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Part One: Fundamentals of Servant Leadership

What Is Servant Leadership? By Ken Blanchard

There are two parts to servant leadership: (1) a visionary/direction, or strategic, role—the leadership aspect of servant leadership; and (2) an implementation, or operational, role—the servant aspect of servant leadership.

Some people say that leadership is really the visionary/direction role—doing the right thing—and management is the implementation role—doing things right.

Blanchard focuses on leadership as an influence process in which you try to help people accomplish goals. This involves not only goal setting, but also establishing a compelling vision that tells you who you are (your purpose), where you’re going (your picture of the future), and what will guide your journey (your values). In other words, leadership starts with a sense of direction.

If people don’t have a compelling vision to serve, the only thing they have to serve is their own self-interest.

Once you have a clear purpose that tells you who you are, you need to develop a picture of the future so that everyone knows where you are going. Values provide guidelines for how you should proceed as you pursue your purpose and picture of the future.

The minute you think you work for the person above you for implementation, you are assuming that person—your boss—is responsible and your job is being responsive to that boss and to his or her whims or wishes.

When you turn the organizational pyramid upside down, rather than your people being responsive to you, they become responsible—able to respond—and your job as the leader/manager is to be responsive to your people. This creates a very different environment for implementation.

Characteristics of Servant Leaders by Larry C. Spears

Larry C. Spears, a noted author and speaker on servant leadership, is president and CEO of the Spears Center for Servant Leadership.

What is servant leadership? Let’s take a look at Greenleaf’s big picture definition: The servant leader is servant first. It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. The best test is: do those served grow as persons: do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants? And, what is the effect on the least privileged in society; will they benefit, or, at least, not be further deprived?

Ten Characteristics of a Servant Leader

1.   Listening.  He or she listens receptively to what is being said and not said.

2.   Empathy. The servant leader strives to understand and empathize with others.

3.   Healing. One of the great strengths of servant leadership is the potential for healing one’s self and one’s relationship to others.

4.   Awareness. General awareness, and especially self-awareness, strengthens the servant leader.

5.   Persuasion. Another characteristic of servant leaders is reliance on persuasion, rather than on one’s positional authority, in making decisions within an organization. The servant leader seeks to convince others, rather than coerce compliance.

6.   Conceptualization. Servant leaders seek to nurture their abilities to dream great dreams.

7.   Foresight.  The ability to foresee the likely outcome of a situation from an intuitive mind.  

8.   Stewardship. Peter Block, author of Stewardship and The Empowered Manager, defines stewardship as “holding something in trust for another.”

9.   Commitment to the growth of people. The servant leader is deeply committed to the growth of each individual within his or her organization.

10. Building community. Greenleaf said, “All that is needed to rebuild community as a viable life form for large numbers of people is for enough servant leaders to show the way, not by mass movements, but by each servant leader demonstrating his or her unlimited liability for a quite specific community-related group.”

Servant leadership offers great hope for the future in creating better, more caring, institutions.

Servant Leadership Is Conscious Leadership by Raj Sisodia

Global thought leader of the Conscious Capitalism movement, Raj Sisodia is the Franklin Olin Distinguished Professor of Global Business and Whole Foods Market Research Scholar in Conscious Capitalism at Babson College.

Conscious capitalist organizations have four defining characteristics:

1. They operate with a purpose other than profit maximization as their reason for being.
2. They seek to create value for all their stakeholders, not just shareholders.
3. Their leaders are motivated by service to the company’s purpose and its people, not by power or personal enrichment.
4. They strive to build cultures infused with trust, openness, and caring instead of fear and stress.

Conscious Leaders are selfless. 

As an acronym, SELFLESS refers to the qualities of conscious leaders:

• Strength:  Conscious leaders are strong, resolute, and resilient.
• Enthusiasm:  When you’re aligned with your purpose, you can’t help but be enthusiastic. As Simon Sinek, author of Start with Why and Leaders Eat Last (see my summary here), says, they create a “circle of safety” within which everyone in the organizational family can grow and thrive.
• Love:  Throughout human history, the great leaders who transformed society for the better—Emperor Ashoka, Lincoln, Gandhi, Mandela, and King—all possessed tremendous strength along with a powerful capacity for caring.
• Flexibility:  Conscious leaders are like golfers with a full set of clubs; they know how to select and implement the right approach for each situation.
• Long-Term Orientation:  Conscious leaders operate on a time horizon that goes beyond not only their tenure as leaders but also their own lifetimes. The success of a leader is best gauged by what happens after they are gone.
• Emotional Intelligence:   Emotional intelligence (EQ) combines self-awareness (understanding oneself) and empathy (the ability to feel and understand what others are feeling).  Unfortunately, research shows that the higher the position in the organization, the lower the level of EQ, with the CEO typically having the lowest level.
• Systems Intelligence:   They understand the roots of problems and how the problems relate to organizational design and culture, and they devise fundamental solutions instead of applying symptomatic quick fixes. As Winston Churchill said, “We shape our buildings, and then our buildings shape us.”
• Spiritual Intelligence: According to Danah Zohar and Ian Marshall, “Spiritual intelligence (SQ) is the intelligence with which we access our deepest meanings, values, purposes, and higher motivations. It is . . . our moral intelligence, giving us an innate ability to distinguish right from wrong. It is the intelligence with which we exercise goodness, truth, beauty, and compassion in our lives.”

Selfless reflects a harmonious blend of mature masculine and mature feminine qualities. Too many leaders today manifest only immature hypermasculine qualities such as domination, aggression, hyper-competitiveness, and winning at all costs.

Servant Leadership at the Speed of Trust by Stephen R. Covey

The practices of servant leadership and trust are inextricably linked. Here are five key insights that have become clear to Covey:

1. The defining outcome for the servant leader is trust. How do you know if you are a servant leader? The answer is trust. Trust is the litmus test.
2. The clear intent of the servant leader is to serve others. Servant leaders are motivated by caring and the agenda they seek is mutual benefit: “I want to win—but it is even more important to me that you win.”
3. The deliberate behavior of the servant leader is authentic, trust-building behavior. For the servant leader, behavior isn’t just what gets done but how it gets done. Former chairman and CEO of Procter & Gamble, Bob McDonald, put it this way: “How we achieve growth is as important as the results themselves.” Similarly, at Marriott they say, “How we do business is as important as the business we do.”
4. The strong bias of the servant leader is to extend trust to others.
5. The purpose of the servant leader is contribution—to make a difference; to give back. The positional leader serves the bottom line, or the self. The servant leader serves something greater, inspiring trust not only in the leader, but potentially in all of society as well.

Great Leaders SERVE by Mark Miller

Five strategic ways great leaders SERVE:

• See and shape the future. Leadership always begins with a picture of the future.
• Engage and develop others. Engagement is about creating the context for people to thrive.
• Reinvent continuously. This fundamental of great leaders is a big idea. To help leaders break it down into manageable pieces we talk about three arenas, each having its own diagnostic questions. Self: How are you reinventing yourself? Systems: Which work processes need to change to generate better results? Structure: What structural changes could you make to better enable the accomplishment of your goals?
• Value results and relationships. Virtually every leader has a natural bias. Our wiring pulls us toward one or the other. This is not necessarily bad—but if we aren’t careful, it can severely limit our effectiveness. Our challenge as leaders is to manage the tension. Only then can we productively channel its power.
• Embody the values. The gap between what we say and do as leaders can be lethal.

Great leaders SERVE! In more than thirty years with Chick-fil-A, Mark Miller served in numerous leadership capacities including restaurant operations, quality and customer satisfaction, and corporate communications. He also co-authored The Secret: What Great Leaders Know and Do (see my summary here) with Ken Blanchard.

Servant Leadership: What Does It Really Mean? By Mark A. Floyd

Mark A. Floyd is a venture partner at TDF Ventures and chairman of the board at Ciber, Inc. He was the recipient of the 2001 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year award for the Southwest region.

Servant Leadership is about helping people succeed both professionally and individually. It’s all about serving those you are responsible for and those you are responsible to.

In Mark 9:35, after the disciples have talked among themselves about which of them was the greatest, Jesus says, “Anyone who wants to be first must be the very last, and the servant of all.” That’s what servant leadership is about.

In great companies such as Apple, Google, and Whole Foods Market, you’ll find the organizational culture—what they value and live by—is defined and understood by everyone from the management team all the way through the employee base.

When you are a servant leader, whatever you do has to support the mission you are trying to accomplish.

People hear the phrase servant leader and think it means someone who is always congenial and nice, and handles everything with kid gloves. But look at Jesus. He threw out the money lenders in the temple with tough love. Servant leadership means you do the right thing.

Business is really not that difficult. Just do the right thing. Whether you run a dry-cleaning business or a multimillion-dollar company—you know the right thing to do. Just do it.

Servant Leaders Create a Great Place to Work for All by Michael C. Bush

Michael C. Bush is CEO of the SaaS-enabled research and consulting firm Great Place to Work and author of A Great Place to Work For All: Better for Business, Better for People, Better for the World.

Bush’s organization, consulting and research firm Great Place to Work, has spent more than two decades studying and celebrating the best workplaces around the world. The best workplaces have built a Great Place to Work For All. These companies have employees across the board who consistently trust their leaders, take pride in their work, and enjoy their colleagues—the three core elements of a great workplace.

These organizations cultivate servant leaders who create cultures where all people feel trusted, empowered, supported, and treated fairly.

What does servant leadership look like at a company identified as a Great Place to Work For All? Five features stand out:

1. Trust at the top. Servant leadership is only effective and sustainable when the executive can fully trust the people they work with. If a high level of trust is not present, the leader cannot humbly serve and selflessly support people.
2. A generous trust mindset. Leaders at Great Places to Work For All trust people in general.
3. Decentralized power. Leaders at Great Places to Work For All free people to work autonomously and include others in decision making. Construction firm TDIndustries, a Fortune 100 Best mainstay, captures the wisdom of employee empowerment with its principles around communication: “No rank in the room,” “Everyone participates—no one dominates,” and “Listen as an ally.”
4. Caring support. Leaders at companies identified as a Great Place to Work For All care for their people. They support them as holistic human beings, encouraging their well-being both in and out of work. Our own research, meanwhile, has found that a caring community is one of the strongest drivers of revenue growth at small and medium workplaces with high-trust cultures. We have also discovered that a key disparity at work between whites and ethnic minorities is whether employees perceive a caring climate.
5. Intentional fairness. Work deliberately to treat all people fairly. They know that fairness is at the heart of the employee experience.

Leaders of companies building Great Places to Work For All act in keeping with the great faith traditions, regardless of personal religion or spiritual beliefs. They demonstrate humility, elevate the least powerful, and treat all people with dignity. In fact, these leaders turn work into a kind of church.

The Leader as Shepherd by Holly Culhane

Holly Culhane is CEO and founder of Presence Point, Inc., a nonprofit organization focused on helping people live into their calling as shepherd leaders.

Shepherding is a universal—and godly—leadership principle. A shepherd is the ultimate example of a servant leader, often laying down their life for the sheep.

The responsibilities of a shepherd are to ensure that the sheep are in good health on a consistent basis, well fed, and shielded from predators.

Sheep need:

• a calming presence to rest;
• discipline to stay on task with the flock;
• a leader who knows their condition and responds accordingly; and
• special attention when they are young, new to a flock, or struggling.

Every responsibility of a shepherd and, ultimately, of a servant leader, can be captured in three words:

• Provision: To take care of or to furnish or supply the need of another.
• Protection: The act of safeguarding, shielding from harm, or guarding against danger.
• Presence: At hand—physically and/or emotionally available and engaged.

The Evolution of Servant Leadership by Simon Sinek

Simon Sinek is an unshakable optimist and the author of three bestselling books: Start with Why, Leaders Eat Last, Together Is Better, and his most recent, Find Your Why.

Leaders shape the environment.

Only when people feel trusted by and are able to trust their leadership; only when people feel they can make mistakes without fear of dismissal; and only when people feel they can break a rule because it’s the right thing to do without fear of humiliation or retribution will a company ever inspire their people to work at their natural best—our most productive, innovative and cooperative selves.

Servant leaders push authority down to those with the information. And in that kind of environment, people feel accountable for and trusted to do the job for which they’ve been trained without leaders putting undue pressure or stress on them or using fear to drive them.

Leadership, it turns out, is not about being in charge. Leadership is about taking care of those in your charge. The closest thing Sinek can equate to servant leadership is the responsibility of a parent. Any decent parent would gladly sacrifice for them.

All good leaders practice servant leadership. It is a teachable, learnable, and practicable skill. Servant leaders practice putting their interests aside in order to enhance the lives of those around them.

Part Two: Elements of Servant Leadership

One Question Every Servant Leader Should Ask by Marshall Goldsmith

Marshall Goldsmith has been recognized by Thinkers50, Global Gurus, Fast Company, and Inc. as the world’s leading executive coach.

Frances Hesselbein—President and CEO of the Frances Hesselbein Leadership Institute and former CEO of the Girl Scouts of the USA—uses this motto, “To serve is to live.”

Great leaders are willing servants of people, organizations, and causes. Instead of worrying about how powerful they are or what position they hold, these leaders focus on what others need.

The next time you run into a conflict, ask yourself this question, “Am I willing at this time to make the investment required to make a positive difference on this topic?” Goldsmith turned the first five words into an acronym: AIWATT (which rhymes with “say what”). Like the physician’s principle “First, do no harm,” it doesn’t require you to do anything other than merely avoid doing something foolish.

Drucker, who was an enormous influence on Goldsmith’s life and work, said, “Our mission in life should be to make a positive difference, not to prove how smart or right we are.”

In the Service of Others When Leaders Dare to Rehumanize Work by Brené Brown

Brené Brown is a research professor at the University of Houston where she holds the Huffington Foundation-Brené Brown Endowed Chair at the Graduate College of Social Work.  She is author of three #1 New York Times bestsellers: The Gifts of Imperfection, Daring Greatly, and Rising Strong. Her latest book is Braving the Wilderness: The Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone.

To reignite creativity, innovation, and learning, leaders must dare to rehumanize education and work.

In his book Out of Our Minds: Learning to Be Creative, Robinson writes: “However seductive the machine metaphor may be for industrial production, human organizations are not actually mechanisms and people are not components in them. People have values and feelings, perceptions, opinions, motivations, and biographies, whereas cogs and sprockets do not. An organization is not the physical facilities within which it operates; it is the networks of people in it.”

Here’s the best way to think about the relationship between shame and blame: if blame is driving, shame is riding shotgun.

In an organizational culture of servant leadership where respect and the dignity of individuals are held as the highest values, shame and blame don’t work as management styles. Here are the four best strategies for building shame-resilient organizations:

1. Encourage servant leaders to courageously facilitate honest conversations about shame and cultivate shame-resilient cultures.
2. Make a conscientious effort to see where shame might be functioning in the organization and how it might even be creeping into the way we engage with our coworkers and students.
3. A critical shame resilience strategy is normalizing. Leaders and managers can cultivate engagement by helping people know what to expect. What are common struggles? How have other people dealt with them? What have your experiences been?
4. Train all employees on the profound dangers of shame culture and teach them how to give and receive feedback in a way that fosters growth and engagement.

Servant Leaders Celebrate Others by Tom Mullins

Tom Mullins is founding pastor of Christ Fellowship Church, a multisite church of more than forty thousand people meeting on nine campuses in South Florida and online. Previously, he was a successful football coach at both the high school and collegiate levels. Tom has written four books including Passing the Leadership Baton and The Leadership Game.

One of the most important things Mullins learned from being both a football coach and a pastor is that you cannot celebrate your team’s victories often enough. When you celebrate your team’s wins, big or small, you are affirming the effort made to reach team goals. Winning calls for celebration!

Here are five benefits of celebration:

1. It demonstrates that you value your team;
2. It reinforces core organizational values;
3. It builds team morale;
4. It increases retention and productivity; and
5. It is a great recruiting tool.

It is the leader’s responsibility to learn what each team member values and how that person prefers to celebrate. Some people respond best to public acknowledgment, some to a handwritten note of gratitude.

Simply stated, what gets celebrated gets done! The more you affirm your team, the more productive they are. A servant leader who is intentional about celebrating will have a happy, hardworking team. It is the duty of a servant leader to create wins for their people and then to celebrate those wins together.

The Servant Leader’s Focus by James Ferrell

James Ferrell is managing partner of Arbinger Institute, and author or coauthor of multiple bestselling books, including Arbinger’s international bestsellers Leadership and Self-Deception (see my summary here), The Anatomy of Peace, and The Outward Mindset.

We can perform almost any action with an inward or an outward mindset. When our mindsets are outward, we are serving others. When our mindsets are inward, on the other hand, we are serving ourselves. This inward orientation corrupts everything—our self-understanding, our views of others, our intentions, and even our service. This means that the foundation of servant leadership can never be a focus on mere actions—even on actions that may seem, on their face, to be for the benefit of others.

What distinguishes true servant leaders and makes them so precious to us is not that they do things for us—although they do. No, we are grateful to them because we know that they see and value us. We understand how the servant leaders in our lives have cared enough about us to learn to speak our language.

For a servant leader, their service is not the point. Their actions are merely the behavioral extensions of their caring.  It is worth asking, “If we would serve, whose languages do we still need to learn?”

What You See Determines How You Serve by Chris Hodges

Chris Hodges is founding and senior pastor of Church of the Highlands.

How you see people determines how you serve people. And most of us tend toward the extremes: we see people as either a problem to be avoided or a person to be loved.

This is the lesson Jesus taught in the famous parable of the Good Samaritan: love is intentionally caring or helping another person by doing something regardless of our feelings. Real servant leaders make choices about people first, and then the feelings follow. The Good Samaritan didn’t necessarily feel like interrupting his travel plans or spending his hard-earned money on a complete stranger. He simply saw someone in need and he made a choice.

Compassion: The Heart of Servant Leadership by Craig Groeschel

Craig Groeschel is the founding and senior pastor of Life.Church, known for the innovative use of technology in spreading the Gospel, which includes the free YouVersion Bible App.

What is compassion to the servant leader? Compassion is not just a feeling; it’s an action. It’s allowing the emotion we feel to ignite the fire within to act—and to inspire others to act as well. To meet someone’s need. To offer our help. To set an example for others. To do what Jesus did. To love how Jesus loved. To lead as Jesus led.

The Bible usually uses the Greek word splagchnizomai (splahgkh-NEED-zum-eye) to describe the kind of compassion we see in Jesus’s life. Splagchnizomai means “to have deep sympathy”—literally a yearning in the bowels—to do something for someone else.

Compassion chooses to act—it bypasses whatever conversations are rolling around in our heads to justify our lack of activity.

If we want to lead like Jesus, we need to serve like Jesus. We need to understand that as followers of Jesus we are called to care.

How to Spot Ideal Team Players by Patrick Lencioni

Patrick Lencioni is the founder and CEO of The Table Group, author of ten business books (including The Advantage, which is summarized here) that have sold nearly five million copies and been translated into more than thirty languages. His latest is The Ideal Team Player: How to Recognize and Cultivate the Three Essential Virtues.

The ideal team players have three qualities, or virtues, in common:

1. Humble. The first and most important virtue of an ideal team player is humility. A humble person is someone who is more concerned with the success of the team than with getting credit for their own contribution.
2. Hungry. The next virtue of an ideal team player is hunger—the desire to work hard and do whatever is necessary to help the team succeed.
3. Smart. The final virtue of a team player is to be smart. This is not about being intelligent, but rather about being wise in dealing with people.

The unique combination of all three virtues makes a person an ideal team player.

The Servant Leader Identity by Laurie Beth Jones

Laurie Beth Jones is an internationally recognized bestselling author, speaker, inspirational life coach, and trainer. Laurie Beth’s fourteen business books, written from a spiritual perspective, include Jesus CEO; Jesus, Entrepreneur; Teach Your Team to Fish, and The Path: Creating Your Mission Statement for Work and for Life.

As a servant leader, one of Jesus’s clear strengths was that He had a clear and compelling narrative of who He was.

In Genesis, God uses four elements—earth, water, wind, and fire—in the creation story. Fire wants fast and visible results. Water wants harmonious, long-term relationships. Wind wants innovation and change. Earth wants stability and order.

When Jesus compared Himself to living water, His desire was to create a culture of harmony and respect for others, with growing relationships as a core value.

A fire leader, on the other hand, values conflict as a refining process and wants to gain territory at nearly any cost. A fire leader wants visible results and wants them now.

Whatever your God-created elemental makeup is will be reflected in all the work you do with a team. If you are an earth leader, like Nehemiah, you will want to do things in a well-thought-out and measured manner—going about your work quietly, even being willing, as a servant, to get low in the ditches if it helps you see where the root problems are. If you are a wind leader, like Joshua, you will use your voice to blow the trumpets that bring those walls of Jericho tumbling down.

Knowing which type of elemental leader you are can do much good for yourself and for those around you. Most likely you are a powerful combination of two of the four as well.

The Four Corners of the Leader’s Universe by Henry Cloud

Henry Cloud is a psychologist, leadership coach and consultant, and bestselling author of more than twenty books, including The One-Life Solution (which is summarized here) and Boundaries for Leaders: Results, Relationships, and Being Ridiculously in Charge (which is summarized here). His book The Power of the Other explains in depth his Four Corners concept and the leadership skills needed to produce Corner Four relationships.

How people feel in their sense of connectedness with their leaders and peers is going to drastically affect whether they succeed or fail.

There are four possibilities of where the people you lead might be at any given moment—mapping these out creates “The Four Corners.”

• Corner One: No Connection – This is the corner where someone feels like they are alone. In it all by themselves.
• Corner Two: Bad Connection – Corner Two is the place where someone feels a connection with others, but the nature of that connection leaves them feeling bad about themselves. They feel not good enough. The phrase “nothing I do is good enough” goes through their head over and over.
• Corner Three: Fake Good Connection – Corner Three is the place where people go to feel good when they find that being disconnected or feeling bad about themselves are not good options. Some seek awards, status, or promotions, as the addiction for feeling good is equated with being seen as good by others—smarter, stronger, greater—whatever it means to them.
• Corner Four: Real Connection – Corner Four is the place servant leaders want their people to be—the place where people feel genuinely connected with leaders and peers who are being honest and supportive with them. In Corner Four, hearts, minds, and souls thrive and prosper. Energy is up, brains are sizzling with creativity and innovation, collaboration is high, and people are fulfilled.

Leaders, go on a search, and ask your people, “Where are 7ou?”

What if, as a leader, you saw this as one of the tools you could use each day—looking at your people and your teams and asking which corner they are in?

Part Three: Lessons in Servant Leadership

Finding Your Voice by James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner

James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner are coauthors of the bestselling, award-winning book, The Leadership Challenge: How to Make Extraordinary Things Happen in Organizations and more than a dozen other books on leadership.

Leadership isn’t a position or a special gift that only a few special people have. It’s an observable, learnable set of skills and practices available to everyone, anywhere in the organization.

As Ken Blanchard has said about servant leadership: “It’s an inside-out job. It starts in your heart with who you are—your character and your answer to the question am I here to serve or be served?”

Kouzes and Posner have been collaborating on leadership research for thirty-five years and they keep rediscovering that credibility is the foundation of leadership.

As The First Law of Leadership says, “If you don’t believe in the messenger, you won’t believe the message.”

In Leadership Jazz (summarized here), Max De Pree, former chairman and CEO of the Michigan furniture maker Herman Miller, tells a moving story about being with his prematurely born granddaughter during the first days of her fragile life. The nurse had advised Max and his wife to touch as well as talk to the tiny infant, “because she has to be able to connect your voice to your touch.” That message, says Max, is “at the core of becoming a leader.”

Authentic servant leadership flows from the inside out.

Every artist knows that finding a voice is most definitely not a matter of technique. It’s a matter of time and a matter of searching—soul-searching.

To lead others, you have to learn about yourself. After all, if you are to speak out, you have to know what to speak about, and if you are to stand up for your beliefs, you have to know the beliefs you stand for.

Don’t confuse leadership with tools and techniques. They are not what earn you the respect and commitment of your people. What earns you their respect in the end is whether you are you.

A Lesson from My Father Washing Feet by Phyllis Hennecy Hendry

Phyllis Hennecy Hendry’s dad taught her the simple act of caring about someone and how serving people changes everything—literally.

Under Phyllis Hennecy Hendry’s leadership as the inaugural president and CEO of Lead Like Jesus, the organization has grown exponentially, equipping and empowering thousands of people around the world to lead as Jesus led. Phyllis is coauthor, with Ken Blanchard and Phil Hodges, of Lead Like Jesus (which is summarized here).

The Puddle Is Not the Problem by Neal Nybo

Neal Nybo has been an ordained pastor since 1997. Neal came to ordained ministry out of a strong business career and a passion for communicating the great news of the kingdom of God. He is the author of Move Forward, Shut Tight, and Discovering Your Organization’s Next Step.

According to Ronald A. Heifetz and Marty Linsky, technical problems are issues people face on a regular basis for which they have known solutions. For example, needing to lose five pounds after the holidays is a technical (puddle) challenge with known solutions. To lose weight, one eats less and exercises more. Cabinet problems cannot be addressed by authoritative decisions. They require those involved to internalize a change before the problem can be resolved.

Discovering and resolving challenges is a vital tool used by God to do deep, transformative work in human beings. As servant leaders we have the opportunity to bring this attention and resource to those we care about most.

Five Army-Tested Lessons of Servant Leadership by Jeffrey W. Foley

Jeffrey W. Foley is president of Loral Mountain Solutions, Inc., where he is a speaker and leadership consultant who coaches executives and helps them build high-performing organizations. He is coauthor of the book Rules and Tools for Leaders, now in its fourth edition. Jeff graduated from West Point and served thirty-two years in the U.S. Army, earning the rank of brigadier general.

In the words of General Creighton Abrams, former U.S. Army chief of staff: “Soldiers are not in the Army. Soldiers are the Army.”

In the Army, true leadership is not about being a master—it’s about being a servant. In a personal email, General Stanley A. McChrystal (U.S. Army, retired), former commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, shared a keen insight on servant leadership: Servant leadership is a term that describes leaders whose actions and motivations reflect a selfless commitment to a cause, an organization, or their teammates. The key lies in intent more than in specific behaviors. It is an important distinction, because a leader’s skills or effectiveness aren’t a function of their underlying motivations—leaders can be exceptionally effective even when entirely self-centered or even evil in their intent. Servant leadership is a decision by any person to commit themselves to others in a way that subordinates personal gain to a wider sense of responsibility. It is demonstrated by the humblest of soldiers whose personal presence is anything but stereotypical of our vision of leadership. And yet it brings a quiet dignity and underlying sense of purpose that inspires.

Here are five tactics that represent valuable lessons about servant leadership McCrystal learned during his thirty-two-year career as a soldier:

1. Commit to Lead by Oaths, Values, and Creeds.  In the mid-1990s, the Army embraced and solidified seven core values: loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity, and personal courage. While at West Point, three aspects stood out regarding servant leadership.
   1. The first was the Army’s motto: “Duty, Honor, Country.”
   2. The second was the Army’s Honor Code: “I will not lie, cheat, or steal, nor tolerate those that do.”
   3. The third was the requirement to memorize Major General John M. Schofield’s Definition of Discipline. General Schofield (a West Point graduate) addressed the Corps of Cadets on August 11, 1879. “The discipline which makes the soldiers of a free country reliable in battle is not to be gained by harsh or tyrannical treatment,” said Schofield. “On the contrary, such treatment is far more likely to destroy than to make an army.”
2. Listen by Squinting with Your Ears.  McCrystal’s mentor, Major General Perry Smith (U.S. Air Force, retired), calls it “squinting with your ears.” Sergeants are the leaders of the enlisted branch of the Army. The origin of the term sergeant is from the Latin serviens, which means one who serves. So, at the very core of the Army, the focus is on sergeants as ones who serve.
3. Be Relentless in the Development of Leaders. Soldiers either get promoted or leave—it is either up or out. Those who demonstrate leadership potential earn the opportunity to continue to serve. All NCOs and officers help grow subordinate leaders through on-the-job coaching and mentoring. In the corporate world, these actions are referred to as succession planning. In the Army, succession planning is everyone’s job, every day.
4. Communicate Your Purpose and Intent. Servant leaders use this purpose—a mission larger than self—to motivate and inspire their team. Commander’s intent:  the commander describes what constitutes success for the operation, linking the purpose to how the operation is envisioned to go down. When done well, this intent facilitates a shared understanding of what is in the mind of the commander.
5. Build Trusted Relationships

A Baptism of Leadership by Erwin Raphael McManus

Erwin Raphael McManus is an iconoclast known for his integration of creativity and spirituality. He is the lead pastor and founder of Mosaic, a church located in the heart of Los Angeles.

McManus writes, “I saw him in front of me: a homeless man trying to reassemble his shopping cart as his possessions floated in the flooded street. Frustrated about having to take on a task I knew would be futile, I took off my suit jacket and jumped out of the car to help the man. While the rain poured down on us and the waters ran knee deep, I reassembled his broken cart and then helped him gather up his possessions—which to me looked like nothing more than garbage that was now soaking wet and worthless. I will never forget the timing. The moment we were done, the rain suddenly stopped and the sun broke through. The sky was beautiful and clear.”

As McManus’ wife watched him—knowing they were on their way home from church, after he just preached a sermon—she started crying.  “Why are you crying?” he asked quietly, not really wanting to hear the answer. It took a moment for his wife, Kim, to catch her breath and find the words—words he said he would never forget. “That was the greatest sermon you have ever preached.” Those words changed McManus’ life.

In serving others, our message is our lives. We must live our message for our message to have life. That’s what servant leadership is all about.

Leadership is a product of gifting. Servanthood is about character. Servanthood is completely independent of talent. While your talent may have a ceiling, your character does not. You can serve to your heart’s content. And that is exactly the point—servanthood is a matter of the heart.

Who we are in the rain, and the choices we make to serve when no one is watching, are all we will have to give to the world when we have our moment in the sun. The greatest leaders when the sun is shining are the greatest servants in the rain.

Little Things and Big Things by Jon Gordon

Jon Gordon is the author of numerous books including The Energy Bus (summarized here), The No Complaining Rule (summarized here), Training Camp, The Carpenter, and most recently, The Power of Positive Leadership (see my summary here). He is founder of The Jon Gordon Companies where he lives his passion for developing positive leaders, organizations, and teams.

When Gordon thinks of servant leadership, two images come to mind: Jesus washing the feet of His disciples, and his mom making him a sandwich.

We often think that great leadership is about big visions, big goals, big actions, and big success. But Gordon learned from his mom that real leadership is about serving others by doing the little things with a big dose of selfless love.

Gordon’s company’s mission is to inspire and empower as many people as possible, one person at a time. One person at a time means we will never be too busy to help one person in need.

In Praise of Followership by Margie Blanchard

Margie Blanchard is cofounder of The Ken Blanchard Companies.

We spend much more of our time as followers in this world of work than as leaders—an estimated 90 percent of our time.

Year after year, one essay catches students’ attention: “Followership in a Leadership World” by Robert E. Kelley. Why? People don’t think a follower can be an effective servant leader. Kelley suggests followership is often overlooked because most recognition and rewards go to leaders.

The most common methods people use for dealing with a command-and-control leader are to comply—adapt to the flawed philosophy of top management—or complain—spend more time moaning and groaning to anyone who will listen than they spend doing their job. A few people will dust off their résumé and begin looking for a position elsewhere. Even fewer will confront the top manager—which, unfortunately, is not usually very effective.

As Margie Blanchard explains, “Ken and I believe that building a relationship with someone is like having money in the bank. No matter how well it is done, giving someone feedback draws something from your interpersonal bank account with that person. As a result, you better have some good experiences in your account to draw from. Otherwise, using our banking analogy, you will need a mask and a gun—position power!”

Margie’s brother, Tom McKee, is The Ken Blanchard Company’s Chairman and CEO, once told Margie that he evaluated people by the number of things they helped him move forward or even took completely off his plate!

Followers need to see a line of sight between a leader’s ideas and some greater good for the organization and the people in it.

As an exemplary follower, each of us is tasked with listening more deeply to new ideas and being open to the possibility of being influenced. Exemplary followers look for the highest value of an idea and help their leaders sharpen their thinking. They look beyond the temporary awkwardness, inconvenience, and discomfort that comes with all change and they are willing to see new and needed resources that may be already in place—like other enthusiastic people willing to try something new. They need to resist the pull and comfort of not changing.

It should be noted that an estimated 85 percent of the execution of a vision or change initiative happens through followers.

Part Four: Exemplars of Servant Leadership

Jesus: The Greatest Example of a Servant Leader by Ken Blanchard and Phil Hodges

Phil Hodges worked in management for Xerox Corporation and U.S. Steel for thirty-six years. In 1997 he became a consultant for The Ken Blanchard Companies and in 1999 he founded Lead Like Jesus with Ken Blanchard. Phil is coauthor of five books including Lead Like Jesus (summarized here), Lead Like Jesus for Churches, and The Servant Leader.

Blanchard explains, “It wasn’t until my early fifties that I started to really read the Bible and learn about Jesus. In the process, I realized He is the greatest leadership role model of all time.”

Ken quickly realized that everything he had ever taught or written about leadership, Jesus did—and He did it perfectly with twelve inexperienced people.

When he shared his realization about what an incredible leader Jesus was with Phil, who had become an important spiritual guide, Lead Like Jesus was born. The purpose of the ministry is to glorify God by inspiring and equipping people to lead like Jesus.

The goal of Lead Like Jesus is “Someday, everyone, everywhere, will be impacted by someone leading like Jesus.”

Jesus wanted His disciples to get this important message:

Jesus established a compelling vision for His disciples. First of all, He was clear about what business He and His disciples were in. Once His disciples had a compelling vision—they were clear on their purpose, where they were going, and what would guide their journey—Jesus shifted his role to the implementation aspect of servant leadership. This involved serving the vision by strategically turning the traditional organizational pyramid upside down.

If servant leadership were easy, you’d think the greatest model would have had instant success with it. What is needed is patience, endurance, and consistent focus.

Good carpenters see the finished product before they start a job. Similarly, good leaders have a vision of where they want to go before they start leading people. Second, good carpenters know how to work with various types of materials just as good leaders know how to work with various types of people. Third, good carpenters know how to use a variety of tools when dealing with different materials in developing a good finished product just as good leaders know how to use a variety of leadership styles when dealing with different people to help them become high performers.

In Matthew 28:19, Jesus used a delegating style as He told His followers: “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” without any further direction. That is what servant leadership is all about: providing clear vision and direction, then rolling up your sleeves and doing whatever it takes to help your people be successful—live according to the vision and accomplish the established goals.

Andrew Young – Partner in Servant Leadership to Martin Luther King Jr. by John Hope Bryant

John Hope Bryant is an American entrepreneur, author, philanthropist, and prominent thought leader on financial inclusion, economic empowerment, and financial dignity. He is the founder, chairman, and CEO of Operation HOPE, Inc.

Andrew Young was the one who calmed the radical and often revolutionary nerves within the halls of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and the offices of civil rights movement staff. He was the one who knocked heads with those on both the far left and far right around strategy within the civil rights movement, which enabled him to bring a balanced set of decisions for Dr. King (who disliked conflict) to choose from. Finally, Young was the one who negotiated with the business community behind closed doors after the marching was over.

Not only did he not seek credit or praise for himself back then, he has continued to shy away from that spotlight ever since.

Following successful marches that dampened the downtown economy, Young would meet with one hundred business leaders. The premise was simple: if he could get one hundred prominent business leaders in a town to agree to any accommodation of social policy within their shops, stores and businesses, the mayor and local government would follow suit. And that is precisely what happened.

The philosophy for negotiating with the business community—in this case, part of the oppressor class—was simple: “Talk without being offensive. Listen without being defensive. And always, always leave even your adversary with their dignity. Because if you don’t, they will spend the rest of their lives working to make you miserable.”

Andrew Young became Dr. King’s constant secret weapon. In small town after small town, Dr. King would set it up and Andrew Young would help to pay it off as a matter of their shared strategy. Afterward, Young would hand any public success back to his friend and movement leader, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Pat Summitt – Steely Eyes, Servant Heart by Tamika Catchings

Tamika Catchings played basketball for Coach Pat Summitt with the University of Tennessee Lady Vols from 1997 through 2001. She was a member of the 1997 National Championship team at UT, and is a four-time All-American. Catchings founded the Catch the Stars Foundation.

Summit’s professional record is legendary. During her 38 years at UT, she coached the “Lady Vols” to 112 victories in NCAA tournament games, 18 NCAA Final Fours, and 8 National Championships. Her 1,098 total wins still hold the record for the most wins of any Division 1 college basketball coach—male or female. She received numerous awards including Naismith Basketball Coach of the Century, the Arthur Ashe Courage Award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom—and let’s not forget her two Olympic gold medals.

Every day, Pat drilled into her players her team-first philosophy: it’s not about you—it’s about the team. Every game was a team effort.

Pat’s ultimate goal and purpose was to help each of us be better—not just better players, but better people.

Pat’s rules for success—her blueprint for winning, not just in basketball but in life—were called “The Definite Dozen”:

1. Respect yourself and others
2. Take full responsibility
3. Develop and demonstrate loyalty
4. Learn to be a great communicator
5. Discipline yourself so no one else has to
6. Make hard work your passion
7. Don’t just work hard, work smart
8. Put the team before yourself
9. Make winning an attitude
10. Be a competitor
11. Change is a must
12. Handle success like you handle failure

Pat was honored when they dedicated the Pat Summitt Plaza and statue at UT in 2013—but she kept saying, “It’s not about me, it’s not about me.”   That was Pat. She was an extremely humble person who never gravitated toward the spotlight. She would always turn it around and shine it on her players. That’s the kind of person and the kind of leader she was—a servant first.

Dallas Willard – The Smartest Man I Ever Met by Tony Baron

Tony Baron is a professor at Azusa Pacific University and an internationally recognized speaker, writer, and consultant on the subject of creating servant leaders and transforming churches and corporations. He also serves as scholar-in-residence for Center for Executive Excellence and is the author of six books.

As Baron wrote, “I call Dallas Willard the smartest man I ever met for this reason: I have never known another human being who was so integrated with the ways of Jesus, the icon of servant leadership (Mark 10:45). He understood how to live life as our Father in heaven designed us to live it. No one I ever met epitomized servant leadership more than my professor and friend.”

Servant leaders must leave people they are serving better off emotionally, physically, spiritually, or psychologically for having had encountered them.

Willard inspired greatness, he was a humble teacher, and he was a compassionate encourager.

Humility is the honest appraisal of one’s gifting without competitive comparisons to others and with full recognition that God is the provider. In essence, humility is personal power under control.

What made Dallas Willard such a gifted and humble teacher was that he was a seeker of truth and knowledge; a servant to his Lord for the benefit of others; and a sage for all those willing to hear and learn how to live “on earth as it is in heaven.”

Henry Blackaby – A Lifelong Servant Leader by Richard Blackaby

Richard Blackaby is president of Blackaby Ministries International.  He shares his perspective on his father, Henry, who was a “lifelong servant leader.”

One of Henry’s key philosophies is “Find out what God is doing, and then join in.” He helped his son Richard realize that he shouldn’t be praying for God to support his agenda, but rather figuring out if his agenda supports God’s. Henry also convinced him that “God doesn’t call the qualified; He qualifies the called.”

In 1977, Robert K. Greenleaf published his influential book Servant Leadership: A Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness. In it, he wrote “A new moral principle is emerging which holds that the only authority deserving one’s allegiance is that which is freely and knowingly granted by the led to the leader in response to, and in proportion to, the clearly evident servant stature of the leader. The servant-leader is servant first.”

Servant leaders primarily do two things. First, they enhance the lives of their people. Second, servant leaders develop organizations that not only achieve their mission but also benefit those who participate in it, whether they are employees, shareholders, or customers.

Throughout his career, Henry Blackaby led in a twofold manner. First, he always sought to ascertain the big picture. Where was this organization to go? What were the possibilities? Having an unbounded faith in God, Richard’s father claimed that if God were as powerful as Christians claimed He was, then nothing was impossible.

Henry had has that uncanny ability—possessed by all great leaders—to make the people around him better. He raised people to greater heights through his encouragement and personal example.

Frances Hesselbein – To Serve Is to Live by Jim Dittmar

Jim Dittmar is president and CEO of 3Rivers Leadership Institute, which provides leadership development and training that is transformational.

Frances Hesselbein was CEO of Girl Scouts of the USA from 1976 to 1990; cofounder in 1990 and CEO of the Peter F. Drucker Leadership Institute (renamed the Frances Hesselbein Leadership Institute in 2012); recipient in 1998 of the Presidential Medal of Freedom; and one of Fortune magazine’s “World’s 50 Greatest Leaders” in 2015.

Frances is a humble, energetic leader of influence. She is a masterful change agent whose character resonates integrity, steadfastness, civility, and trustworthiness. In her often quoted mantra, “To serve is to live.”

Frances describes her day-to-day life of service this way: “Every day I find a way to make a difference, to help someone, even if I don’t know them. And then at night I ask myself ‘What did I do today that helped someone, some group or organization? In what ways did I make a difference in someone’s life?’ I never fail to ask that question at the end of the day.”

Frances and her team worked to establish organizational structures and a culture that encouraged shared authority and decision making, emphasized a spirit of service, and, above all, embraced inclusion. For Frances, inclusion meant replacing hierarchical, top-down authority with a model of shared governance and decision making that utilized the input of Girl Scout leaders nationwide. Frances called this model Circular Management.

This statement from Frances delightfully captures the themes of her life of service: “Leadership is not a destination; it is a journey. And along the way we find fellow travelers to share the journey. We open doors that tell us where we should be—and then, once we have served, we close those and then we open new doors.”

Charlie “Tremendous” Jones – A Sermon Seen by Mark Sanborn

Mark Sanborn is president of Sanborn & Associates, Inc., an idea studio dedicated to developing leaders in business and in life.

Edgar Guest was born in England but moved to the United States where he became known as “The People’s Poet.” One of his best-loved poems is a classic familiar to many called “Sermons We See.” In it he says, “I’d rather see a sermon than hear one any day / I’d rather one should walk with me than merely tell the way.” Servant leadership is about being a sermon seen; about living out an inner philosophy.

Many recall Charlie Jones as a powerful speaker and successful author. His book Life Is Tremendous has sold more than two million copies since 1967. He is probably best known for his declaration: “You will be the same person in five years as you are today except for two things: the people you meet and the books you read.”

Charlie founded Executive Books (now Tremendous Life Books) as a way to get affordable and uplifting books into as many hands as possible.

The quality of Charlie’s deeds and the character of his mind and heart made him the most effective sermon seen—a servant leader who realized his greatest purpose and joy by putting others ahead of himself and loving them unconditionally.

Part Five: Putting Servant Leadership to Work

Treat Your People as Family by Colleen Barrett

Colleen Barrett is president emeritus of Southwest Airlines. She joined Southwest in 1978 as corporate secretary, serving in VP and executive VP roles before becoming president and COO in 2001. She stepped down as president in 2008.  She co-authored Lead with Luv with Ken Blanchard (summarized here).

The airline industry, in its history, has lost money. But Southwest Airlines, year after year, turned a profit. Why? Because Colleen and founder Herb Kelleher have always had servant leadership in their veins.

Over the years, all leaders at Southwest Airlines tried to model Servant Leadership. For over four decades, Colleen and Herb said that their purpose in life as Senior Leaders with Southwest Airlines was to support People.

As Barrett put it, “We want each of our People to realize they have the potential to be a Leader. They can make a positive difference in anybody’s work and life, regardless of whether they are in a management position. Our entire philosophy of Leadership is quite simple: treat your People right, and good things will happen.”

In Southwest’s corporate headquarters in Dallas, there is a huge inscription on the glass elevator wall in our lobby that says: “The People of Southwest Airlines are the creators of what we have become—and of what we will be.”

Three key values—Warrior Spirit, Servant’s Heart, and Fun-LUVing Attitude—guide Southwest’s People every single day.

• Warrior Spirit means that you have to have a fighting spirit to be successful. You want to be the best and work hard.  It’s the determination to follow through on a vision, mission, or goal.
• The Servant’s Heart is the core of knowing how to lead with love. When Southwest Airlines interviews, hires, and promotes, they’re looking for People who are Servant Leaders—no matter what title or position they are going to hold, they have to want to serve. Southwest wants all Employees to follow the Golden Rule.
• Fun-LUVing Attitude means just that: we want to enjoy our work life as much as we do our home life. We want to show each other and our valued Customers that we care about them, and we want them to feel like extended family members.

The People of Southwest Airlines understand that as long as the decisions they make are not illegal, unethical, or immoral, they are free to do the right thing while using their best judgment—even if that means bending or breaking a rule or a procedure in the process.

Developing and Using Servant Leadership in the Military by Robin Blanchard

Robin Blanchard owns and operates Blanchard Consulting in the Washington, DC, area. She retired as a colonel after twenty-nine years of service with the Washington Army National Guard.

As she puts it, “A servant leader must be technically competent; but to motivate others they also must earn trust and respect. Before a leader can have success on the battlefield—when orders must be followed quickly or someone might die—they already must have earned the hearts and minds of their troops. That takes a servant leader. During my twenty-eight years practicing servant leadership in the military, I realized two critical things about leading others: (1) People need to feel valuable; and (2) People need to be equipped for success.”

Remember that no matter how senior or junior you are in the workplace, praise releases the recipient’s creative genius—and organizations reap the benefits. Another essential part of valuing people is to trust them and strive to earn their trust in return.

A servant leader asks the question, “How can I help?”  If you want to motivate people, make sure they know they can trust you.

A servant leader must ensure that people know what is expected of them, understand policies and procedures, and receive whatever training is needed. The goal of every servant leader is to care more about the success of others than your own.

Leading Is Serving by Dave Ramsey

Dave Ramsey is a personal money management expert, a popular national radio personality, and bestselling author of several books including Financial Peace, The Total Money Makeover, and EntreLeadership.  The Dave Ramsey Show is heard by more than fourteen million listeners each week.

In EntreLeadership, Ramsey thought about all the stories that have led his family to where we are, and one concept kept coming to the surface as the key to success: servant leadership.

In corporate America, the gap between servant and leader is about the size of the Grand Canyon!

When some leaders hear servant, they think subservient. That is, they think servant leaders bow down to the whims of their teams. They mistakenly think that a servant leader only takes orders and acts like a doormat at the front door of the business—trampled on by everyone who walks in.

Serving as you lead them doesn’t really change what you’re doing; it changes how and why you’re doing it.

If there’s one big key to servant leadership, it’s pretty simple: put other people first.  Show your team by your actions that leading is serving. Look for every opportunity to show them that, although you’re in charge, you’re all in this together.

Serving from an HR Perspective by Shirley Bullard

Shirley Bullard is chief administrative officer for The Ken Blanchard Companies. She joined Blanchard as vice president of HR and chief personnel officer in February 1998. Shirley’s prior industry experience included ten years at the Poway Unified School District as director of personnel support services and more than fifteen years with the U.S. Navy as a civilian employee.  She received her juris doctorate from Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego.

What is HR at its finest? It is one of the core elements of being a servant leader—putting other people’s needs ahead of your own. Without this mindset, your actions can be viewed as self-serving.

Oftentimes in HR there is no script for what you will encounter; there is no rule or policy that you can rely on; there is no clear-cut plan of what to do or not to do. But with a mindset of “I am here to serve,” you can get through even the most challenging event with grace.  Notice that did not say “without angst, second guessing, or fear.”

More than fifteen hundred homes were lost in San Diego County as a result of four separate fires burning at the same time. Dealing with this kind of a crisis isn’t in anyone’s job description. But as the head of HR, Bullard was the caretaker of the people in The Ken Blanchard Companies during this tough time.

Through this experience, she realized once again that being a servant leader is more about serving than leading. You need both to be effective—especially when there is no script.

It’s How You Treat People by James H. Blanchard

James H. Blanchard began his service with Synovus Financial Corp. in June 1970. He served as CEO of Synovus from 1971 until being named executive chairman of the board in July 2005.

Focusing on business performance always went hand in hand with mindfully serving people and the community. It drove growth and made Synovus an inspiring place to work.

At some point in the early 1980s, the patriarch of the bank, Bill Turner, came into Blanchard’s office with a book Robert K. Greenleaf had written on servant leadership. Bill tossed the book on his desk and said, “Jim, this is exactly what we have been doing.  We just didn’t know what to call it!”

Ken Blanchard helped Synovus understand what servant leadership looks like. He taught that leaders must see themselves on the bottom of an upside-down pyramid—that’s where they serve the entire organization using their power, resources, influence, and everything else leadership affords. Ken and other leadership experts helped Synovus learn how servant leadership concepts fit into running a successful business.

Synovus created an evaluation system that included financial components to the metrics on culture as well as feedback from employees, customers, and stakeholders. You have to treat culture like a business plan: everything you do for financial performance must be done for culture as well.

In 1999, Synovus made it to the top of the chart: Fortune’s #1 Best Company to Work For!  The company continued to strive for and maintain a culture where everyone was treated with respect no matter their status or ability. Synovus treated people the way they would want to be treated and told stories about how to treat others.

It became Jim Blanchard’s mission to free the workplace of anyone who was holding the company’s cultural goals back. Senior leadership decided they would not keep any manager they would not be willing to work for themselves.

One of the most important drivers of success at Synovus was that the entire senior executive team embraced the strategy and cultural goals. Even if you win awards, you are never done.

How Servant Leadership Has Shaped Our Church Culture by Miles McPherson

Miles McPherson started Rock Church in San Diego in 2000. Today, attendance at the Rock stands at more than fifteen thousand people who attend in person as well as through online streaming, radio, and TV. In 2013, Miles initiated Do Something Church, a community outreach ministry.  Miles played NFL football for the San Diego Chargers from 1982 to 1985.

The awesome thing about servant leadership is that once it has become a fundamental component of organizational culture, it permeates every department, sneaks into every office, and defines every leader.

If God’s Son chose to stoop, serving sinful men—including the one who would betray him to his death—who are we to expect to be served? Jesus himself didn’t come to be served, but to serve, giving his very life as a ransom for many.

McPherson came up with the “Do Something Church” model. It consists of four main steps:

1. Count: What they count is symptom centers. These are the places people go to find temporary and fake relief for the pain of their sin.
2. Walk: They drive across town or walk across the street and just show up at their front door.
3. Ask: Then they ask: “How can we help you?”
4. Love: This is the most powerful step in servant leadership. It’s the fruit—the reward—for all the work that goes into the first three steps. And, most important, leaders:  it’s the heart—the essence—of your message.

If you want your influence to grow, love. If you want to be a better leader, love. If you want your work to matter, love. If you want to be more like Jesus Himself, love.

Part Six: Servant Leadership Turnarounds

Out of the Flames, into the Light by Art Barter

Art Barter is the owner and CEO of Datron World Communications and the founder and CEO of the Servant Leadership Institute. Art began his career working with the Walt Disney Company.  He is passionate about servant leadership and operates by the guiding principle “How you get results is more important than the results themselves.”

Having recently taken over Datron World Communications, Art decided servant leadership would be his strategy for turning the operation around.

The actual practice of servant leadership is not some arduous rule or some overwhelming, difficult exercise. It is a life-giving, life-freeing mindset that releases people. This approach operates by one overarching ideal:  caring about people.

Barter and his team came up with a very simple mission and purpose statement that is still in place today: A self-sustaining, profitable communications company which positively impacts the lives of others today and in the future.

First, they threw out the organizational chart since they only reinforce the positional leadership model. The principles of servant leadership turn that model upside down.

The next key component was to put families ahead of work.

People transform from traditional leaders to servant leaders at a different rate. They may have the desire to take the journey, but they move at different speeds and have varying ideas about what servant leadership really is.

Barter is excited to share the story of Datron World Communications.  As he puts it, “I want to share the challenges we’ve faced, the pitfalls to avoid, and the ultimate success that is possible. We created the Servant Leadership Institute (SLI) to do just that. SLI is a leadership development organization that focuses on the implementation of servant leadership.”

Serve the People by Cheryl Bachelder

Cheryl A. Bachelder served as CEO of Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen, Inc., from 2007 to 2017. She has more than thirty-five years of leadership experience at companies like Yum! Brands, Domino’s Pizza, RJR Nabisco, Gillette, and Procter & Gamble. In 2012, she was recognized as Leader of the Year by the Women’s Foodservice Forum. She is author of the best-selling book Dare to Serve: How to Drive Superior Results by Serving Others (summarized here).

When Bachelder assumed leadership for Popeyes, she clearly understood, “There has never been a brand with positive sales and profit growth that is at war with its franchise owners.” It was this very predicament that her Popeyes leadership team decided to address as the strategy for turning around business performance. Simply put, they decided to serve the franchisees well and began by calling them their number-one customer.  More important, they began treating them that way—as servant leaders.

Serve the people well. And the rest will take care of itself.

Here are six servant leadership principles that guided their actions:

1. We are passionate about what we do.  The first principle was to respect the passion of the owners. They had made the investment of their money and their lives in Popeyes.
2. We Listen Carefully…and Learn Continuously – The leadership team’s first road trip in the fall of 2007 was called a listening tour. They went to seven cities and listened carefully to the franchise owners, restaurant managers and Popeyes guests.  Listening carefully to franchise owners, and learning from them, became an essential principle of success.
3. We Are Fact-Based and Planful – Facts and plans made their success sustainable.
4. We Coach and Develop Our People… The talent grew by leaps and bounds—and franchisees noticed the difference.
5. We Are Personally Accountable – Popeyes’ culture became one of “no excuses, no blame.” They accepted their role and responsibility to make things right. And worked to avoid victim behavior. Productivity soared when accountability was high.
6. We Value Humility – The last principle may have been the most important to the turnaround of Popeyes. It was the principle that underscored the Popeyes purpose statement:  Inspire servant leaders to achieve superior results. Their definition of humility was one Bachelder has heard attributed to Rick Warren, Ken Blanchard, and others: “Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it is thinking of yourself less.”

And as Jim Collins predicted in his book Good to Great, the results were phenomenal. Collins states great leaders “are a paradoxical mix of personal humility and professional will. They are ambitious, to be sure, but ambitious first and foremost for the company, not themselves.”

Waste Connections: A Servant Leadership Success Story by Rico Maranto

Rico Maranto serves as guardian of the culture and servant leadership evangelist for Waste Connections.  A learning and development professional with more than twenty-five years of experience, Rico Maranto’s passion is helping others embrace servant leadership so that they can become better servant leaders in their homes, communities, and workplaces. He holds an MS in organization leadership and HR management from Regis University.

Out of a staff of 3,000, between 1,200 and 1,400 employees were leaving the organization each year—a turnover rate of more than 40 percent. Ron Mittelstaedt (CEO and founder of Waste Connections) knew the company would not remain successful if it had to replace and retrain 40 percent of its staff every year. Mittelstaedt says, “We realized people expected more from the employee/employer relationship than simple management of day-to-day tasks. People needed to feel included, familial, cared for, and empowered. They wanted to know their voice mattered—that they were more than a number. We had to make a wholesale change.  It was a matter of survival.  The direction we were heading was not sustainable.”

Mittelstaedt considered the premise that employees do not leave companies; they leave managers. He was told servant leadership could make better leaders, create a better place to work, and increase employee retention.

Mittelstaedt said to the managers, “We hope you will become servant leaders. We won’t make you do it, but we believe you’ll get better results if you do. And you will be judged by your performance.”

Waste Connections did a number of things to change the culture and help managers embrace servant leadership:

• Introduce a vision, purpose, and values.
• Conduct servant leadership training.
• Distribute a servant leader newsletter.
• Distribute a servant leadership survey. In 2007, a survey was distributed to all employees. The following year, a percentage of each manager’s bonus—for some, as much as 25 percent—was determined by survey results.
• Create a Servant Leader Playbook.  Some of the plays in the playbook included:
  • Manage by walking around
  • Post the company’s vision, purpose, and values in your department
  • Meet with your team and discuss accountability for vision, purpose, and values
  • Reinforce the values (walk the talk)
  • Catch people doing something right
  • Allow time in every meeting for employees to give their manager a to-do list to hold the manager accountable
  • Coach every day
• Create servant leadership awards.
• Get self-serving leaders off the bus. By 2008, servant leadership had gained momentum. About 90 percent of managers had adopted servant leadership and were achieving significant results. At that year’s annual managers’ meeting, Mittelstaedt made an announcement: servant leadership was no longer optional.  It was the expected method of leadership throughout the company.
• Hire for character.  As Mittelstaedt would say, “You can’t train character.”

By the end of 2010, overall turnover had dropped from 40 percent to 17 percent. And of that, only 56 percent was voluntary, down from 80 percent.

“Servant leadership made Waste Connections a place where employees wanted to be instead of where they had to be,” says President Steve Bouck. “It was a better place to work in a tough industry.”

Don’t Mark My Paper, Help Me Get an A by Garry Ridge

A native of Australia, Garry Ridge is president and CEO of WD-40 Company, where he has worked since 1987. He received his Masters of Science in Executive Leadership (MSEL) degree in 2001 from the University of San Diego, where he is now an adjunct professor for the MSEL program. In 2009, Garry and Ken Blanchard coauthored the book Helping People Win at Work: A Business Philosophy Called “Don’t Mark My Paper, Help Me Get an A” (see my summary here). Garry is a popular speaker on the topic of humanizing the performance review process.

Ridge met Ken and heard him talk about his philosophy, as a college professor, of giving his students the final exam at the beginning of the semester—and then throughout the course teaching them the answers—so when they got to the final exam they each would get an A.

According to Edgar Schein and others, culture is “the way we do things around here.”

Ridge and his team determined that at WD-40, when things go wrong, we don’t call them mistakes; we call them learning moments.

The rank-ordered values that guide behavior at WD-40 Company are:

1. Doing the right thing
2. Creating positive, lasting memories in all relationships
3. Making it better than it is today
4. Succeeding as a tribe while excelling as individuals
5. Owning it and passionately acting on it
6. Sustaining the WD-40 economy

A team is about winning and getting stuff done in a positive way. While that’s important, a tribe is a much richer concept. A tribe is a place you belong; a team is something you play on once in a while.

A New Performance Management System

There are three aspects of the “Don’t Mark My Paper, Help Me Get an A” performance review system: planning, execution, and review and learning.

1. Planning: When it comes to planning, once a year every tribe leader has a conversation with each of his or her direct reports to establish the tribe members’ final exam that consists of three to five short-term SMART goals. The rules at WD-40 Company are simple: if people attain their observable, measurable goals at the end of the fiscal year, they will get an A—as long as they’re in good shape with living the company’s values.
2. Execution: Once people are clear on their final exam and the observable, measurable goals that the exam consists of, we move on to execution—the servant aspect of servant leadership.
3. Review & Learning: At WD-40 Company the review and learning process is a continuous conversation throughout the year. Why do we say review and learning is an ongoing process? Because we don’t want to save up feedback until somebody fails. Periodically, you want to be able to give people feedback that is either positive or redirects their efforts. Four times a year all tribe leaders have a conversation with each of their tribe members, which we call informal/formal discussions. The first item of business is to review the agreed-upon final exam.  Is it still relevant? At each quarterly meeting, performance is evaluated—but rather than the tribe leader doing the initial evaluation, the tribe member does it. Each tribe member gives themselves an A, B, C, or L on each of his or her agreed-upon goals. An L means that the tribe member is in a learning mode on that goal and isn’t ready for evaluation yet. The job of the tribe leader is to agree or disagree with the tribe member’s evaluation, and to do what needs to be done to help that person move each goal toward an A.

As Ridge summarizes, “To me, helping people get an A is servant leadership in action. It’s the only way to get both great results and human satisfaction.”

Final Comments

Ken Blanchard got a letter from a New Zealander a few years ago that summed up this philosophy. He said, “Ken, you’re in the business of teaching people the power of love rather than the love of power.”