Leaders explore mandate to embrace Servant Leadership for Vision San Diego

Servant Leadership Institute hosted a workshop on “Transforming Your Community as a Person of Influence”. The purpose of the leadership experience was to help leaders lead at a higher level.

We were inspired by the responses from the various members of the group. It reminds me that there is a deep hunger for the right kind of leadership in our society regardless of vocational domain.

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Tony Baron interviewed on The Mark Larson Show

Listen here to Monday’s broadcast with Tony Baron  on the Mark Larson Show here in San Diego (KCBQ-1210) discussing Servant Leadership and our 2012 Winter Conference!

“If ever there was a time for Servant Leadership, the time is now”–Mark Larson

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The Case for Servant Leadership

No wonder we live in a world that mistrusts leaders and their institutions.  Recent news reports have revealed scandals atPennStateUniversity, insider stock information benefiting certain members of Congress, and another church scam related to money and sex.  Unfortunately, no sector seems to be exempt from the misuse of power and the abuse of leaders.

Leadership is in crisis, especially as our world becomes both more complex and much smaller.  Of course, transparency will help leaders build trust, but it will not solve the increasing gap between principle and practice unless a major paradigm shift takes place.  Leaders, both corporate and church, are finding the need to sharpen their skill sets and seek greater depth in their character to inspire, equip, and encourage cynical followers.

Blind faith in leaders no longer works; perhaps it never did.  The world is looking for leaders who serve first, then lead. But that kind of leader means a change in attitude, habits, and behaviors.  This “serve first mentality” has already been adopted by Southwest Airlines, Datron World Communications, WD-40, and Chick-fil-A with amazing results culturally and financially.  This “serve first mentality” has been proclaimed by noted authors and business consultants like Ken Blanchard, John Maxwell, and Kevin and Jackie Freiberg.  This “serve first mentality” has been successfully demonstrated by CEOs like Ken Melrose, Garry Ridge, Art Barter, and Jack Lowe.  This “serve first mentality” has been part of the spiritual journey of my friends in the church, including Mark Foreman, Dallas Willard, Todd Hunter, and Steve Matson, for nearly their entire pastoral lives.

As an AT&T executive, Robert Greenleaf coined the phrase “servant leadership” in 1968, but this model of leadership has been demonstrated through the ages by leaders like Moses, Daniel, Paul, and our own Lord and Savior Jesus Christ  (Mark 10:45).  Even those not of the Judeo-Christian heritage, like Pittacus of Mytilene, who lived five centuries before Christ, demonstrated the importance of being a servant first, then a leader.

Servant Leadership has been successful throughout the ages because it works!  Working with international and national communities, corporations, and churches for nearly thirty years now, I have seen it change the working environment from fear to trust, task completion to task enhancement, and transform positional authority into personhood authority, inspiring people to actually want to follow.

Servant Leadership is a method of stewardship that maximizes profits, people, and the planet in order to make a positive and sustaining difference in the world.  If you want to develop your skills as a servant leader, I encourage you to attend the Servant Leadership Institute (SLI) 2012 Winter Conference, January 31-February 2, featuring John Maxwell, Leonard Sweet, Garry Ridge, and organizations like Southwest Airlines, Solutions for Change, WD-40, Kiwanis, and the San Diego Business Journal.  At the SLI Winter Conference, you will learn the principles and practices of Servant Leadership that will help transform you and the community you

By the way, if it was a good enough leadership style for Jesus, it certainly should be good enough for us.  After all, in the midst of oppressive Roman power and without any positional power within the Church, the early Church grew 40 percent per decade for the first 300 years. Leaders, both enslaved and free, faithfully learned to serve first others in love, and then to lead others in hope.  With that kind of leadership, the world can be changed!

Dr. Tony Baron

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Sleepless in Seattle

This past week I had the privilege to see the inner sanctum of three major organizations in the Emerald City of Seattle that are known world-wide.  I entered the “geek” capital of the world when I visited the Microsoft Corporation, and what I saw blew my mind.

[Microsoft headquarters]

 I was not in the same line with them when God passed out our brains.  Wow!  Of course, I didn’t understand the entire “tech rap” that was taking place.  All I know is that they are continually innovating and creating new technologies that will help change the world for the better.

One such gadget is a pair of glasses that actually translates for you visually when you are in a foreign country hearing someone speaking a different language.  You can now actually communicate without Rosetta Stone!

[Kevin Turner]

But I was most impressed with their Chief Operating Officer Kevin Turner.  He is a clear-cut, hands-down servant-leader bent on continuous improvement for self, others, and the world.  Over the next few blogs I will share some of his thoughts on leadership.

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Leaders beyond Power

His military coup in 1969 made his followers call him “king of kings in Africa.” His demise was cheered today by euphoric Libyans as many of them yelled that “the mad dog of the Middle East is dead.” The historic streets of Tripoli were filled with celebratory car horns and gunfire while other Libyans hugged and danced in the streets. Moammar Gadhafi’s death will certainly change the way Libyans live. The transitional Prime Minister, Mahmoud Jibril, proclaimed that “This is a time to start a new Libya, with a new economy, with a new education and with a new health system–with one future.”

I hope so. Power has a way of changing people into different channels of leadership. One such channel of utilizing power is resorting only to positional authority and enforcing that authority with threats and dehumanizing actions. Moammar Gadhafi or Saddam Hussein serve as the extreme political examples of using power in ways that destroy lives, create fear, and turn people into voiceless tools of selfish gain. To a lesser degree, the best positional power has to offer, even to a person of integrity, is simply the right to be followed by others because of one’s title. Control, in this channel, is best regulated by rules, policies, and organizational charts. As John Maxwell says in his book, The Five Levels of Leadership, “people follow because they have to.”

The greatest channel in utilizing power correctly is based on moral authority. This kind of leadership is rare in politics and the business world, but it does exist. One of the seven sages of Greece, Pittacus, led with moral authority. Today, 2,400 hundred years removed from Pittacus, Dan Cathy of Chick-fil-A and Colleen Barrett of Southwest Airlines influence their corporate teams in order make a difference in the world through moral authority. This kind of leadership may have positional authority, but people respond to these business leaders because of the kind of people they are, in public and in private. People with moral authority inspire, equip, and encourage others to dream beyond themselves in order to make this world a better place. They live by the motto “service above self” without becoming doormats. They seek lasting change, create authentic relationships, preserve with an non-anxious presence, inspire personal responsibility, invest in motivated people, and live to the applause of a higher authority than just stockholders.

All power eventually dissipates for the individual in charge. It always has, it always will. Ask Nebuchadnezzar of ancient Babylon or the modern Babylon dictator Saddam Hussein – wait, you no longer can. They are people who are both dead and without power. Positional power usually ends self-destructively while the power surrounding moral authority can last for decades, even centuries, beyond the leader’s life.

This channel of leadership is transformational for people, companies, and countries. This kind of leadership is called “servant leadership.”

Dr. Tony Baron
President, Servant Leadership Institute

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