Serving Leader Blog

A common myth about leadership is that a leader is responsible to “establish a compelling vision.” This is just not true. Many leaders step into an organization that already has a great vision, and they should not try to prove that they are a leader by cooking up some new vision.

Raise High the Vision

It is the leader’s job to make sure everyone understands why the business exists. Leaders aren’t required to come up with a great vision, but they are required to serve a great vision. Leaders who do not raise high a great purpose are throttling the contributions of the people who work for them. Human beings desire purpose. An organization’s vision must provide a compelling and noble reason for employees to care.

Leaders must raise vision high enough for everyone to have a direct sight line to it. Obviously, this demands that leaders communicate what the vision is—which we call Great Purpose. However, people respond to leaders’ actions more than to their words. Leaders must demonstrate the Great Purpose. This work not only includes communicating the vision to new employees, but also daily actions needed to reinforce the importance of the vision.

Great organizations are successful at getting their people to own the vision. As this happens, employees become more engaged and committed to doing their part to serve the Great Purpose.

Create and Sustain Urgency for the Vision

Too often, a vision statement is just words hung on a plaque in the lobby. To be effective, a Great Purpose must create and sustain urgency. Everyday frustrations demotivate people who don’t understand the value of the work they do. However, those who see the urgency of their work apply creativity and collaboration to overcome problems and to improve continuously.

How does a serving leader introduce a good kind of urgency into everyday work? Not by injecting fear and panic! Many supervisors use carrots and sticks to drive performance. Fear produces a short-lived and frightened commotion; fear does not produce a sustained and fearless concentration. Urgency, in service of greatness, comes from a completely different source.

First, serving leaders use important goals and milestones to help people see the progress being made toward the Great Purpose. The more people can personally track their progress on a daily basis, the better focus they have on the ultimate purpose being served for their customers.

Second, serving leaders focus on the positive. They look to catch people doing the right thing and promptly recognize and reward that behavior. And here’s a key: the best reward for a worker is the chance to see, first-hand, how the daily work serves the customer. Assembling a widget in the factory transforms into saving lives and serving people when the end user’s story gets back to the people who did the work.

Third, serving leaders understand the source of true and sustained urgency. Whether your people realize it or not, human beings desire to express purpose for their lives in the service of others. A powerful way to create sustained urgency into everyday work is to provide a compelling and emotional reason to care, a direct connection between the daily work and a heart of service.

Connect the Vision to Each Person’s Job

Work often feels meaningless, but this needn’t be the case. All work matters, whether that work is accomplished in boardrooms or boiler rooms. Many people come home every day from fast food restaurants and cleaning jobs feeling that their day counted. Conversely, many people come home each day from corporate offices and community service agencies feeling their day was a waste. And, of course, we all know that these last two sentences are equally true in the reverse.

A graduate student of mine once protested, “The minimum wage workers I hire to serve roast beef sandwiches are stuck in a menial industry. All I have are carrots and sticks!”

In other words, no full human engagement could be expected from these young men and women! If she wanted performance, it was going to be what I call “beatings and baubles” all the way to quittin’ time.

However, the industry-leading worker engagement scores received by Chick-fil-A refute my student’s protest. Serving a quick chicken sandwich shouldn’t be intrinsically more meaningful than serving a quick roast beef sandwich! And yet, the highly motivated young workers who tell their customers, “It’s my pleasure,” and appear to mean it, make a convincing case that work can be steered toward drudgery or delight.

There is no task, however seemingly noble, that cannot be rendered menial by stripping it of purpose. Conversely, there is no chore, however ordinary, that cannot be rendered meaningful by showing why it is crucial for the accomplishment of a Great Purpose. In either case – work that is experienced as menial versus work that is embraced as meaningful – leadership is responsible.

In The Serving Leader, Admiral Rock Butler tells Mike Wilson, “You were born to make a difference!” We must believe this about each person who works with us. If we believe that each person is born for purpose, it is our privilege to connect jobs with the organization’s Great Purpose helping our people to see what they do really makes a difference. No matter how “small” the job, work becomes meaningful when we understand how our part contributes to a great and worthy cause. Leadership is responsible to connect the dots.

Closing the Gap Between Knowing and Doing

Stanford professor of organizational behavior, Robert Sutton, says, “The gap between knowing and doing is larger than the gap between ignorance and knowledge.” I can’t verify Sutton’s observation empirically, but experience seems to bear this out. 

We are prone to cram our minds full of new things to know yet fail to put into practice those few important things we need to do.

Let’s call this problem of knowing but not doing the “application gap.” Every one of us experiences this challenge, especially in our information-driven work world. While it’s true that there’s an ongoing need to learn and know more – you’ve heard the lament, “if I had only known!” – implementing what is already clear is our greater need.

Let me share three quick insights I’ve learned from others that have helped me close the application gap:

1. “Succeed in a few.” This quote comes from one of my close mentors, Bruce Bickel. He said this to me in the summer of 1993 in the very first meeting I ever had with him. I was 34 years old (how’s your math?), and launching the very first of my enterprises, the Pittsburgh Urban Leadership Service Experience (PULSE, now at http://pulsepittsburgh.org). What’s the point? If you have dozens of must-do’s or could-do’s staring at your day, your week, your month, your quarter, your year, it matters that you know which ones to implement with determination. Everything doesn’t matter equally. A few things matter a great deal. Chasing every opportunity assures a major application gap. I’m reminding myself of this as I see opportunities multiplying, and because I’m seeking focus on those few things I must successfully accomplish.

1. “Little is big.” A few years ago, I had the privilege of teaching principles of Serving Leadership to doctoral students in Hong Kong. Over the course of the class, I gave the students the assignment to put into practice the lessons they learned. One student, a president of a large, national Chinese bank, focused his work on two principles: “Serve Others First,” and “Build on Strength.” I was deeply moved as I read through his project. Though his duties were crushingly large, he worked with great care and intentionality on improving his supervisory relationships with three of his inner staff. The impact on them and his bank was both big and beautiful.

1. “Mind the gap.” Dan Sullivan (www.strategiccoach.com) taught thousands of us that we need encouragement in our goal achievement work. If we continuously stare at the gap between where we are and where we think we should be, we live in debilitating discouragement. Instead, he taught us to observe and appreciate how far you’ve come! You aren’t where you want to be, but you aren’t where you were, either. The great insight by Dan is this: the destination we seek will recede into the horizon as we approach it. In one sense, the purpose of a destination is to pull us forward by always moving ahead of us. As we make progress, our destination asks us to regroup and to stretch further. Life, all evidence seems to suggest, is not so much interested in our arriving as it is in our movement forward in the journey. So, celebrate the progress. Be thankful for how far you’ve come. Recognize, and appreciate the growth.

We need all three of these insights as we “mind the gap.” I can do some things but not all things. I need the encouragement to stay focused. Little things are big; closing the gap on the small things is often the most solid way we have to make progress. And progress is actually being made! We’re not where we will be tomorrow, true enough, but we’re also not where we were yesterday.

How do you handle the application gap in your life? Do you know where it’s most important for you to apply yourself? And do you give enough credit to the small things that you can do? And how about your progress? Do you see how far you’ve come? Celebrate that! Give thanks and be strengthened for the next leg on your journey!

Early-20th-century philosopher and poet, George Santayana, said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” With that in mind, here’s a quick look back at seven world-changing events from 2016 and leadership lessons we can learn from them.

Lesson #1: Don’t Lose Touch with the Needs of Those You’re Leading (Brexit)

On June 23, 2016, surprising the pundits and ruling class, British citizens voted on a referendum to pull the United Kingdom out of the European Union. Lessons:

1. Leaders can lose the pulse of the people. A commitment to truly serve those we lead presses us to stay close in touch with them, but it’s important to be intentional about this.
2. The squeaky wheel gets the oil. There’s always a group that yells the loudest, but we must not believe that volume equals majority. We must look past the noise to hear what people are really saying, experiencing, and feeling.

Lesson #2: Don’t Allow Gaps in Your Leadership (Syria and Aleppo)

When Russian President Putin gained nearly unfettered access to Syria, he joined Syrian President Assad in crushing resistance fighters and mercilessly decimating territories under contention, Aleppo being but one of those battleground sites. Lessons:

1. When we create a vacuum by the withdrawing our leadership, the vacuum we create will be filled. Stepping back so others can step forward is not, in and of itself, a virtuous act.
2. Brute force, in pursuit of any aim, produces outcomes that are brute.

Lesson #3: Success Requires Focus on the Fundamentals (Rio Olympics 2016)

In spite of the Zika virus, 206 nations and over 11,000 athletes gathered in Rio de Janeiro to compete in the 31st Olympiad. Lessons:

1. The brief film clips of glorious performances by world-class athletes gloss over the thousands and tens of thousands of hours of inglorious work that led to those few shining moments.
2. Triumph requires staying relentlessly focused on the fundamentals, rather than on watching the scorecard. It’s the process and the discipline that counts.

Lesson #4: Never Give Up Hope (Cubs, Cavs and Other Unlikely Sports Victories)

Chicago Cubs fans put 108 years of World Series failure behind them. The Cleveland Cavaliers ended a citywide 52-year championship drought. Across the pond, Leicester City won its first soccer championship in 132 years. Closer to home, Villanova ended a 31-year NCAA title dry spell and Army, after 14 years of defeat by Navy, recovered its dignity. Lessons:

1. While the best predictor of future behavior is prior results, this is not determinative. A long track record can be broken, and any year can be a year of new beginnings.
2. Actions are a powerful way to establish new thoughts and beliefs. More than a century of believing in the “curse” came to an end when the Chicago Cubs won.

Lesson #5: Be True to Your Design (Presidential Election)

The election of Donald J. Trump as the 45th president of the United States has left many in disbelief, shock, and anger. Others celebrate it as a welcome, hopeful change. In years to come, this election will be mined for leadership lessons, but here are a few for starters:

1. Donald Trump didn’t pretend to be what he wasn’t. The people you lead want to know you for who you are, and that you’re comfortable with being you. Authenticity trumps many other qualities; bigly.
2. Persistence in the face of overwhelming odds can change the odds. Many pursuits have been lost because the contender, seeing that a win was impossible, quit. Triumph is seldom the companion of quitters.

Lesson #6: Own Up to Your Mistakes When You Fall (Hillary Clinton’s Illness and Public Fall)

When Hillary Clinton suffered a health crisis on 9/11 and fell forward as she was being assisted into her vehicle, it became major news. Lessons:

1. Every leader falls (and fails). When that happens, we must quickly acknowledge it and candidly address how we will avoid an encore performance.
2. Nobody expects leaders to be perfect, but our fall/failure is compounded when we try to cover it up or pretend that it didn’t really happen.

Lesson #7: Do The Right Thing No Matter the Cost (Flint Water Crisis)

On January 16, 2016, President Obama declared a state of emergency in Flint, Michigan after findings revealed the city’s drinking water was contaminated with unsafe levels of lead. It was eventually discovered that city officials, in an attempt to cut cost and make up for ongoing financial downturn, used a corrosive water source that caused lead and other heavy metals to leach out of aging pipes into drinking water. Lessons:

1. Leaders do the right thing no matter what the cost, especially when the welfare of human lives is on the line.
2. Leaders get the facts, do the research, and don’t cut corners.

Bonus Lesson: No Matter the Longevity of Your Leadership, It Will End (The Death of Fidel Castro)

After 40 years of dictatorial rule over the Republic of Cuba, Fidel Castro perished. Lessons:

1. Everybody’s time in leadership ends. The question we must ask is never, “can I stay in charge,” but must always be, “will I leave things better when my time is done?”
2. The purpose of leadership is to prepare the future to be stronger and healthier and more vital than the past. No legacy is meritorious when this is not accomplished.

What lessons will we learn in 2017? We will have to wait and see. One thing we know about the year ahead. We will – each one of us – have countless opportunities to learn, to repent and apologize, and to get better. Here’s wishing you a wonderful year of growth and contribution!

Did you know the idea of forecasting a new president’s success from what he gets done during his first 100 days began with Franklin Roosevelt when he, in his first term, began tackling the challenges of the Great Depression in 1933? Since then, the 100-day standard, while not precise, has become a popular concept used to predict the effectiveness of every president.

You may not be an elected official, but if you are considering taking on new leadership responsibilities in a business or organization, what you accomplish in the first days, weeks, months, and year—and how you go about it—will bear significant consequences. With that in mind, consider the following tips on how a Serving Leader can make the most of his or her first “100 Days.”

Before Saying “Yes”

Before entertaining the notion of stepping into a leadership role, consider this: the people you lead will be searching for indications—in your words, gestures, and behaviors—of what life will be like for them now that you’re in charge. Your followers instinctively know that their well-being will be greatly impacted by the kind of person you are and the level of intentionality and excellence you bring to the job. Serving Leaders think very carefully about the well-being of the people they are about to lead, and they make a commitment to be intentional, observant, and impactful in a positive way.

Day 0: Tackle 3 Critical Questions

In the sanctuary of your own heart and mind, take the time to address three fundamental questions (write your answers down):

1. Who are you serving? Think about the customers your organization exists to serve. Think about the investors and board members and partners who are looking to you for leadership. Think about your teammates and colleagues—your followers—who will do most of the organization’s work. You are stepping into leadership to serve others, not yourself.
2. Why does the organization or cause matter? Why will excellent performance—your own, your organization’s, and your people’s—be worth it in the end? Gain clarity on the great purpose that you will be marshaling every resource to pursue.
3. How will you and your people conduct business? What are the non-negotiable, core values that will guide your decisions and the way your organization operates day-to-day? Take time to get very clear on these behaviors and values.

Day 1: Get to Know Those You Will Lead

Meet your people. Without being hurried, reach out to as many as you can. Introduce yourself. Ask them to introduce themselves to you. Listen—actively, appreciatively, respectfully—to what they tell you. A simple preamble may be, “We have lots of work to do, a cause that matters, and a very bright future. But before we just jump into the work, I very much want to make your acquaintance.”

Week 1: Let Them Hear Your Heart

Meet with your people. Meet them face-to-face if you can, or by Zoom, Skype, FaceTime, or phone. Then, meet with your teams to learn who they are, what they know and do, and what ways they contribute to the greater goal. And, finally, convene the whole company—in person, or digitally—to hear your heart and values, see your passion and purpose, and to know that you are already paying attention to them. You heard them, you value them, and you’re going to lay out before them a challenging and important roadmap—a purposeful plan—to guide the enterprise into the future. To quote a leader I love and respect, “Don’t promise them Easy! Promise them Worth it!” Then wish them a great weekend and invite them to return on Monday ready to jump into a great journey with you.

Quarter 1: Focus On 4 Objectives

Accomplish these four goals in your first 12 weeks:

1. Demonstrate and talk about your core values. Let everybody hear about it. And let your own values-aligned behavior win any arguments. Call attention to your people when you catch them living out the values you have espoused. You’re building trust. You’re drawing a line in the sand that your word is your bond. You’re raising the stakes on accountability, starting with yourself.
2. Share the great purpose your organization exists to serve. Bring your people stories from customers and from the world that illustrate how your enterprise makes a difference that matters. Talk to individual teammates about the part they play, however seemingly small, in serving your great purpose.
3. Maintain your personal and relational touch. Learn names, make notes about families, intentionally follow up at a personal level to reinforce human connections and personal care.
4. Identify and tackle problems that can easily be fixed and be classified as short-term “wins.” Show action. Score points. Take pain away and build confidence.

At the end of your first quarter, throw a party! Express your appreciation. Ask your leaders and managers—following a framework you provide them—to benchmark improvements, showcase wins, and celebrate contributors. Give a “state of the organization” report. Keep it brief, but punchy. Communicate what you’ve learned and what you appreciate. Also, take this time to share your vision. Talk about what you see both now, and in the future for the organization. Finally, announce the big, next step and the plan to get there.

A Final Word

There is a significant difference in approach, during the first 100 days of your tenure as a Serving Leader, when compared to the American presidency. In our presidential politics, voters choose the person they want based on what they have learned about that individual during the campaign, including the particular promises made by the candidate. The first 100 days of an elected leader’s tenure need to demonstrate that they are doing what they promised. That said, your first “100 days” as an organizational leader should focus on winning trust, discovering who the people are and what they have to offer, honoring what has been accomplished in the past, showing your people that you’re with them, and earning the right to step in and actively lead.

Go slow at first so you can go fast and together. Fortify the bonds that link you to your great team members. And then, go! You’ve got an important mission to serve!