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On Becoming a Servant-Leader
Uplift Your Heart and Increase Your Effectiveness Delve into the personal writings of the grandfather of the modern empowerment movement in business leadership. In this collection of previously unpublished works, eminent writer, consultant, and lecturer Robert Greenleaf shares his personal and professional philosophy, which postulates that true leaders are those who lead by serving others. Spanning a time frame of fifty years, these essays and lectures touch on such key issues as power, ethics, management, organizations, and servanthood. And they offer the reader a wealth of practical suggestions and useful information garnered through the course of a remarkable career.
394 pages, Hardcover
First published April 30, 1996
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
August 14, 2019
This is the third book I have read of Greenleaf's collected writings and I probably enjoyed this one the most. I enjoyed learning more of his personal background which provided valuable context for the development of the ideas about servant leadership and other ideas that are expressed in Greenleaf's other essays. I also really enjoyed his explanation of the role of Seeker and seeing how that relates to what he says about the role of servant leaders and servant institutions. Very interesting and thought provoking reading.
June 7, 2019
I could only read a third of it. It was way too deep and elaborate for my simple brain. I wish I could digest it easily but every 2 in 3 sentences I was not able to get the real meaning.
December 16, 2009
I really love this guy you are sharing with me. I read the beginning of a lecture he gave at Dartmouth called Leadership and the Individual. He definitely believed in aiming to impact the world through whatever you put your hand to. He said the only reason he went to AT&T was that it was the place with the most people he could find and he didn't want to write, preach, research, advocate or legislate ... he wanted to get inside the institution and do something, become influential. He said: "I wasn't really interested in being a businessman--still am not. Although I spent thirty-eight years on a business payroll, I never thought of myself as a businessman." He then tells a story about being out with a client and the president of AT&T. The client said to Greenleaf: "And what is your role in the company?" His reply: "Gee, I don't know, why don't you ask the president! The president gave me a look, turned to his guest, and said, 'He's a kept revolutionary.' I think this sums up my career pretty well." Ha!
I was struck most deeply by his section on Acceptance as one of several leadership strategies (others are Listening, Values, etc):
"A very effective college president said recently, 'An educator may be rejected by his students, and he must not object to this. But he may never, under any circumstances, regardless of what they do, reject a single student.'
We have know this for a long time in the family. For a family to be a family, no one can ever be rejected" ... he goes on to tell of a poem by Robert Frost about the home, with a husband and wife arguing about what the home is ... "The husband gives his view that the home is one place where acceptance is guaranteed, not so much out of love, but out of duty. If one must go home, family members must allow it ... This is the male view. I have come to see it as the symbolic male--hard, rational, uncompromising. The wife gives the symbolic feminine reply--gentle, feeling, accepting. In answer to the question "What is home?" she replies that home is nothing we deserve. Home is like unearned grace; it is simply available, no strings attached.
Some women are hard and uncompromising, and some men are gentle and accepting. What Frost portrays here is the masculine and feminine principle. Because of the vagaries of human nature, the halt, lame, half-made creatures that we all are, the great leader would say what the wife said about 'home.'
The interest and affection that the leader has for his followers--and it is a mark of true greatness when it is genuine--is clearly something that the follower 'haven't to deserve.' I have known some great leaders; it has been my privilege to work for a few. Some, not all, had gruff, demanding, uncompromising exteriors, but deep down, inside all those I think of as great--no exceptions--was a thoroughly feminine aspect, reflected in their unqualified attitude of acceptance of their people. You might get fired if you did not do you job. But as a person, you would never be rejected. Because their followers felt accepted, they tended to perform beyond the limits they had set for themselves. Initially, they may have excelled to please their leader but eventually they did so to please themselves." (On Becoming a Servant Leader, Robert K. Greenleaf, P.309-310)
This strikes me as so true of greatness and of great leaders ...
I was struck most deeply by his section on Acceptance as one of several leadership strategies (others are Listening, Values, etc):
"A very effective college president said recently, 'An educator may be rejected by his students, and he must not object to this. But he may never, under any circumstances, regardless of what they do, reject a single student.'
We have know this for a long time in the family. For a family to be a family, no one can ever be rejected" ... he goes on to tell of a poem by Robert Frost about the home, with a husband and wife arguing about what the home is ... "The husband gives his view that the home is one place where acceptance is guaranteed, not so much out of love, but out of duty. If one must go home, family members must allow it ... This is the male view. I have come to see it as the symbolic male--hard, rational, uncompromising. The wife gives the symbolic feminine reply--gentle, feeling, accepting. In answer to the question "What is home?" she replies that home is nothing we deserve. Home is like unearned grace; it is simply available, no strings attached.
Some women are hard and uncompromising, and some men are gentle and accepting. What Frost portrays here is the masculine and feminine principle. Because of the vagaries of human nature, the halt, lame, half-made creatures that we all are, the great leader would say what the wife said about 'home.'
The interest and affection that the leader has for his followers--and it is a mark of true greatness when it is genuine--is clearly something that the follower 'haven't to deserve.' I have known some great leaders; it has been my privilege to work for a few. Some, not all, had gruff, demanding, uncompromising exteriors, but deep down, inside all those I think of as great--no exceptions--was a thoroughly feminine aspect, reflected in their unqualified attitude of acceptance of their people. You might get fired if you did not do you job. But as a person, you would never be rejected. Because their followers felt accepted, they tended to perform beyond the limits they had set for themselves. Initially, they may have excelled to please their leader but eventually they did so to please themselves." (On Becoming a Servant Leader, Robert K. Greenleaf, P.309-310)
This strikes me as so true of greatness and of great leaders ...
January 29, 2009
"The great opportunity is to discover in one's mature years an unrealized growth potential. Growth, not in terms of external achievement, but in the things that are important in the quiet hours when one is alone with oneself; growth in the capacity for serenity in a world of confusion and conflict, a new kind of inner stamina, a new kind of exportable resource as youthful prowess drops away....The search is the thing...The work exists for the person as much as the person exists for the work."
"Thoughtful people no longer hope for certainty."
"Awareness is awareness. It isn't something one ever turns off....The effort is always to be aware, always to know that something important is going on all of the time."
"The growing-edge people are those who are most open to knowledge and who are living as if the future is now. They are not necessarily the intellectual giants of our time. They are often lonely people and not difficult to know."
"Everyone who would grow in strength....to see oneself and to know who one really is, to judge the attitudes and direction sets that one sees, to know that one is husbanding one's resources - mental, emotional, physical - as the most precious assets. so many people I see about me think they are prudent when they are conserving their property but wasting their lives."
"When pressed, a characteristic response of the anti-intellectual is, "I don't want to know any more about the problem. I only want to know what to do about it."
"Thoughtful people no longer hope for certainty."
"Awareness is awareness. It isn't something one ever turns off....The effort is always to be aware, always to know that something important is going on all of the time."
"The growing-edge people are those who are most open to knowledge and who are living as if the future is now. They are not necessarily the intellectual giants of our time. They are often lonely people and not difficult to know."
"Everyone who would grow in strength....to see oneself and to know who one really is, to judge the attitudes and direction sets that one sees, to know that one is husbanding one's resources - mental, emotional, physical - as the most precious assets. so many people I see about me think they are prudent when they are conserving their property but wasting their lives."
"When pressed, a characteristic response of the anti-intellectual is, "I don't want to know any more about the problem. I only want to know what to do about it."
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February 13, 2013How do you build a business and a career? By focusing on serving others.
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February 11, 2016Jack Welch read this? Maybe, maybe not. With the buzz of "Social Enterprises", and "Carbon Trading", this may be a good to resume this.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews