To Lead is to Serve
Yesterday evening, I had the opportunity to attend a celebration of a program on my campus called Destination. Destination is a program sponsored by the Office of Student Life that provides opportunities for students to serve over spring break in different parts of the country. Earlier in the year, I had the opportunity to advise a team of nine students who served in the Dominican Republic as part of our Destination: International program. We had an opportunity to teach in the local schools and interact with the children who live at an orphange in the city of Monte Cristi. The Detination program is coordinated by an incredibly talented student named Christa and an amazing professional staff member in Student Life named Amy. I am so proud that this program is in the department I get to work in every day!
So how does service connect with leadership? Instead of sharing my thoughts, let's allow one of our leadership role models to make the connection. Check out the YouTube video below. It was shared with me from one our students involved in the Destination program.
For another example, let's turn to Robert K. Greenleaf who in an essay titled The Servant as Leader written in 1970 coined the term "servant leadership". Greenleaf graduated from Carleton College in my neighboring state of Minnesota and then worked for AT&T. Throughout his career Greenleaf researched and reflected on the management style employed in the corporate setting and grew worried about the authoritarian style of leadership commonly practiced then and as it is today. In 1964 Greenleaf founded the Center for Applied Ethics and started writing on the subject of "servant leadreship".
In the essay The Servant as Leader Greenleaf writes, "The servant-leader is servant first… It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. That person is sharply different from one who is leader first, perhaps because of the need to assuage an unusual power drive or to acquire material possessions…The leader-first and the servant-first are two extreme types. Between them there are shadings and blends that are part of the infinite variety of human nature."
He goes on to write...
"The difference manifests itself in the care taken by the servant-first to make sure that other people’s highest priority needs are being served. The best test, and difficult to administer, 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?"
Imagine a world where these ideals were the hallmark of good leadership practice. What does that community look like? What do our insitutions and organizations look like under this model? These are worthy questions of a community of leaders striving to make the world a better place.
This brings me back to the beginning of this post. Those students who chose not to do anything else over their spring break other than to drive in crowded vans to Portland, New Orleans, Kansas City, Pittsboro, NC, Beardsfork, WV, or fly to the Dominican Republic to make the world a better place. This is our community of leaders!!
So how does service connect with leadership? Instead of sharing my thoughts, let's allow one of our leadership role models to make the connection. Check out the YouTube video below. It was shared with me from one our students involved in the Destination program.
For another example, let's turn to Robert K. Greenleaf who in an essay titled The Servant as Leader written in 1970 coined the term "servant leadership". Greenleaf graduated from Carleton College in my neighboring state of Minnesota and then worked for AT&T. Throughout his career Greenleaf researched and reflected on the management style employed in the corporate setting and grew worried about the authoritarian style of leadership commonly practiced then and as it is today. In 1964 Greenleaf founded the Center for Applied Ethics and started writing on the subject of "servant leadreship".
In the essay The Servant as Leader Greenleaf writes, "The servant-leader is servant first… It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. That person is sharply different from one who is leader first, perhaps because of the need to assuage an unusual power drive or to acquire material possessions…The leader-first and the servant-first are two extreme types. Between them there are shadings and blends that are part of the infinite variety of human nature."
He goes on to write...
"The difference manifests itself in the care taken by the servant-first to make sure that other people’s highest priority needs are being served. The best test, and difficult to administer, 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?"
Imagine a world where these ideals were the hallmark of good leadership practice. What does that community look like? What do our insitutions and organizations look like under this model? These are worthy questions of a community of leaders striving to make the world a better place.
This brings me back to the beginning of this post. Those students who chose not to do anything else over their spring break other than to drive in crowded vans to Portland, New Orleans, Kansas City, Pittsboro, NC, Beardsfork, WV, or fly to the Dominican Republic to make the world a better place. This is our community of leaders!!
This model of leadership would certainly change a lot of "institutions" that have stagnated - schools and government to name but two. I appreciated the second part of the quote of Greenleaf's article in regard to "measuring" the effects of servant leadership. Ayn Rand once suggested that making altruism the highest of ideals assumes the creation of a permanent population of "needy" people; but if we can have as an ideal helping people to become more autonomous, or helping others to help themselves, then servant leadership is a model whose time is way overdue. Congratulations to the UW-RF students who choose to become a part of this activity!
ReplyDeleteThis is great Paul! I am really loving your blog!
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