

First, to foster an atmosphere in which service is the hallmark, leaders must be seen as a resource of truth.

Second, in an atmosphere in which truth can be spoken, leaders must be accepting.

And finally, leaders must be prepared to “share” power if they are to be effective in guiding an organization toward its objectives.  In that  sense they model generosity-becoming a resource of positive influence on all individuals in the organization with  whom they come in contact.

The fifth myth about servant leadership is that it is not sustainable because people “really must be coerced to produce results.”

In some of the older literature on administrative leadership, it was postulated that leaders proceed from one of two theoretical perspectives: Theory X which reflected a belief that employees, learners, workers are naturally lazy and must have external stimuli to motivate them to perform; Theory Y which postulated that human beings are naturally inclined to be creative, to wish to excel-to perform, to produce.

A corollary to this construct is that the environment created by leaders can predispose workers, employees, students and staff toward either of these perspectives.

To be sure, servant leadership is founded, in part on the belief that the servant leader can have a profound impact in predisposing all of those within the community toward one of these perspectives.

In fact, the “charismatic” leader tends to create an environment in which workers, employees, students, staff perform ONLY at the behest of that leader. While they may do the bidding of the charismatic leader, the overall health of the organization deteriorates because of the negative energy expended in guessing what it is the charismatic leader really wants.

In contrast, an environment fostered by servant leadership is one that embraces creativity.

As Margaret Wheatley stated in her article “The Work of the Servant Leader,” in Focus on Leadership, Servant-Leadership for the 21st Century, “. . .Part of the job description of a servant-leader. . .is that we have to be ones who welcome newness. . .who look for difference rather than try to ask people to conform and to move into all those small boxes on our organizational charts. . .”

Most of us, upon reflection, can recall at least one situation in our lives when we felt coerced to act a certain way, to talk a certain, to make extreme concessions, to even find ways to avoid contact with a leader, a boss, an administrator. In the presence of this person, most individuals engaged in posturing in order to appear in agreement with that individual. It isn’t mutual respect that emerges in such an environment but sometimes even fear and dread. At the worst, duplicity and deception become the hallmarks of living and working in such an environment-even self-delusion. Readers unfamiliar with the “Stockholm Syndrome” are invited to examine its implications.

Toward the end of her article, Wheatley states “Most people in your community or your organization want their work to be grounded from the same sense of call, from the same ground of energy, which is purpose, spirit, service. . .These are natural to human beings. . It may take you a few months to discover it in certain people because we are very bruised, but you can trust that what’s called you is an impulse that is calling people in every form of organization. . .”

It is this spirit which cannot be coerced but must be nurtured. And it is this spirit which can be easily destroyed by a leader who believes that theirs is the only way, the only answer, the only path.

We have received a number of inquiries about the book Learning to Serve, Serving to Learn-Leaving the Selfish Life Behind as to its suitability as a text for a course in service learning. 

The book was written for two markets-general readers and students in an introductory service learning course.  It is envisioned that the book chapters could serve as an outline of the topics in a such a course:  models of service, concepts of service-perseverance, openness, empowerment, impact of service, the joys of service.

Also included would be a list of readings tailored to the specific institution and course.  In the near future, we will be developing an instructor’s manual for the book for use by anyone using the book in a course, a church seminar or discussion.  The manual will be available for no charge on this web-site.

A common misconception about leadership in an organization which supports and affirms its employees is that the goals of any such organization are “mushy.”
It is thought that goals must come from the top, crystal clear and unchangeable. Otherwise, employees would not understand the company or institutional direction. More often than not, such a view is usually held by weak, inexperienced or insecure administrators or managers.

In reality, the goals of a servant leadership-led organization are more  more clearly defined and having been developed through consensus, more strongly supported.

In a small but powerful publication, The Servant Leader, Robert Greenleaf describes the journey of a band of travelers accompanied by a servant named Leo.  Leo provided many of the needed services for a portion of the journey, allowing the band to make needed progress. 

After a period of time, Leo disappeared.  When the band reached its destination, Leo reappeared as the host and leader at their ultimate destination.  One of the many points of this seminal work in the field of servant leadership is that a true servant leader, like Leo,  contributes to the establishment and realization of organizational goals from “the bottom-up.” 

Providing such leadership is much more difficult than dictating goals from the top down.  Those who serve in top-down organizations will tend to wait for orders, doing only what the “leader” orders them to do.  The book is available from the Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership in Indianapolis, Indiana.  For anyone embarking on the journey to servant leadership, the book is a must read.

One of the most common misconceptions about servant leadership is that it cedes too much power to workers/employees.

The misconception evolves from a view of leadership as a top-down, hiearchical view of leadership, e.g. only the leader has the answers. Only the leader should have the power.

In reality, the old top down structure constricts the effectiveness of the organization.

I remember vividly when a new leader came upon the scene at one university. Prior to his arrival, faculty and other employees regularly gathered at the student union coffeeshop. Many conflicts, issues and problems were worked out during these informal meetings. On Saturday, it was not uncommon to see faculty on campus either at events or working in their offices.

When the new leader came on the scene, he immediately made it known that only he had the authority and the power to carry out policy. He systematically began dismantling all political structures by removing existing heads of committees and departments. Rather than find ways to utilize existing structures, he made it known that anyone who crossed him would suffer the consequences.

In a very brief period of time, faculty presence diminished, the informal social networks disintegrated and the informal communication structures moved underground. Noteworthy were the closed doors to faculty offices, mid-level administrative offices.

The truth of the matter is that it is a weak leader who must constantly operate from a power position.

As quoted in a paper entitled Servant-Leadership and the Best Companies to Work for In America, in the book Focus on Leadership, edited by Larry Spears, Nancy Ruschman quotes Jim Blanchard when he was CEO of Synovus:

Great leaders are responsible for creating work environments in which people care about each other, share pride in a common goal, and celebrate the successes of all. For this atmosphere to flourish, we have to realize that, though we can’t change everyone around us we can change ourselves, and make a difference.

Another way to put it is that the power of the organization comes from the power of the individual.

The second myth of servant leadership is that it won’t work in organizations because people cannot be trusted.
A corollary to this myth is that the organizational “leader” must hold workers accountable because they do not hold themselves accountable. In reality, when leadership fails, it is because the leader does not hold trust as a value.

In a book entitled, Focus on Leadership, Leadership for the 21st century, edited by Larry Spears, the former Executive Director of the Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership, Max Depree writes in his article, Servant Leadership: Three Things Necessary, that good servant leaders work to build mutual trust. He cites a note written by an industrial designer which said “Your trust is the grace that enables me to be creative.”

Understanding the importance of trust is better understood by contrasting trust with its absence in the workplace and elsewhere.

In one institution, the President was famous for circulating the hallways. Ostensibly, he circulated because he wanted to be a “hands-on” manager, to know his workers and to solicit input.

When performance evaluations came due, it became clear what was his real purpose. Each employee who was not present for even one time when the President was passing through was marked down on “initiative” or “meets responsibilities.” In the opening meeting of the following year, the President emphasized the importance of being accessible to the customer, which meant to him that employees should always be at their desks. In reality, most contacts with customers occurred in the field, not in the office.

This approach stemmed from a basic view of humanity that humans can’t be trusted. Workers must be constantly monitored lest they not follow rules. Absence from their desks meant they were avoiding work in this leader’s eyes.

The end result was that more and more employees found reasons to be in the field. Some workers even arranged to have colleagues arrange to open their office, turn on their computer in their cubicle when they weren’t present. When no customers were present, office doors were closed. Lack of trust evolved into a toxic work environment whereby workers communicated less and less, did their best to avoid the President except to appear visible only when they were required to do so.

Contrast that to the statement “Your trust is the grace that enables me to be creative.”

Contrast the lack of trust to an adminstrative assistant who once worked for me who went out of her way to communicate to me the rare occasions when she commited an error. What I tried to do was to make sure that when errors occurred and they will in any organization, that we pulled together to fix those errors. It wasn’t long before she would report the error but nearly always reported that it had already been fixed. She also had no hesitation in identifying my errors-and then doing her utmost to help me correct them!

We all know or have worked in situations where a leader has trusted, has modeled trust, has avoided the punishment mode for redressing mistakes. What results is greater creativity, greater initiative, a tendency for mutual support to arise throughout the enterprise.

In the book, Learning to Serve, Serving to Learn, it is the “grace of sense, white light, still and moving. . ,” a line from T.S. Eliot which, in some ways, describes the very high level of trust to which servant leaders must aspire. It is this level of trust, once achieved, which allows the philosophy of servant leadership to have a powerful impact on the health of organizations and the persons working within it. To the extent that servant leaders foster such trust is the extent to which their colleagues will become strong servant leaders themselves. To the extent trust is negated by oppressive or deceptive leadership practices is the extent to which organizations can be harmed by lack of trust.

One of the stories that Kevin Eikenberry tells in his book, Vantagepoints on Learning and Life is in the chapter “Secret Samaritans.” As you might recall in the days of public telephones, nearly everyone checked the coin return tray to see if there had been any money left by a previous user.
In a study which describe “The Good Samaritan Effect,” researchers placed coins randomly in selected return trays in public telephones. Then, timing the accident carefully, they had a woman drop her books at the exact moment the callers were hanging up and leaving the telephone. They found that those people who had earlier discovered coins in the return tray were FOUR time more likely to help the woman pick up her books.

The point? When we receive good fortune, we tend to pass it on. Kevin suggests that acts of kindness should not be just random and intermittent but that we can increase the power of the “Good Samaritan Effect” by systematically performing acts which provide good fortune for others.

Think of the power that this can have in the work place!  Think of the impact that this approach to servant leadership could have on the well being of workers, not to mention the productivity of the enterprise!

When people speak of servant leadership, they often tend to forget that certain connotations to the word “servant” may be a barrier to a full understanding of the concept.  As the idea of servant leadership spreads, so do several myths.

There are seven myths that have arisen and have become a barrier to its implementation:

1. A servant leader is a weak leader who “follows” the dictates and ideas of others.

2. Servant leadership will not work because people can’t be trusted.

3. Servant leadership will not be effective because it allows too much power to employees.

4. Goals in organizations which espouse servant leadership are not well defined.

5.  People must be coerced to perform.

6.  People are inherently selfish.

7.  Servant leadership does not contribute to the financial health of an organization.

Over the next several weeks, we’ll be addressing each of these myths and suggesting specific individual authors or books who can shed further light on why these myths are not true.

In this segment, I will briefly address the first myth-that a servant leader is a weak leader who only follows the ideas of others. 

Several basic principles illustrate why this myth is not only untrue but represents a complete misunderstanding of the concept and practices of servant leadership.

First, servant leadership is founded on the basic principle that an effective servant leader is focused on organization goals that are based on well defined values.   The values define the product, frame the working environment, reflect a basic respect for workers and are the result of the collective wisdom of the company.  This principle is in direct contradiction of leaders who seek power first or who seek leadership for the purpose of acquiring power.  In Saul Alinsky’s book, Rules for Radicals,  he describes a process of humiliation-a “freezing’ of the opposition to top down leadership.  And then, opposition can be ridiculed and destroyed to preserve the power of the powerseekers.  In a strange way, this book should be required reading for all aspiring servant leaders who wish to understand coercive, oppressive, top-down leadership.  A leader who does not foster positive values but relies on coercion, in reality, reflects a weak leadership style-spending their life in fear of the loss of power, reveling in the disruption of the lives of others.

Second, a servant leader must have the strength of character to withstand the ambiguity which comes with allowing substantive input from workers or colleagues.  Openness is an absolute requirement for the servant leader.  The weak leader simply imposes his or her will, seeking destruction or humiliation of all opposition to preserve and protect his or her power.  To the weak leader, opposing opinion doesn’t matter, only that his or her will is carried out.

In the Learning to Serve, Serving to Learn  book, an incident is described where a college president forces a mid-level administrator to place expensive ficus trees in a dark hallway of a recently remodeled building.  Even though the mid-level administrator tries to explain that the trees will die without light, the president orders them placed in the hallway anyway.  As the months passed by, the dead leaves of the ficus trees lay on the carpet, a testimony to the effect of oppressive, coercive leadership on the spirit of the organization.

Third, the servant leader must have the ability to foster inner peace both within their own soul and the soul of the workers in the organization.   In any organization, both internal conflicts and external pressures often create potential chaos.  If the servant leader relies on the principles of coercive leadership, those pressures only increase.  On the front cover of Learning to Serve, Serving to Learn, there is the image of a jar of peaches.  In the book, a story is told about that jar of peaches which reflects a life of servant leadership of the mother-in-law of the author.  But the jar also is a metaphor of what could happen if the correct boiling temperature and time is not understood-the correct time to take the jar from a boiling canner in order to allow it to cool, to become a finely preserved jar of peaches.  The coercive leader keeps the jar boiling until the organizational spirit disintegrates, the frustration often overflowing as fed-up workers close their doors, cease communication and only do what appears to appease the coercive leader.  A jar of peaches, overboiled, may actually look quite similar to the finely preserved jar, until, after time, the peaches spoil.

These are three reasons why the myth that servant leadership is weak is not true: 1.)  A servant leader must be a strong leader with strong character who fosters positive values underlying organizational goals;  2) A servant leadership with strong character supports his or workers and believes that workers want to be productive and doesn’t rely on the easy route of humilation and coercion; 3) A servant leader must have strong character to foster inner peace in his or her own soul and those of the organization’s workers.

One of the most difficult features of learning to serve is to develop persistence. In Kevin Eikenberry’s book, Vantagepoints On Learning and Life, he relates a story from his past Lessons from a Lawn Needing Improvement. In it, he talks about clearing some rocks from his yard in the month of July and how difficult it is to remove rocks that have been cemented into the soil by being baked in the sun. The lesson about the rock, he says is this: “Persistence is always about hard work; sometimes it is more about wiggling away at a situation. When you think you may not succeed, wiggle a little more.”

There are those among us who never give up on wiggling the rock. During the last year of my mother-in-law’s life she suffered a heart attack and a stroke. She was resting at home one day when Beth and I visited her to see if she needed anything.

Beth noticed a jar of peaches on the kitchen counter. Beth asked if her brother, Wendell had been there and my mother-in-law responded “No. Why do you think he was here?”

And Beth replied, “Well, then, who got the peaches from the basement?”

“Well, I did.” was the reply. She was unable to walk down to the basement, so she crawled on her bottom down the steps, retrieved the peaches and then crawled back up the stairs.

She did not want to trouble the rest of the family but wanted to remain independent.

Given Kevin’s story, I can now envision her, wiggling the rocks in her garden much like I have envisioned her crawling to the basement.

Persistence . . .a vision to remind me to not give up in serving others. Never.

Kevin’s book can be found at http://vantagepoints.net.