Service in Leadership
In a world that is moving faster than ever in a global state that is as unstable and as uncertain as ever, leadership holds the key towards the future. Leadership plays such an instrumental role in the way the world is shaped and developed from social, economic, political, etc. perspectives. When I think of leadership, I think of the following goals leaders from all arenas share in common:
Creating an inspiring future to look forward to
Motivating and inspiring the community
Building and serving the team to work towards a communal vision
Whether leadership always accomplishes these goals is up for debate, but I’m sure you can pick out the few good ones from the not so great ones based on your previous experiences. If I asked you to think back to a time you experienced poor leadership and to another time when you experienced exemplary leadership, I’m almost certain that your physicality, emotional state, body movements, etc. would dramatically change from one memory to the other. What constitutes this difference in leadership styles and experiences?
American writer and political commentator Walter Lippmann defines leadership as “the custodians of a nation’s ideals, of the beliefs it cherishes, of its permanent hopes, of the faith which makes a nation out of a mere aggregation of individuals.” Custodians. What an odd way to frame the idea of leadership, no? Meriam-Webster dictionary associates custodians with caretakers, guardians, and keepers. Then, it seems as if a custodian’s role is to look after others to protect their best self interests. Custodians, in short, serve a greater cause.
Lippmann is definitely on to something with the idea of leaders acting in service to a community when you look at the large part of various arenas in the world and see mismanaged leadership styles that are centered around serving and advancing their own agenda and self-interest.
Collective Service Over Self-Interest
Over the course of history, leaders who have served for the collective interest of a group, even when they had their own individual pressing self-interests, have been held in high regard. These types of leaders galvanize their communities to work towards those very three overarching goals I mentioned earlier in the post. You can think back to a host of leaders ranging from Martin Luther King Jr. to justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg for examples of leaders who lived up to those ideals.
When you boil down the characteristics of leadership, you soon come to the conclusion that leadership is a selfless act. No matter how much praise or adulation you receive for your leadership, the high regards truly fall on those with whom you were able to lead, since, without them, nothing would have been accomplished. Leaders have to take into consideration the needs of others in order to put them in positions to succeed individually such that the collective goal can be accomplished, even if that means putting aside the leader’s own personal wishes and desires.
Now you may be shaking your head and telling me that it isn’t that easy or asking how to exactly fully envelop the service mindset for leaders. It’s really as easy as a shift in what we associate with leadership and counting to three.
Leading with a Service-Oriented Mindset
For centuries on end, we’ve often associated leadership with power. Those who are in leadership positions make all the decisions and, therefore, affect the entire community for better or worse. As humans, we naturally crave a sense of power in our lives in order to gain a greater sense of control in our lives that are so uncertain.
The notion of service-based leadership comes with the connotation that you’re just one and the same as everyone else and, thus, have no sense of hierarchy or power. Let me let you in on a little secret here:
You can still retain that power you so desire by exercising that power in service for the common good
We forget that power is just a mere means of influence. That very same idea of power which comes with leadership can be used in such a way that you learn so much more about yourself and life as you don’t know it by serving and tuning in to the common goal.
How can we all become better service-oriented leaders? There is the following three step system rooted in a practice of reflection that can help expand your mind to encompass a greater propensity for service-based living:
Describe
Look around yourself and take stock of what’s going on, the behaviors people are exhibiting, how everyone is feeling, etc. This will require you to be quite intentional in observing your surroundings to better understand the context of the situations and environments you’re in. Attention is one of the scarcest resources of all nowadays, so those who can be more deliberate and focused with their attention can greatly increase their ability for service-based leadership.
Assess
Examine the moment, people, and environment, and ask yourself what can you do better to broaden your world to fully experience the situation. Think internally why you feel uncomfortable, happy, relieved, hesitant, etc. in the midst of the moment, and similarly, do the same for those around you. It will allow you to become more aware of your own self and others to determine root issues that can be addressed more authentically.
Articulate
Last, but not least, it’s a great practice to reflect upon what it is that you’ve learned about yourself, others, and how the world works at large. Take time to analyze how you could take your learning from one context or situation and apply it to another. Often times, it’s best to write these thoughts down so that you physically are reminded of all the growth you’ve been able to experience as a result of describing and assessing your environments more intentionally.
These steps aren’t all encompassing of the journey to becoming better service-oriented leaders. I hope, though, that they will lead, no pun intended, you to expand your mind and propensity for service-based action in the future as we all continually to develop ourselves!
“True leadership must be for the benefit of the followers, not to enrich the leader.” - John C. Maxwell
