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Shannon McNerney

ORGL 530 Servant Leadership

Dr. David T. Houglum

May 11, 2023

Discovering Servant Leadership

A Board & Staff Training Presentation

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WHAT exactly is a Servant-leader?
WHO came up with this anyway?
WHY should we be Servant-leaders?
WHERE & WHEN has it worked?
HOW do we begin?

Questions?

References

An Overview of Servant-Leadership

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Person of Character
Puts People First
Skilled Communicator
Compassionate Collaborator
Has Foresight
Systems Thinker
Leads with Moral Authority

(Sipe & Frick 2015, p. 5)

"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" (Greenleaf 2002, p. 27).

WHAT exactly is a Servant-leader?

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“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?”

(Greenleaf 2002, p. 27)

Robert K. Greenleaf's Test of Servant-leadership

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Robert Greenleaf wrote an essay…

Worked for years at AT&T (management & development)
Consultant for major companies at the time
Founded the Center for Applied Ethics, now the Robert K. Greenleaf Center

Larry Spears

Major thought-leader and servant-leader scholar
Past president and CEO of the Robert K. Greenleaf Center
Started the Larry C. Spears Center for Servant Leadership

"'The Servant as Leader' was written in 1969 out of concern for pervasive student attitudes which then, and now…seemed devoid of hope. Hope, it seems to me, is absolutely essential to both sanity and wholeness of life" (Greenleaf 2002, p. 17).

WHO came up with this anyway?

Robert K. Greenleaf

(1904–1990)

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Listening

Empathy

Healing

Awareness

Persuasion

Conceptualization

Foresight

Stewardship

Commitment to the growth of people

(Mathew 2021, pp. xiii–xv)

Spears 10 Characteristics of a Servant Leader

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It makes for more successful organizations.
It aligns with our mission focus on critical thinking.
It creates community—a sense of belonging for ourselves and everyone we reach.
It creates a culture of dignity and respect that reciprocates and grows.
It supports our value of stewardship of Fishtrap.
It is how we can fix our broken world.

"But if one is servant, either leader or follower, one is always searching, listening, expecting that a better wheel for these times is in the making" (Greenleaf 2002, p. 23)

WHY should we be Servant-leaders?

"Bottom-line, servant-led companies with a strong corporate culture based on a foundation of shared values and principles outperform other companies by a huge margin" (Sipe & Frick 2015, p. 20).
Fishtrap's mission is to promote clear thinking and good writing in and about the West.
"Promoting community involves creating environments where individuals and the collective both flourish—one should not occur at the expense of the other" (Horsman 2018, p. 82). "Its purpose is to nurture human wholeness and human flourishing" (p. 99).
The golden rule: "When we treat ourselves with dignity, we can expect and accept it from others, and if we expect to be treated with dignity by others, then they deserve to be treated with dignity also—even when they do not appear or act worthy of it" (Horsman, p.83).
"The greater one's individual development, the greater the potential influence of a contribution to collective perpetuity" (Horsman, p. 100).
Shann Ray Ferch: "We need a transitional generation: servant-leadership, critical density and critical mass, a tipping point into a new and better way of being together mutually and with greater regard for one another…" (Ferch, et. al. 2015, p. 233).

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"'The law?' I asked curiously. 'What law is that, Leo?'

'The law of service. He who wishes to live long must serve, but he who wishes to rule does not live long.'"

The Journey to the East (Hesse 1956, p. 34)

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Harriet Tubman
Mother Teresa
Martin Luther King
Eleanor Roosevelt
John Woolman
Viktor Frankl
Rich Wandschneider
Kim Stafford
Others? Who do you know?

"The people who have changed the world for the better simply started by noticing a problem and doing something about it"

(Mathew 2021, p. xxix).

WHERE & WHEN

has it worked?

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LISTENING

Seek first to understand,
Listen receptively and genuinely
Listen to yourself
Support each other, provide feedback
Practice silence

"Listening is an attitude, an attitude toward other people and what they're trying to express" (Greenleaf 2002, p. 313).

"Are we really listening? Are we listening to the one with whom we want to communicate? Is our basic attitude…wanting to understand?" (Greenleaf 2002, p. 31)

HOW do we begin?

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“I have a bias about this which suggests that only a true natural servant automatically responds to any problem by listening first. When one is a leader, this disposition causes one to be seen as servant first. This suggests that a non-servant… might become a natural servant through a long arduous discipline of learning to listen, a discipline sufficiently sustained that the automatic response to any problem is to listen first” (Greenleaf 2002, p. 31).

"True listening builds strength in other people."

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Hierarchy: Top-down leadership structure

chief

(Greenleaf 2002, p. 75)

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primus

Primus inter pares – First Among Equals

(Greenleaf 2002, p. 75)

"If the manager works for the employee, as servant leaders do, what is the manager's purpose now? To help their employees accomplish goals, solve problems, and live according to the vision" (Mathew 2021, p. xxviii).

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A man came across three stonecutters engrossed in their work. Curious, he asked them what they were doing.

(Mathew 2021, p. 58)

The first replied, "I'm making a living."

The second kept on hammering while he said, "I'm doing the best job of stonecutting in the entire county."

The third looked up, and with a gleam in his eye, said, "I'm building a cathedral."

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QUESTIONS?

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Ferch, & Ferch, S. R. (Shann R. (2015). Conversations on servant-leadership: insights on human courage in life and work. Suny Press.

Greenleaf, Spears, L. C., Covey, S. R., & Senge, P. M. (2002). Servant leadership : a journey into the nature of legitimate power and greatness (Spears, Ed.; Anniversary edition.). Paulist Press.

Hesse, H., & Rosner, H. (1956). The journey to the east. New York, Picador.

Horsman, J. H. (2018). Servant-leaders in training: Foundations of the philosophy of servant-leadership. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan.

Mathew, P. (2021). Finding Leo: Servant leadership as paradigm, power, and possibility. Wipf and Stock Publishers.

Sipe, J. W., & Frick, D. M. (2015). Seven Pillars of servant leadership: practicing the wisdom of leading by serving. Paulist Press.

All images in this presentation were taken in Wallowa County, Oregon and Hells Canyon .Images are owned by the presenter and used with her permission.

References