they're much more real

The locomotive engineer... the farmer who is out pitting himself against the weather and against the... bugs and everything else all the time - to me they're much more real than the guy who makes the money and sits in the office... I find myself more sympathetic to them. I always have.... I suppose it's also because I can't imagine anything duller than sitting in an office all day long.

David Plowden

as quoted in Brave Companions: Portraits in History by David McCullough. Simon and Schuster, 1992. p. 185

hear his story

We have to be careful to always remember the first reason we listen. In the midst of serving others—especially if our daily work is in a service industry—it’s very easy to get caught up in listening only for the details of another’s needs. After all, we do have to meet people’s needs in order to serve them well. But there is another layer—a deeper layer—to listening, and it’s ultimately what sets apart those who serve by meeting expectations and those who serve by exceeding expectations.

That deeper layer is listening to understand a person’s story. At Chick-fil-A we like to say that when we know a person’s story, we can serve them personally. We believe it wholeheartedly. Consider how we ourselves feel when others take time to do more than transactional listening. We would probably say we felt as though the person really cared about getting to know us. However we translate that special feeling that occurs when others take the time to deeply listen to us, the bottom line is that a deeper connection happens, and a truer sense of meaningfulness ensues. This is the reason the Earl of Chesterfield, Philip Stanhope, said, “Many a man would rather you heard his story than granted his request.”

Listening is more than a means to an end. At its best, listening is the commencement or continuation of a deeper relationship.


Dan T. Cathy

"The Deeper Reason We Listen" Cathy Family Blog. 4/6/2016

living on the frontier

There is another group of people whom Francis admires, and this one has nothing to do with social stratification such as marital status or sexual preference. These are special people who go beyond the call of duty, day in and day out, because they live on what Francis has described as the “frontier.”

Here, Bergoglio uses a very personal example to explain the term: “The frontiers are many. Let us think of the religious sisters living in hospitals. They live on the frontier. I am alive because of one of them. When I went through my lung disease at the hospital, the doctor gave me penicillin and streptomycin in certain doses. The sister who was on duty tripled my doses because she was daringly astute; she knew what to do because she was with ill people all day. The doctor, who really was a good one, lived in his laboratory. The sister lived on the frontier and was in dialogue with it every day.” You can’t lead from the back, Francis is saying. You have to lead from the front, where the struggle doesn’t end just because the leader has left. So he lives on the frontier himself….

Although frontier – or new frontier – were popular words and phrases for John F. Kennedy when he campaigned for president, Francis has a slightly different meaning for the word today. In American parlance, he means pushing the envelope by doing courageous things on the front lines. Don’t be afraid to push yourself beyond limits that are self-imposed or placed on you by society or convention…

Jeffrey A. Krames

Lead with Humility: 12 Leadership Lessons from Pope Francis. 2014

TWIST

Tesco has a unique program that requires all its front office executives and the managers in departments such as distribution to work more traditional store jobs for a full week every year. The program is dubbed TWIST, for “Tesco Week in Store Together.” From Tesco: “TWIST reinforces our values and aims to improve knowledge-sharing throughout the company…. IT covers all aspects of store operations, from the back door to the shop floor working as a Customer Assistant, including: receiving deliveries, working in the warehouse, filling, working on checkouts and the Customer Service Desk and this year completing a nightshift.”

TWIST is only a part of what helped Tesco grow to become the largest retailer in Europe. However, this is the type of program that brings people at the top of an organization closer to those who get the real work done and, more important, closer to customers. 

Jeffrey A. Krames

Lead with Humility: 12 Leadership Lessons from Pope Francis. 2014

between the known and the unknown

Invention… is an active process that results from the decisions we make; to change the world, we must bring new things into being. But how do we go about creating the unmade future? I believe that all we can do is foster the optimal conditions in which it – whatever “it” is – can emerge and flourish. This is where real confidence comes in. Not the confidence that we know exactly what to do at all times but the confidence that, together, we will figure it out. 

That uncertainty can make us uncomfortable. We humans like to know where we are headed, but creativity demands that we travel paths that lead to who-knows-where. That requires us to step up to the boundary of what we know and what we don’t know. While we all have the potential to be creative, some people hang back, while others forge ahead. What are the tools they use that lead them toward the new? Those with superior talent and the ability to marshal the energies of others have learned from experience that there is a sweet spot between the known and the unknown where originality happens; the key is to be able to linger there without panicking. And that, according to the people who make films at Pixar and Disney Animation, means developing a mental model that sustains you. It might sound silly or woo-woo, this kind of visualization, but I believe it’s crucial. Sometimes – especially at the beginning of a daunting project – our mental models are all we’ve got. 

For example, one of our producers, John Walker, stays calm by imagining his very taxing job as holding a giant upside-down pyramid in his palm by its pointy tip. “I’m always looking up, trying to balance it,” he says. “Are there too many people on this side or that side? In my job, I do two things, fundamentally: artist management and cost control. Both depend on hundreds of interactions that are happening above me, up in the fat end of the pyramid. And I have to be okay with the fact that I don’t understand a freaking thing that’s going on half the time – and that that is the magic. The trick, always, is keeping the pyramid in balance.”

Ed Catmull

Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration. Random House 2014.

allow more people to solve problems

There is a crucial yet hard-to-understand concept here. Most people grasp the need to set priorities; they put the biggest problems at the top, with smaller problems beneath them. There are simply too many small problems to consider them all. So they draw a horizontal line beneath which they will not tread, directing all their energies to those above the line. I believe there is another approach: If we allow more people to solve problems without permission, and if we tolerate (and don’t vilify) their mistakes, then we enable a much larger set of problems to be addressed. When a random problem pops up in this scenario it causes no panic because the threat of failure has been defanged. The individual and the organization responds with its best thinking because the organization is not frozen with fear – waiting for approval. Mistakes will still be made – but in my experience they are fewer and farther between – and they are caught at an earlier stage. 

Ed Catmull

Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration. Random House 2014.

make room for what they do not know

I believe the best managers acknowledge and make room for what they do not know – not just because humility is a virtue but because until one adopts that mindset, the most striking breakthroughs cannot occur. I believe that managers must loosen the controls, not tighten them. They must accept risk; they must trust the people they work with and strive to clear the path for them; and always, they must pay attention to and engage with anything that creates fear. Moreover, successful leaders embrace the reality that their models may be wrong or incomplete. Only when we admit what we don’t know can we ever hope to learn it.

Ed Catmull

Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration. Random House 2014.

the true test of a servant leader

The true test of a servant leader is this: Do those around the servant leader become wiser, freer, more autonomous, healthier, and better able themselves to become servant leaders?


Robert Greenleaf
As quoted in Ken Blanchard. Leading at a Higher Level. 2010

self-serving leaders

Self-serving leaders give themselves away in two ways. The first is how they receive feedback. Have you ever tried to give feedback to someone up the hierarchy, and that person killed the messenger? If that has ever occurred, you were dealing with a self-serving leader. They hate feedback. Why? Because if you give them any negative feedback, they think you don’t want them to lead anymore. And that’s their worst nightmare, because they are their position. The second giveaway for self-serving leaders is their unwillingness to develop other leaders around them. They fear the potential competition for their leadership position.

Ken Blanchard

Leading at a Higher Level. 2010

Photo by rafa espada

turning the hierarchy upside down

The traditional hierarchy is good for the visionary aspect of leadership. People look to the leader for vision and direction, and although a leader should involve experienced people in shaping direction, the ultimate responsibility remains with the leader and cannot be delegated to others.

However, the implantation role – living according to the vision – is where most leaders and organizations get into trouble. The traditional hierarchy too often is kept alive and well, leaving the customers neglected at the bottom. All the energy in the organization moves up the hierarchy as workers try to please and be responsive to their bosses. The authoritarian structure too often forces the front-line people, the customer contact people, to say frustrating things like, “It’s our policy,” “I just work here,” or “Do you want to talk to the supervisor?” In this environment, self-serving leaders assume “the sheep are there for the benefit of the shepherd.” All the energy in the organization flows up the hierarchy.

Effective implementation requires turning the hierarchy upside down so the customer contact people are at the top of the organization and are able to respond to customers, while leaders serve the needs of employees, helping them to accomplish the vision and direction of the organization.

Ken Blanchard & Phil Hodges

The Servant Leader: Transforming You Heart, Head, Hands & Habits. 2003. J.Countryman.

the reluctant leader

To my way of thinking, part of the servant leader mentality is that of the reluctant leader. The reluctant leader is a person who assumes a leadership role only when necessary or when it seems to be the most logical serving choice. The reluctant leader takes action and leads when to do otherwise would be self-serving. There are indeed times and situations where it would seem easier to remain silent and withdrawn. Those are the moments when the reluctant leader makes the decision to rise up.

Dr. W. Kevin Barksdale

Dean, Professor of Management, Ken Blanchard College of Business. 2010.

freshest-looking tulips

Connecticut’s Trader Joe’s Grocery exceeds expectations by making sure the customer gets the best of what he wants. One of the HPO SCORES researchers, Fay Kandarian, had an experience with this when she bought red tulips to the checkout line. The associate checked the tulips before ringing them up and suggested looking for a fresher bunch. Together they went to look at other tulips, and after checking for color preference, the associate picked out the freshest-looking tulips, which were pink and white. After ringing up the new tulips, the associate said, “Since I need to throw away these red tulips, I’ll give them to you to enjoy for the few days they will last.” This is another example of how high performing organizations encourage those who touch the customer to create the best possible customer experience and act on their ideas.

Ken Blanchard

Leading at a Higher Level: Blanchard on Leadership and Creating High Performing Organizations (Revised and Expanded Edition). FT Press, 2009. p.34,35

making someone else more happy

The longer I live and the more experience I have of the world, the more I am convinced that, after all, the one thing that is most worth living for—and dying for, if need be—is the opportunity of making someone else more happy and more useful.

Booker T. Washington

Up from Slavery: An Autobiography. Doubleday, Page & Company, 1907

As quoted in "The Wisdom of Booker T. Washington." by Michael McKinney. Leading Blog. 2/14/2011

how to build trust

So how can you do this? It requires a few qualities.

• You’re willing to get experience doing the work of your team. This doesn’t mean giving rousing speeches, putting out strongly worded press releases, or releasing polished promotional videos. This means you actually spend time with the people doing the work.
• You honor those people by listening and responding in earnest.

When I was at Medtronic, I gowned up and saw between 700 and 1,000 procedures. I’d put on the scrubs, met with the doctor, and watched an open-heart surgery, a brain surgery, or a pacemaker implant. And that’s how I learned the business.

When I was on the board of Target Corporation, the former CEO, Bob Ulrich, explained how he walked about 14 store floors a week. He didn’t tell them he was coming. He just put on a sweatshirt, walk around, and watch the store run.

And take Dan Vasella at Novartis. He’d be down in the labs all the time with the researchers asking, “What are you working on? What are the barriers?”

Instead of being the invisible entity who spends his or her time at black tie CEO events in DC, this is a leader who delves into the real day-to-day functions of the business. And that’s the type of leader who builds trust.

To maintain that trust, you need care about your team, want to be out there with them, and love the business. You really do have to love it! I can’t stress that enough. If you don’t love it, don’t do it.

Daniel Goleman

How Leaders Build Trust. Linkedin Pulse. 8/9/2015

that seem less than leaderish

Servant leaders also often do things that seem less than leaderish. Wolfskehl, for example, would clear the snow from employees' cars on wintry days. Other proponents step in for absent staff rather than expecting others to shoulder the burden. At the Ward Group, a $34 million advertising agency in Dallas, founder and CEO Shirley Ward filled a vacant media buyer position for several weeks; she and her son Rob Enright, the agency's president, have been known to man phones in the reception area to give a secretary a break. Similarly, Chris McKee, managing partner of Venturity, a $2 million accounting outsourcing firm in Dallas, has been performing some of the duties of an assistant controller who has been on extended sick leave. Although McKee has 25 employees he can call on, "I don't want the weight of the world on their shoulders during difficult times," he says. 

Leigh Buchanan

In Praise of Selflessness: Why the best leaders are servants. Inc. magazine. May 1, 2007. 

socialized to think about success

Ari Weinzweig and Paul Saginaw understand the challenges [of Servant Leadership] better than most. The co-founders of Zingerman's Community of Businesses have built their $30 million food, restaurant, and training company on servant leadership principles. In the process, they've wrestled with three paradoxes. First, the higher you rise, the harder you must work for others; no kicking back in the Barcalounger of success allowed. Second, although you hold formal authority over employees, you must treat them like customers and, when reasonable, do their bidding. Third, when your desires and the needs of your organization conflict, your desires draw the low card. "It's a big change from the way we're socialized to think about success," says Weinzweig. "When you've put so much energy into getting to a leadership position, this is hard." 

Leigh Buchanan

In Praise of Selflessness: Why the best leaders are servants. Inc. magazine. May 1, 2007.

leading at a higher level... is a process

Leading at a higher level… is a process. We define it as the process of achieving worthwhile results while acting with respect, care, and fairness for the well-being of all involved. When that occurs, self-serving leadership is not possible.


Ken Blanchard
Leading at a Higher Level: Blanchard on Leadership and Creating High Performing Organizations (Revised and Expanded Edition). FT Press, 2009. p.xvii, xviii

willing to sacrifice

[Simon] Sinek mentions Captain William Swenson, who was awarded the congressional Medal of Honor in 2013. When his column came under ambush in Afghanistan, Swenson ran into live fire to rescue the wounded officers. Someone captured the entire experience on camera, including the moment when Swenson bent over to kiss a wounded soldier before putting him in a helicopter.

At first, Sinek thought altruistic people like Swenson were simply drawn to military service. Then he realized it works the other way around — the military environment can prompt anyone to act selflessly.

Unfortunately, this is hardly the current environment in most organizations.

“In the military, they give medals to people who are willing to sacrifice themselves so that others may gain. In business, we give bonuses to people who are willing to sacrifice others so that we may gain. We have it backwards,” he quips.

But moving ahead at the expense of others teaches your subordinates to do the same, to the detriment of the organization as a whole. That’s because employees spend time competing with and fearing each other instead of joining forces and protecting the company from external threats.

A truly effective leader knows to put her employees’ well-being before her own, so that her employees ultimately do the same for her and for the organization. 

“When a leader makes the choice to put the safety and lives of the people inside the organization first, to sacrifice their comforts and sacrifice the tangible results, so that the people remain and feel safe and feel like they belong, remarkable things happen,” Sinek says.

Shana Lebowitz

"Why effective managers act like military leaders." Business Insider. 8/14/2015