“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.
“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?“
A servant-leader focuses primarily on the growth and well-being of people and the communities to which they belong. While traditional leadership generally involves the accumulation and exercise of power by one at the “top of the pyramid,” servant leadership is different. The servant-leader shares power, puts the needs of others first and helps people develop and perform as highly as possible.
The Cebrity Pastor Factory
There is an Evangelical Industrial Complex that helps create and relies upon celebrity leaders. Have you ever wondered why you don’t see pastors from small or medium sized churches on the main stage at big conferences? Or why most of the best-selling Christian authors are megachurch leaders?
Here’s the answer we like to believe:
The most godly, intelligent, and gifted leaders naturally attract large followings, so they naturally are going to have large churches, and their ideas are so great and their writing so sharp that publishers pick their book proposals, and the books strike a nerve with so many people that they naturally become best-sellers, and these leaders become the obvious choice to speak at the biggest conferences. As a result they ascend to celebrity status.
.. In the place of a church hierarchy we’ve built the Evangelical Industrial Complex where we expect publishers, conference directors, and radio producers to be the gatekeepers. We trust them to filter out the immature, ungodly leaders, and for many years the managers of the EIC were willing to serve this function. Those days are over. Chaos in the publishing world has put incredible pressure on the EIC to sell books and fill conferences profitably. Managers within the Evangelical Industrial Complex are remembering that they were not appointed to shepherd us, but to sell to us. Those who had functioned as evangelicalism’s bishops for decades have taken off their vestments to reveal their business suits once again.
Lars Dalgaard: Build Trust by Daring to Show That You’re Human
I created an education course on weekends, six weeks before the college’s big exam, which a lot of students were failing. My program was very hard, like boot camp, but I was able to charge so much that I could pay the best teachers enough to get them to teach the course. It was an insane model.
The dean was angry with me and said, “What are you doing here?” I said, “Who’s got the problem? People aren’t passing your tests and graduating. So if you fix the school, there won’t be any demand for my product.” I was unapologetic about it.
.. I think it’s because we’ve been brought up thinking that when you’re in a business role, if you show any emotion, then that’s the opposite of being tough.
The funny thing is that you’re actually a stronger leader and more trustworthy if you’re able to be vulnerable and you’re able to show your real personality. It’s a trust multiplier, and people really will want to work for you and be on a mission together with you.
.. One of the rules was about email — no blind copying. And if someone emailed me complaining about a colleague, I would add the person they were complaining about to the email string and say something like, “Hi, Kim, it looks like Carl has something to talk to you about. I really look forward to you guys meeting and figuring this one out.” That sends a powerful message.
.. One question I ask about 10 minutes into the interview, after we’ve created some trust, is “What did you learn from your mom?” It’s an incredibly powerful question. And then I’ll ask them about their father.
The Problem of Too Much Talent
Many wondered what would happen when the team needed a single player to take a game-winning shot in the absence of a clear hierarchy.
The concerns that Miami lacked a clear hierarchy turned out to be well-founded. In late-game situations, the Heat’s execution and coordination was disastrous.
.. Intrigued by this idea, we set out to analyze 10 years of NBA performance with Roderick Swaab of the business school INSEAD. Our analysis revealed exactly what we saw with the Miami Heat: At a certain point, adding more top talent caused teams’ winning percentages to go down rather than up. These teams simply had too much talent.
.. It turns out that for basketball teams, steeper hierarchies lead to better performance. Why? Teams with a clear pecking order passed the ball more effectively. They had more assists, and as a result, players made more of their shots... The United States Olympic basketball committee recently came to appreciate the problem of too much talent... In order to maximize egg production, sellers selectively breed the chickens who lay the most eggs. But something goes terribly wrong when you place a high number of the best egg-producing chickens in one colony: Total cage-wide production plummets. And, even worse, chicken deaths skyrocket. Why? Because, the best egg producers also happen to be the most competitive birds, and when they are brought together, they begin fighting over food, space, and territory. They peck each other to death... If your ring finger is considerably longer than your index finger, you were exposed to greater levels of testosterone back in your mom’s womb. If your two fingers are similar in length, it indicates that you were exposed to less testosterone in utero.It may seem ridiculous to use finger length to determine anything about a person’s behavior, but our work with Richard Ronay of VU University shows that high levels of prenatal testosterone exposure makes people sensitive to threats to their place on the hierarchical ladder. High-testosterone people, in other words, are more likely to feel disrespected... But sometimes more talent is better. Consider baseball... hierarchy is most useful in situations where coordination is the key to success; thus, the key to whether or not you can have “too much talent” hinges on how much the group performance requires coordination between the team’s members... Bill Simmons referred to baseball as “an individual sport masquerading as a team sport.”