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THE SERVANT A Simple Story about the True Essence of Leadership James Hunter Prima Publishing, 1998, 187 pp. ISBN 0-7615-1369-8 www.primapublishing.com
or www.primalifestyle.com
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James Hunter is principal
consultant of J. D. Hunter Associates, a labor relations and training
consulting firm located near Detroit.
This is a story in the Ken Blanchard style. A beleaguered leader is persuaded to take a weeklong retreat at
a monastery. There he comes under the
tutelage of a former renowned leader-turned-monk who introduces him to the
understanding that the qualities of a leader are the qualities of love as
described in I Corinthians chapter 13.
“Building influence with others,
true leadership, is available to everyone but requires a tremendous extension
of oneself. Sadly, most of those in
leadership positions shy away from the great effort required.” (28) “You manage things, you lead
people.” (28) “Leadership: The skill of
influencing people to work enthusiastically toward goals identified as being
for the common good.” (28) “Power: The ability to
force or coerce someone to do your will, even if they would choose not to,
because of your position or your might.”
(30) “Authority: The skill of
getting people to willingly do your will because of your personal influence.”
(30) “Power erodes relationships.”
(32) “When working with and getting
things done through people, there will always be two dynamics involved—the
task and the relationship. It is easy
for leaders to lose their balance by focusing on only one of these dynamics
at the expense of the other.” (40) “All of life is relational—with
God, self, and others.” “The truly
great leaders are skilled at building healthy relationships.” (41) The most important ingredient in a successful
relationship is trust. (44-5) “It is impossible to improve
unless we change.” (54) “The people in many
organizations today are looking up the food chain, so to speak, and worrying
about keeping the boss happy. And
while everyone is focusing on keeping the boss happy, who’s focusing on
keeping the customer happy?” (60-1) “Too many managers spend their
careers getting in the way instead of getting the obstacles out of
the way.” “A seagull manager is
one who periodically flies into the area, makes a lot of noise, dumps on
people, maybe eats their lunch, and flies away.” (63) “A leader is someone who
identifies and meets the legitimate needs of their people, removes all the
barriers, so they can serve the customer.
Again, to lead you must serve.” This does not mean meeting the ‘wants’
of their people, but their ‘needs.’ (64-5) Leadership is built on service.
(79) “Leadership begins with the
will, which is our unique ability as human beings to align our intentions
with our actions and choose our behavior.
With the proper will, we can chose to love, the verb, which is about
identifying and meeting the legitimate needs, not wants, of those we
lead. When we meet the needs of
others we will, by definition, be called upon to serve and even sacrifice. When we serve and sacrifice for others, we
build authority or influence.... And
when we build authority with people, then we have earned the right to be
called leader.” (90) This can be diagramed as an
inverted pyramid from bottom to top as Will, Love, Service and Sacrifice,
Authority and Leadership. Everyone has a religion. “We all have some sort of beliefs about
the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe. Our religion is simply our map, our paradigm, our beliefs that
answer the difficult existential questions.” (93) “All of life is relational, both
vertically to God, and horizontally to our neighbor. Each of us has to make choices about those
relationships.” (93) When Jesus speaks of love in the
New Testament, he is speaking of a love of behavior and choice, not a love of
feeling. “I cannot always control how
I feel about other people but I certainly am in control of how I behave
toward other people.” I can behave
lovingly, be patient, honest and respectful, even if he chooses to behave
poorly. (97-8) According to I Corinthians
chapter 13, love is patience, kindness, humility, respectfulness,
selflessness, forgiveness, honesty, and commitment. “This beautiful definition of agape love, ...is also a
beautiful definition for leadership today.” (99-100) The greatest opportunity we have
to pay attention to people is by actively listening to them. (104) “Active listening requires a
disciplined effort to silence all that internal conversation while we’re
attempting to listen to another human being.
It requires a sacrifice, an extension of ourselves, to block out the
noise and truly enter another person’s world—even for a few minutes.” (105) “At the core of the human
personality is the need to be appreciated.” (108) “Honesty is the quality most
people put at the top of their list of what they want most from their
leader. Trust, which is built by
honesty, is the glue that holds relationships together. But honesty with people is also the tough
side of love and brings balance to love.
Honesty is about clarifying expectations for people, holding people
accountable, being willing to give the bad news as well as the good news,
giving people feedback, being consistent, predictable, and fair. In short, our behavior must be free from
deception and dedicated to the truth at all costs.” (119) “Manipulation, by definition, is
influencing people for personal benefit.” (122) “When Jesus says to love others
as we love ourselves, He is rightly assuming that we already love
ourselves. He is asking us to love
others in the same way as we love ourselves.” Although we may not always feel good about ourselves, we tend
to do what is in our own best interest.
That is how we are to love others.
(128-29) Motivation – any communication
that influences choices. (144) “If I make a commitment to love
and extend myself for those I serve, and align my actions and behaviors to
that commitment, positive regard for those people will follow over time.”
(150) “We can discipline ourselves to
do what is unnatural until it becomes natural and a habit. And we all know we are creatures of
habit.” (163) “Leadership is not about
personality, possessions, or charisma, but all about who you are as a
person. I used to believe that
leadership was about style but now I know that leadership is about substance,
namely character.” (166) “The labors of leadership and
love are character issues. Patience,
kindness, humility, selflessness, respectfulness, forgiveness, honesty,
commitment. These character building
blocks, or habits, must be developed and matured if we are to become
successful leaders who will stand the test of time.” (167) “Thoughts become actions,
actions become habits, habits become our character, and our character becomes
our destiny.” (167) “Happiness is based upon
happenings. If good things happen
then I’m happy.” “Joy is a much
deeper phenomenon.... Joy is about
inner satisfaction and the conviction of knowing that you are truly aligned
with the deep and unchanging principles of life. Serving others breaks you free from the shackles of self and
self-absorption that choke out the joy of living.” (178-79) “There is great joy in leading others by
meeting their legitimate needs.” (182) * * * * * |
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