Save the Chicken!

If you have attended many dinner events, you know that the standard meat in the meal is chicken.  The chicken is usually served one of four ways: fried, grilled, baked, or barbeque, with or without sauce, with sides of vegetables and some type of potatoes or rice.  You scan the various fast food restaurants and chicken is on the menu.  You even have a Colonel selling chicken, a filly-fill of chicken, and the tastiest, in my opinion, fried chicken from Popeye’s Louisiana Kitchen.  It just dawned on me that “chicken” should be on the most endangered species list, but I can’t find it anywhere!

            Recently I was asked to be a keynote speaker at the 40^th anniversary of Popeye’s Louisiana Kitchen Conference in New Orleans.  Apparently they didn’t have my concern that chickens may become extinct.  In fact, business is really good! They are growing by leaps and bounds.  Not only are they increasing in their growth (already $2 billion plus with locations in 20 countries) but they have decided that they need to grow deeper by investing in the future.

Dr. Tony Baron, Servant Leadership Institute & Cheryl Bachelder, Popeyes® Louisiana Kitchen

            Cheryl Bachelder, CEO, is committed in leading this organization further and deeper by investing in their current and future employees through educational programs and teaching everyone, including the many franchised owners, about Servant Leadership. I applaud Cheryl and the 1,100 attendees at the Conference who believe leaders who wish to maximize people, profit, and planet must serve first for the sake of others than for themselves.  That is the core of servant leadership.

By Tony Baron, PhD
President, Servant Leadership Institute

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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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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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