The Empowered Leader: 10 Keys to Servant Leadership by Calvin Miller

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Key 1 – Fostering an Honest Servant Image

Friedrich Nietzsche wrote that what most people want as a model for leadership is “a strong kind of man, most highly gifted in intellect and will.”

You may not know how to define charisma, but you know it when you see it. Jesus’ great charisma as a leader was recognized everywhere, but mostly by those who did not know Him as well the hometown folks did.

One mix for great leadership that is unstoppable: Inward substance and outward daring—the Spirit of God and magnetic motivation all in a single life—is God’s recipe for greatness.

According to Matthew 5:5 of the Beatitudes, the meek will inherit the earth (check out my post). The word meek is best translated “power under control.”  Jesus was called meek, not weak.

Since books cannot make leaders, this one exists more to waken and define your capabilities in leadership than to create them.

Real leaders hire to their weakness. Strong organizations are more important to them than egoistic reputations. They crave a strong organization above a good image.

Scripture says David was “beautiful” (1 Samuel 16:12).  David must have been one whose inner life rendered him beautiful. Mother Theresa’s life was called “Something Beautiful for God.” Her life is beautiful because, while she exemplifies leadership, she does it with no hint of self-interest.

The New Testament Words that form the boundaries of Servant Leadership:

• Diakonos:  The servant in relation to his or her work.
• Doulos:  The servant in relation to his or her master.
• Huperetes:  The servant in relation to his or her superior.

As Christ is track one of great leadership, His agenda is track two. Servant leaders carry to completion what God has given them to do.

Key 2 – Seeing Yourself as a Leader:  Learning the Art of Self-Perception

As a leader, your work, like your life, must bear the scrutiny of your own tough evaluation.

Stanley Coopersmith defines self-esteem as “the evaluation which the individual makes and customarily maintains with regard to himself: it expresses an attitude of approval or disapproval, and indicates the extent to which the individual believes himself to be capable, significant, successful, and worthy.”

Max DePree notes that a combination of self-confidence and humility seems to me to be crucial, for this oxymoronic quality makes it possible for the group to be decisive.

Power listening is the way to become a power communicator, and power communication is the route of power leadership. We must listen to know who we are.

Make sure that we are a people of the disciplines—prayer, Bible study, and ministry. Prayer includes both speaking and listening. Bible study is personal, devotional Bible study.

It ought to be easy to tell how you are going to lead by looking at how you have led in the past. Always analyze the past in preparing for the future was one of the leadership principles of Attila the Hun (see my summary of the book entitled Leadership Principles of Attila the Hun). As Attila the Hun said, “Let your past guide your future.  Let your future instruct your present.”

Innovation is nearly always met by challenge.  The number one response to all change is resistance and not just passive resistance.

Anthony Robbins says that stress can be overcome in a twofold formula:  “First, don’t sweat the small stuff, and secondly, remember, it’s all small stuff.”

No risk is foolproof and no good dream is 100 percent sure. 

Key 3 – Networking and the Special Friends of a Leader

A great leader is never a Lone Ranger (see my post “Are You a Lone Ranger Leader?”). Lee Buck, the one-time vice-president of New York Life, reminds us, “Making friends along the way is an action anyone pursuing success in his work should follow.  This means being a friend to everyone, all fellow employees above and below you, even to those who you feel can do you absolutely no favors.”

Quality in leadership demands that you build a circle of loyal friends who will compose the network out of which (and upon which) your leadership can reach for excellence.

Bob Dale’s Four Leadership Styles

Style	Strength	Weakness
Catalyst	Team Builder	Insignificant
Commander	Inspires Action	Autocratic
Hermit	Wise	Aloof
Encourager	Counselor	Poor Manager

Consider the four leadership styles suggested by Ken Blanchard:

1. Directing:  Leader provides specific instructions and closely supervises task accomplishment.
2. Coaching:  Leader directly and closely supervises task accomplishment while explaining decisions, soliciting suggestions, and supporting progress.
3. Supporting:  Leader facilitates and supports subordinates’ efforts toward task accomplishment and shares responsibility for decision-making with them.
4. Delegating:  Leader turns over responsibility for decision-making and problem-solving to subordinates.

Max DePree says, “Diversity of opinion is as necessary as light and air, a diversity of opinion that is encouraged and exploited for the good of the group.”

Here are three varieties of Corporate Oneness:

1. Leadership Oneness:  We stand with the leader.
2. Community Oneness:  We stand with the corporation.
3. Spiritual Oneness:  We don’t stand with anyone.  We belong to each other.

Lee Buck sums up the whole issue of networking in these words: “How one treats others in his or her climb up the ladder is vital. For each friend made along the way is a building block in your foundation of success.”

Key 4 – Vision: Gathering It Up and Giving It Out

Walter Heller, interviewed by Nation’s Business, was asked, “What do you think makes good leaders?”  He replied that the two things leaders had to own were courage and vision. “These are sheer essentials,” he said. 

Proverbs 29:18 reads, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” John Haggai contributes to our understanding of this verse when he reminds us that the “true meaning of these words is, that without a vision, the people cast off restraint.  When a group is under the direction of a person who has no vision, the result is confusion, disorder, rebellion, uncontrolled license, and—at worst—anarchy.”

Here are four axioms of judgment to turn reversals into opportunities:

1. Nothing happens to us by accident.
2. Never sidestep challenges.
3. Love people, use things.  Never, ever reverse this order.
4. Don’t celebrate leisure and condemn hard work.  Esteem them both.  Leisure will give your life pacing.  Labor will make you productive.

The power of enthusiasm is the energy that drives every successful idea.  And enthusiasm has its taproot in the fertile soil of vision.

John Haggai’s creed of real success goes like this, “You are more likely to discern a vision in the cloistered halls of solitude than in the screaming jostle of the metropolitan concrete jungle. Perhaps in the cathedral of the trees, under the silence of the stars, or by the moaning sea, you’ll be most likely to see the true light and hear ‘the still, small voice.’”

Anthony Robbins says there are seven basic mechanisms that can ensure success:  passion, belief, strategy, clarity of values, energy, network rivalry, and mastery of communication.

As aging kills vision, enthusiasm connotes newness.  The most powerful visions remain simple at heart.  The more we try to amend simple visions, the less visionary they become.  George Barna is concise in this proverb: “For the vision to be effective…it must be simple enough to be remembered and specific enough to give direction.”

Vision gathers multiple, complex organizations into single goal relationships.  When the focus of vision narrows, like a canyon cutting river, the dynamics of the dream rush forward.   On the other hand, the longer it takes a leader to state his or her vision for an organization, the more the complex dream slows to a meandering focus. 

One of the best things any leader can do is to create simple pictures of organizational dreams and goals.

Key 5 – Decision:  The Key to Leadership

“It ain’t nothin’ ‘til I call it.” – An American Umpire

James MacGregor Burns in Leadership said, “Leaders, whatever their professions of harmony, do not shun conflict; they confront it, exploit it, ultimately embody it.”

Deciding seems less frustrating than having to live in that self-imposed state of paralysis known as decidophobia.

Your decisions, right or wrong, create places for you to start again.  A good, firm decision can provide a starting place from which to choose a new direction.

Consider the four functions of Pier Decisions:

1. They divide life into manageable segments.
2. They create new beginnings.
3. They authenticate selfhood.
4. They weld us into a strong relationship with God.

Somewhere around 50% of all decisions you make will be wrong.

Here are the four postulates of decision and consequence:

1. The wrong decision at the wrong time = Disaster
2. The wrong decision at the right time = Mistake
3. The right decision at the wrong time = Rejection
4. The right decision at the right time = Success

Moses was met by his father-in-law during a time of great executive stress and given three pieces of advice (see my post entitled “Three Lessons from the World’s First Management Consultant”):

1. Talk more to God about the people than to the people about their problems (Exodus 18:20).
2. Teach the people more clearly to walk in God’s ways (Exodus 18:20).
3. Delegate responsibility to others and share the burden of leadership with them (Exodus 18:21).

There are 3 indicators that tell us we are making decisions that God can honor:

1. Good decisions are made in an atmosphere of joy.  Peter Drucker wisely advises, “This is how we’ve always done it.  Let’s improve it a little bit.  This is one of the critical decisions.  It is one of the crucial tasks of the executive to know when to say, ‘Enough is enough.  Let’s stop improving.  There are too many patches on those pants.’”
2. Good leadership decides in favor of God before self.  Abraham Lincoln, who we now revere as the greatest of American leaders, confessed his neediness when he admitted, “I have been driven to my knees many times on the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go!”
3. Good leadership sometimes makes decisions to postpone deciding.  There are two all- important rules for deciding.  Rule Number 1—decide without redeciding. Make a decision, and don’t look back after you’ve made it.  Rule Number 2—don’t decide until you’ve gotten past your doubts.  Once you’ve made up your mind, decide and move on.

Viktor Frankl, who spent the war years in a concentration camp, explained, “The prisoner who had lost his faith in the future—his future—was doomed.  With his loss of belief in the future, he also lost his spiritual hold; he let himself decline and become subject to mental and physical decay.”  The idea of the future comprises all that is brightest in human hope.

Key 6 – Defining, Structuring, and Motivating

John White in Excellence in Leadership, said, “Leaders must be able to spot roadblocks and clear them.”

Anthony Robbins cites a very commanding survey done by the Harvard Business School on its 1953 graduates. Only 3 percent of these graduates had written goals for their lives. Twenty years later, in 1973, the researchers went back and interviewed the surviving members of the 1953 graduating class. They discovered the 3 percent with written specific goals were worth more in financial terms than the entire other 97 percent put together.

Keep your vision simple. Along with simplicity, two other issues are imperative in making any plan workable. The leader must prioritize which aspects of the plan are to be carried out first. But the second and most important aspect of bringing a vision to be demands that the plan be flexible.  Simple but supple is the way to make plans.

Paul says in 1 Corinthians 9:16, “Woe unto me, if I preach not the gospel.”  In this verse of Scripture, Paul is dealing with the basic goal of his life.  In fact, he is stating his “Woe Point.”  Paul was saying, “Woe be unto me if I preach not the gospel.”

Great leadership does not advance one ladder rung without determining that the part of the ladder just traversed is still secure.

Goals should be achievable and sustainable in order to satisfy clearly charted expectations.  It is important, however, that your overall dream provide a continuous need to improve and grow.

Motivating generally takes a lot more praising than reprimand.  Positive reinforcement builds positive, aggressive team members.  Reprimands build tentative, cautious players.

Here are Ken Blanchard’s Three Axioms of Management

1. Goals keep things moving.
2. Praising fosters development.
3. Reprimands stop poor performance.

Tom Peters wrote the following, “People in organizations are all boss-watchers, especially when external conditions are ambiguous.  For better or for worse, what you spend your time on (not what you sermonize about) will become the organization’s preoccupation.”

Ken Blanchard says that the successful leader will achieve using two different leadership behaviors:

1. Directive behavior:  Clearly spelling out individual expectations
2. Supportive behavior:  Listening to encourage, facilitate, and build decisiveness

Key 7 – The Politics of Grace and the Abuse of Power

In every organization, including the church, the leader must be somewhat of a politician. He or she must learn to motivate various people by making commitments, side deals, complimenting, remonstrating, and bargaining in order to get things done.

Let us remember that the word politics derives from the same term as the words polity and polite. Polity is the word for cooperation in and understanding within the community. Polite refers to any action marked by courtesy, consideration, or correct social usage.

Are you using deference, courtesy, and public relations to get others to grant you power, or are you using these things to create a wider sphere of influence for God?

Warren Bennis gives four themes that should empower Christian leadership:  Make people feel significant; Teach all that learning and competence matter; Inspire community; and Incite vision.

Every notable leader, from Abraham to the present time, has tried to work out political compromises that would harmonize hostilities without war.  The key issue is that in playing politics, a leader does not begin to use power abusively.

Rollo May, in his book Power and Innocence, says that it is not always power that corrupts; indeed, powerlessness may be the corrupter.

Comedian Rodney Dangerfield popularized the idea of how the lack of our esteem can cripple us.  “I don’t get no respect,” he laments for everyone who feels the impact of powerlessness.

Max DePree said, “The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality, the last is to say ‘thank you.’  In between the two, the leader must become a servant and a debtor.  That sums up the progress of an artful leader.

Here are Five Evidences of Power Abuse:

1. Giving up those disciplines we still demand of underlings.
2. Believing that others owe us whatever use we can make of them.
3. Trying to fix things up rather than make things right.
4. Closing our minds to every suggestion that we ourselves could be out of line.
5. Believing that people in our way are expendable.

God made us to love people and use things.  Why is it that we so often love things and use people?

Key 8 – Leadership: Coping with Difficult People

Most people are problem people once in a while.  In fact, nearly everybody is a problem to somebody, sometime, somewhere.

Difficult people are those who stand between you and the realization of your objectives.  They are a deterrent to the earliest possible achievement of your God-ordained dreams.

Socrates believed that all of humanity could be divided into two types:  the wise who know they are fools, and the fools who believe themselves wise.

Here are six difficult souls:

1. Chronicially Arrogant:  Burdens leadership
2. Congenitally Belligerent:  Declares war on leadership
3. Non-Negotiator:  Won’t inform leadership
4. Nit-Picker:  Amends greatness with smallness
5. Wheedler (combination of whiner and needler):  Needles leadership confidence.  Wheedlers negotiate, but they always use a grieving tone the moment you force them from their complaint.
6. “Yes-Butter”:  Impedes leadership but greeting every great idea by saying, “Yes, but it won’t work for this reason.”

Here are four key questions we can use to analyze our coping efficiency:

1. Why has God sent this particular problem person into my life?
2. Which of my problem people can be reconciled to the corporate dream?
3. How far can I go to satisfy the grudges of antagonists?
4. When is my time better spent on finding new support rather than trying to “sweeten up” old belligerence?

It behooves each of us who lead to be sure that our walk with Christ is sufficient to keep us from being a stumbling block for someone else.  The key issue to coping with difficult people is to handle them without belittling them before others.  Love is a key ingredient of leadership.

Key 9 – Leadership:  The Art of Delegation and Team Spirit

Often a company or a church consists of a few hassled, harried leaders and a great many take-it-easy followers.

Less than one of four working people now say they are working at full potential. Half of the current workforce say that they do not put any more effort into a job than they absolutely must do to keep the job. Three-fourths of the American workforce say they could be more effective, and almost 60 percent agree that they do not work as hard as they used to work.

Warren Bennis gives us the simplest and best of all definitions of leadership and management:

Joe Batten suggests that these steps to better management should be taken in this order. Research should precede planning. Planning should precede organizing. After all are organized, we must learn to direct, coordinate, and control.

The process of management must always end with a quantitative and qualitative measurement of what has been achieved. But the wideness of achievement will always come in direct proportion to the leader’s aptitude at delegation.

Joe Batten said, “Delegation means to assign, trust, instruct…  Abdication means to relinquish all control and follow through, and hope the assignment gets done.”

Uncommon faithfulness to common jobs is an uncommon glory.

Every leader leads by team building. 

Bert Decker says there are nine factors in effectively communicating to the corporate team. 

Eye Factors: 

1. Eye communication;

2. Posture and movement;

3. Dress and appearance; and

4. Gestures and smiles;

Energy Factors: 

5. Voice and vocal clarity;

6. Words and pauses;

7. Listener involvement;

8. Humor; and

9. Naturalness (How do we become our natural selves in communicating with the team?)

In The Psychology of Jesus, David McKenna identified four demons of doubt:

1. Ignorance:  I don’t know how to handle this situation.
2. Heredity:  I can’t change because this is how God made me.
3. Age:  I’m getting too old.
4. Inferiority:  I can’t do this.  Who am I to consider this?

In the Bible, David demonstrated three principles of management style that every leader must consider if his leadership is to grow and expand:

1. Overcoming fatigue in a growing organization.  Fighting giants, David learned that you may avoid exhaustion and fatigue if you learn to delegate. 
2. Listen, adjust your management style, and then delegate.  Three steps to good management:  listen to everyone; adjust your management style as you learn; and redelegate continually as you gather new data.
3. Delegate the task then share the publicity.

Flexibility in management style speaks volumes to the leader’s spiritual maturity.

Key 10 – Surviving a Visible Mistake

An American Presidential candidate once said upon losing the election, “I’m too big to cry and it hurts too much to laugh.”

David’s survival of his affair with Bathsheba shows that great leaders can indeed transcend their mistakes. Here are three attitudes to consider for making your future sins forgivable:

1. Openness
2. Forgiving others their corporate transgressions before it’s their turn to reciprocate
3. Connoting to all who need understand that you, too, are a person in progress

One of Gandhi’s disciples once confronted him in desperation:  “Gandhi, I don’t understand you.  How can you say one thing last week, and something quite different this week?”  “Ah,” Gandhi replied, “because I have learned something since last week.”

It is important to our spiritual maturity to celebrate those who out-succeed us.  They may keep an aura of spiritual submission while they build shrines of self-importance.

Christian leaders who really move their world are not generally conscious of their self-surrender.  Yielding to Christ has become so much a part of them that they no longer see anything remarkable in it.

• Consider the three states of spiritual healing:
  1. The acknowledgment of our hypocrisy
  2. Repentance.  Repentance is not telling God what we have done wrong.  Repentance has a single aim: the restoration of relationship.  God knows the exact nature of our sins and their effects on our lives.  Repentance is not informing God about our morality.  It is a heart cry of acknowledgment.  It is crying over the awful distance that has come to separate us from Him.  Repentance is a threefold process.  First, we survey our wrong.  Second, we admit the error.  Third, we seek a restoration of joy.
  3. The restoration of our praise unto God

Speak only after you have listened.  Lead only as you follow.  Stand only after you have sat quietly in His presence.  Raise your chin and command, only after you have bowed your head and obeyed.

May these 10 Keys to Servant Leadership empower you to shoot for the stars!