Members of the Service Excellence Institute Taskforce were invited to send Larry Spears questions about what it means to be a servant-leader. Spears is recognized as a leading authority here in the U.S. and internationally for his scholarship in the domain of servant-leadership and in promoting the earlier work of Robert Greenleaf. Spears is the CEO of the Spears Center for Servant- Leadership in Indianapolis, Indiana, and former CEO of the Greenleaf Center for Servant-Leadership. Additionally, he serves as a Scholar/School of Leadership Studies and Senior Advisory Editor/The International Journal of Servant-Leadership, Gonzaga University.
How can we encourage and persuade students that the Extra Mile program has value for them? What aspects of service excellence/servant leadership are most valuable to students' future, and how do we communicate that to them?
I would like to preface that my responses to all these questions are from the perspective of what it means to be a servant-leader and what servant-leadership is. To the degree that there is similarity between the meaning of service excellence, the Extra Mile program, and servant-leadership, my comments may have value for you.
This is Robert Greenleaf’s definition of the servant-leader—
“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?”
(The Servant as Leader, Robert K. Greenleaf)
What are some effective ways for growing as a servant-leader? Encouraging people in their own service impulses; doing your best to live your own life as a servant-leader; accepting people for who they are; focusing on personal examples of servant-leadership within each person’s life; sharing a variety of learning tools on servant-leadership. The single best starting point for most people who want to read something about servant-leadership remains Robert Greenleaf’s essay, The Servant as Leader. The idea of servant-leadership may be communicated in many ways. The personal development of servant-leaders can be enhanced by showing them love, acceptance, and encouragement. I have also seen the benefits of service-learning projects—deeply grounded in the values of servant-leadership—as a method capable of igniting the servant’s heart in students.
Show people that they really matter to you. This is the single greatest lesson that I have learned in my life—and one that I continue to work hard at learning and remembering. Let people know that they matter to you. This has a broad range of expressions and includes such things as: showing your love for family, friends, colleagues, and students; sharing your appreciation for others in your life; saying please and thank you frequently. Demonstrate through large-and-small ways that you value those who are around you and let them know that they make a real difference in your life.
Greenleaf wrote the following:
"If a good society is to be built, one that is more just and more caring, and where the less able and more able serve one another with unlimited liability, then the best way is to raise the performance of institutions as servants, and to sanction natural servants to serve and lead." - Robert Greenleaf, The Servant as Leader
Servant-leadership requires personal commitment and dedication. For those who feel called to it, it makes all the difference in the world.
How do you balance creating a healthy work environment for yourself when focusing on service excellence/servant-leadership to those around you?
Greenleaf emphasized several characteristics salient to the process of servant-leadership, including listening, empathy, healing, awareness, persuasion, conceptualization, foresight, stewardship, commitment to the growth of people, and building community. These ten characteristics of servant-leadership are by no means exhaustive. However, they serve to communicate the power and promise that this concept offers to servant-leaders who are open to its invitation and challenge.
It focuses on servant-leadership that helps to create a healthy work environment for both you and others. The most important thing you can do is to become an effective and empathetic listener. Leadership is all too often seen as telling people what to do. Servant-leadership is about asking questions and listening carefully to one another.
What are the boundaries or self-care practices that you would recommend for those who want to offer service excellence/servant-leadership but also avoid burning out?
It is helpful to understand that servant-leadership starts within each one of us, and that it is primarily a personal philosophy and commitment that we can choose to practice in any environment. Also, servant-leadership is not a “leadership style” that one puts on and takes off depending on the situation. Rather, if we understand Greenleaf's best test as the fundamental understanding of servant-leadership, then it becomes clear that the choice to act as a servant-leader is ours to make. Our personal embracing of servant-leadership does not require the approval of our supervisor or anyone else. We don't need anyone's permission to personally do our best to act as a servant-leader. It is our choice.
Taking care of oneself, being aware and willing to say no when necessary, and holding reserve energies are all helpful in avoiding burnout in any situation, including servant-leadership.
Robert Greenleaf once had a cup of tea. On the back of the tea bag, he read this statement: "The pearl caused the oyster great pain." Greenleaf thought this was both an amusing and true statement when also applied to us as evolving human beings. The discomfort that we sometimes feel as servant-leaders in training during times of change may be likened to the bit of sand that irritates the oyster, and yet, the end-result is a beautiful pearl.
How do we articulate to faculty and staff our vision to increase our modeling of service excellence/servant leadership/customer service with all of our work at CU?
The words servant and leader are usually thought of as being opposites. In deliberately bringing those words together in a meaningful way, Robert Greenleaf gave birth to the paradoxical term “servant-leadership.” In the years since then, many of today’s most creative thinkers and leaders are writing and speaking about servant-leadership as an emerging leadership paradigm for the twenty-first century. The list is long and includes James Autry, Warren Bennis, Peter Block, John Carver, Stephen Covey, Max DePree, Joseph Jaworski, James Kouzes, Parker Palmer, M. Scott Peck, Peter Senge, Peter Vaill, Margaret Wheatley, and Danah Zohar, to name but a few of today’s cutting-edge leadership authors and advocates of servant-leadership.
Another helpful insight is to state the obvious: There are no perfect servant-leaders and no perfect servant-led institutions. Institutions are led by people, and people are imperfect. Even the most well-intentioned servant-leaders in training (and we are forever servant-leaders in training) will at some point in time do or say something that he or she regrets. At those times, the best thing to do is to apologize, and to seek to learn from it. In other instances, someone else may become angry at us for a decision that we are convinced was the right one and made with the greater good in mind. When that happens, and if we are aware of it, the opportunity is there to try and promote healing by reaching out to one another. Of course, the effective use of foresight, listening, and other servant-leader characteristics can often help us to avoid the need for this sort of thing in the first place.
Robert Greenleaf’s writings have influenced several generations of people. Part of Greenleaf’s great contribution to the world was the simple act of bringing together the words “servant” and “leader” in an innovative hyphenated word, “servant-leader.” In providing us with a name for something that many of us intuitively understand, he has helped to link together many who might otherwise have felt even more isolated in their beliefs and in their workplaces. I believe that leading others can be quite meaningful. Serving others is better yet. But both serving and leading others, at least for me, is the best. It offers opportunities for wholeness, for making a difference in the world, and for helping to fulfill Bob Greenleaf’s “Best Test” of a servant-leader: Is one healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to serve others? And what is the impact on the least privileged in society? Will they benefit, or at least, not be further deprived?
Another key point of recognition: It is possible to serve without leading; and it is possible to lead without serving. Servant-leadership is about the fundamental desire to serve others, followed by the conscious choice to provide leadership.
What impressed you the most about Greenleaf’s dispositions and demeanor?
I had the opportunity to meet face-to-face with Robert Greenleaf on one occasion, a day spent with him just eight days before he died, in September of 1990. My primary knowledge of Bob Greenleaf comes from 35 years of reading and studying, publishing and teaching his writings (both published and unpublished), and through conversations with others who knew him. It is clear to me that he was a quiet, thoughtful man who understood that the best organizations are those that demonstrate their caring spirit for their constituents and their communities.
Greenleaf, born in Terre Haute, Indiana, spent most of his organizational life in the field of management research, development, and education at AT&T. Following a 40-year career at AT&T, Greenleaf enjoyed a second career that lasted 25 years, during which time he served as an influential consultant to a number of major institutions, including Ohio University, MIT, Ford Foundation, R.K. Mellon Foundation, the Mead Corporation, the American Foundation for Management Research, and Lilly Endowment Inc. In 1964 Greenleaf also founded the Center for Applied Ethics, which was renamed the Robert K. Greenleaf Center in 1985.
As a lifelong student of how things get done in organizations, Greenleaf (1977) distilled his observations in a series of essays and books on the theme of “The Servant as Leader”—the objective of which was to stimulate thought and action for building a better, more caring society.
In your friendships with Stephen Covey, Scott Peck, Ken Blanchard, and other leaders you have worked with (mention others as well if you wish), what were the common traits they all possessed?
Like Robert K. Greenleaf, they all view the best leadership comes from those who have a deep commitment to serving others. Empathetic listening is essential to the development of servant-leaders, and all three of them are/were skilled listeners. Each of them have/had a profound understanding of what it means to be a servant-leader, and like Greenleaf, each has inspired many people in their understanding and practice of servant-leadership.
Final thoughts?
In 2005, Shann Ferch and I launched the International Journal of Servant-Leadership. Since that time, we have produced 19 volumes. Each volume contains several dozen articles, essays, poems, reviews and other content—all on a wide-range of servant-leadership topics. We now have the content of each edition up on the Gonzaga University website as free downloads. I invite you to check out this link: https://repository.gonzaga.edu/ijsl/. There you will find all the content. Just click on any volume and you will see the content in the form of separate PDFs. If you skim through the Tables of Content for each volume, I imagine that you will find certain articles that will address special interests you may have in servant-leadership. You can also search for keywords. This is an important online resource for people around the world who are interested in servant-leadership.
Jesus taught that true greatness comes from serving others, rather than seeking power.
In 604 B.C., the Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu said, "Go to the People / Learn from them / Live with them / Start with what they know / Build with what they have. / But of the best leaders, / When the job is done, / When the task is accomplished, / The people will all say, / 'We have done it ourselves.'"