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.

With all of the turmoil in the world, it is often difficult to think about learning to serve. But, it is that turbulence that provides the greatest challenges to service. World events may preoccupy us to the extent of paralysis. How can service to our local community and to individuals be important when world peace is threatened? How will our service impact the “big” picture?

The recent tragedies at Fort Hood and elsewhere remind us of the importance of serving, even in small ways. The images of the long funeral processions symbolize the unity that can result, even among and across disparate community elements. The reaction of the Amish community in reaching out to the family of the perpetrator of the killings in Lancaster stands as a testament to the possibilities of the service of forgiveness. This unity stands in contrast to the conflict, terror, violence, death and destruction that exists in much of the rest of the world.

The many small service acts of community members can have a powerful impact, not only on the immediate community, but can provide a model for the rest of us.

I have re- read Kevin Eikenberry’s excellent book, Vantagepoints on Learning and Life: Finding Learning Opportunities in Everyday Situations. It is a great companion piece to Learning to Serve, Serving to Learn: Leaving the Selfish Life Behind.

Kevin provides descriptions of how you can reframe your perspective to “learn” in every situation. Often, we sometime drift through the day without really thinking about what incidents and events are telling us. As I continue to read through this, I will share additional perspectives. It can be found on on Kevin’s site, http://www.kevineikenberry.com.