Servan-Leader: The Power of Positive Words

A leader, in general, has a great deal of power within their hands. They can influence those who follow them so easily sometimes, and just as easy influence those who may only be on the outside of their group they lead.

It's important that a Servant-Leader strive to speak the truth with compassion. Without such, we will find ourselves no longer the servant we should be. We must use words to lift up others, make them better than they are. Through positive reinforcement, we build self-confidence in others, and make them stronger team members, and push them further towards being better leaders themselves.

The greatest accomplishment that a Servant-Leader can reach for, is to create a Legacy of Leadership. They groom someone to replace themselves, and set them up to create even bigger success than they have achieved. Imagine, if you will, how successful a group, team or company is, and what it says when they say, "Hey, isn't that the team where we got all those good group-leaders from that Bobby-Joe put together?"

It really wasn't that Bobby-Joe did something more magical than encourage and build people of quality who were confident to lead others. That, is truly a Legacy of Leadership.

Remember to never dress down someone in public, but always give praise for things well done in the public forum. Corrections are always done gently, in private. By doing this, you create more trust with your team. They know if there's a mistake, you're not going to broadcast it as an example to others, but you will help them correct it in a way they will learn from it, and not feel as though they're being beaten with a verbal whip.

Always work to use a calm and steady tone with others, even when you want to raise your voice. This goes a long way to help keep arguments from cropping up. It's just hard to argue with someone who won't keep pace with the level of your voice. More than that, it gives you the opportunity to defuse things before they blow up. Besides, it will give you the chance to offer up alternative suggestions, and help you to steer the conversation to less turbulent waters so meetings don't become unproductive.

By using Positive Words in the way we speak, we build others up. We reinforce their self-esteem, we make them stronger and better and more focused team members. And when we use Positive Words as a matter of course, they become our Culture. If that's the way we do things, it becomes ingraned in us and we carry it out beyond our team, to everything we touch. When we do things the "right" way, people take note, and want to know why we're ...just a little different.

It's good to be different that way.

Servant-Leader: Humility

The place of a servant-leader is one of humility. Without it, we often find that we're going to get our priorities in the wrong order. Maybe not at first, but if we're not mindful, we'll find that we're not really where we should be.

C.S. Lewis indicated that the first step in acquiring humility is to realize that we are proud, "If you think you are not conceited, it means you are very conceited indeed."

Harry Joiner wrote, "Humility involves dying to oneself -- Sacrificing oneself to a higher good or yielding to legitimate authority. Quite often it means doing what you don't want to do. sometimes it means going down with the ship so that others may live. And always, it means killing the egotistical, self-centered person inside all of us who wants to be comforted, petted and admired. Humility is a Godly thing."

Some suggestions for practicing humility in the workplace:

• When you're in a contest of will with another person, just stop talking and let the other person be in the limelight.
• Ask others how you are doing. It takes humility to ask the question, and even more to consider the answer.
• Share credit for success with others. By doing this, you set an example of humility that inspires others to follow suit.

Here are some ways that a servant-leader can communicate humility in their organization:

• Invite feedback. Prepare your employees so they won't just tell you what you want to hear. Leaders must make it safe for their people to offer criticism as well as advice.
• Encourage dissent. Accepting dissent is a lesson in humility, you will also get other points of view, which are valuable.
• Turn mistakes into lessons. Don't cover up mistakes in order to look good, admit them. Publicize them as a way to learn from them. It takes humility to admit a mistake, and you can turn that into a success if you learn from it.
• Expect humility in others. If you show humility, you can ask and expect others on your time to do the same.

The dictionary reveals humility such as "the quality or state of being humble"; and humble is defined as "not proud or haughty, not arrogant or assertive, unpretentious, modest, or low in rank." Humble and humility are both derived from the Latin word humus, meaning "earth," a reminder that humility can be fertile soil for a fruitful life.

A humble servant-leader, will bear fruit.

Helping Others..

I like to listen to the Dave Ramsey podcast every day.

Yesterday, Dave spoke with an older, retired woman whose husband had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's seven years previously. They ran up credit card debt doing things together while she felt they still could. She's on a fixed income now, he's in a nursing home on Medicaid, which has put a lien on her house. She can still live there, but can't sell it, and when she passes away, Medicaid gets it to defray the cost of taking care of her husband.

Dave spent a good deal of time talking to her. He told her the truth in love. She's in a tight spot, no doubt. Much more month left at the end of the money for her bills than she could do anything with. And there simply aren't things she can do any more, the rest of her life. It doesn't make her a bad person, because she's not. It just means she needs a guide to walk the rest of this race.

What I think I like most about the way Dave works is that he's not afraid to tell you the truth, in love. And more than that, he's not afraid to help you find a solution that's rooted in keeping it simply and straightforward. In this case, he told her he was going to provide a counselor in her area to help hold her hand through this, free of charge. Why? Certainly he could afford to give it away, absolutely. But more than that, compassion is part of the culture he surrounds himself with. His organization seeks justice, loves mercy, and embraces compassion.

When things become all about me, me, me...we become dull, dull, dull. It's far more important to elevate others, to focus on things external, and when we look outward and put our energies into those things, we can't be drained by internal struggles, stress and strife. By lifting others up, we often will find that they reach down and pull us up with them.

A servant-leader is just that, first a servant, then a leader. They do not lead with an iron rod, or a sharp tongue, but in a humble way. A servant-leader knows that if no one follows them because they want to follow them, then they aren't truly a leader at all...just a boss.