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Excerpts |
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“This book is a must read…”
-Ken Blanchard |
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Excerpt from Seven Pillars PREFACE
“As many small trickles of water feed the mightiest of rivers, the growing number of individuals and organizations practicing Servant Leadership has increased into a torrent, one that carries with it a deep current of meaning and passion.” —Larry Spears
A Quiet Revolution People who are new to Servant Leadership may wonder what the fuss is all about. What distinguishes it from all other leadership philosophies? What is it about its foundational principles that has inspired so many? Why is it so often described as “transformative?” Simply put, it is the leader’s commitment to serving others that matters most of all. According to Greenleaf: “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.” For several decades, Robert Greenleaf’s concepts have inspired a quiet revolution. It has now become noisy. The topic speaks to a deep longing for a way of being and acting in the world that reflects inner truths. Through the years, thousands of people whom Greenleaf referred to as “seekers” have had an “Aha!” experience when they encountered this idea—a shock of recognition, a realization that what Stephen Covey calls a natural, universal “force of nature,” was hidden in plain sight all along. But what then? Where does one find the path to becoming a Servant-Leader and what are the steps to travel it? Greenleaf did not provide a universal checklist or a formula for becoming a Servant-Leader. He wanted each person and organization to apply the principles and values in ways that made sense to them. Nevertheless, Greenleaf did believe that certain core skills of Servant Leadership could be taught, developed, and measured. His work was both conceptual and concrete, idealistic and pragmatic. Greenleaf’s strategy fit his personality and the zeitgeist of the 1970s. Yet, while times have changed, the truths he tapped into have not. Mountains of leadership research since his death confirm his key insights, and a global Servant Leadership movement is afoot, creating a groundswell of interest in developing step-by-step, actionable and measurable competencies for becoming a Servant-Leader. That is why we wrote this book. |
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Click on the list below for Additional Excerpts |
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Seven Pillars of Servant Leadership |
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Practicing the Wisdom of Leading by Serving |
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Excerpt from Seven Pillars INTRODUCTION
Servant Leadership is Great Business When Jim Collins and his research team searched for a term to describe the exemplary performance of the leaders behind the “great” companies profiled in the book, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t, “Servant-Leader” was a serious contender. Some members of the team, however, “violently objected” to its connotations of “servitude” and “weakness.” Apparently, “Level 5 Leader” sounded safer, less controversial. At first we thought, “How unfortunate—if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, sounds like a duck…” But that was before we conducted our own research into leadership greatness. Our results led us to a startling conclusion, offering relief that Collins and colleagues did not appropriate the name, because servant-led companies are even better than great! We used Collins’s metrics to compare the financial performance of his eleven publicly-traded “good to great” companies with eleven publicly-traded companies that are most frequently cited in the literature as being servant-led. During our ten-year study period ending in 2005, stocks from the five hundred largest public companies averaged a 10.8 percent pre-tax portfolio return. The eleven companies studied by Collins averaged a 17.5 percent return. However, the servant-led companies’ returns averaged 24.2 percent! Bottom line: the servant-led companies produced far superior financial results. To learn more about our research, please turn to Page 2. |
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James Sipe, PhD, LP Don Frick, PhD |