This is an excellent, short article on how love is central to good leadership. We don’t often think about how love has a place in the workforce, but a growing body of research is showing that it creates a better work environment (no surprise there) and increases performance. It is also better for your own career if you are guided by good will toward others (= love), as Tim Sanders showed in his landmark book Love is the Killer App. 

And, beyond that, it is the right thing to do.

The big take-away from this article is: “Highly effective leaders use love and discipline to elevate others.”

Leadership as a way of elevating others, not yourself. That is a very biblical idea.

It is the leadership application of the Golden Rule.

I think it is so important for the church to understand the real meaning of servant leadership. So important. 

“But Jesus called them to him and said, ‘You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave, even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many’ (Matthew 20:25-28).”

“‘But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all brothers. And call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven. Neither be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Christ. The greatest among you shall be your servant. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted'” (Matthew 23:8-12).

A servant leader:

1. Puts the needs of the followers first — not themselves or the preservation of their own power. (This, counterintuitively, results in more influence.)
2. Transfers as much authority as possible to the followers, enabling them to make their own decisions in as many areas as is possible. Other words for this are empowerment and decentralization. These are not just popular buzzwords. They are essential concepts for the proper functioning of society and any organization.
3. Seeks the growth of their followers to their maximum potential. This is another reason that top-down oriented leadership is not right or helpful: it stunts the growth of followers by making most of their decisions for them.
4. Recognizes that they are accountable to those they lead. This is an implication of the equality of all people. Without this accountability, leaders are by definition in a special “higher class” than the followers, which is unbiblical, wrong, and prideful at its very root. We see a very good, albeit imperfect, example of this in modern democracy. The leaders in government are ultimately accountable to the people, and the best governmental leaders see themselves as public servants in the fullest sense.
5. Seeks to lead chiefly through influence and persuasion, not authority or coercion (threat of punishment or bad consequences for not doing what the leader wants). Note that this requires that the servant leader read and study, for their is no other way to have the knowledge needed to operate according to persuasion. Often when people lead by coercion, they are taking the easy way and trying to make up for the fact that they lack true knowledge, and thus real influence.
6. Recognizes that their authority is limited. No individual ever has total authority over another. That is by definition a form of dictatorship, even if the “leader” who thinks he has such authority has good intent. This, again, stems from the fact that we are all in the image of God and thus ontologically equal. Ontological equality does not necessarily negate functional differences, but it must be reflected in the way those functional differences operate (such as through accountability to the led, principle 4, and recognizing the limited scope of authority, this principle).
7. Has a concern for the poor and marginalized. Concern for the poor is a fundamental biblical responsibility, and the servant leader recognizes that this is not to be forgotten in the way they go about anything, including the way they lead.

We often think that the autocratic, top-down leader is a mean person with bad intent. Hence, when it seems that a leader is nice and genuinely wants the good of the people he is leading, we can easily fall into the notion that he must therefore be a servant leader.

But this is actually incorrect. It failures to recognize what autocratic leadership really is and, conversely, what servant leadership really is.

Being an autocratic leader is not first about being mean, and being a servant leader is not first about being nice.

Rather, the difference lies in the way you view the scope of your authority. 

The Heart of Servant Leadership: Recognizing Your Limited Authority

The essence of servant leadership is not being in charge but just being nice about it, but rather recognizing the limits of your authority and that people are capable of and deserving of being self-directed. The servant leader thus seeks to empower rather than control.

Autocratic leaders, on the other hand, think they have more authority than they really do. They don’t realize the limits of their authority. Further, they often think that as long as they seek to use their authority for good, that that is enough to make them a servant leader. But it is not, because to think you have more authority than you really do is, by definition, domineering — regardless of your intentions for how you will use that authority.

Here is an example from the world of government. Let’s say the US was a monarchy and we had a king. Now, let’s say the king decided that we could read certain books, but not others. Further, let’s say this king has good intentions in his decree. He sincerely believes that if people are able to read the books he has banned, it will harm them. He has issued his decree for the good of his people.

Is this monarch a servant leader, or a dictator?

He is a dictator, because he has exceeded the scope of his authority. It does not matter that his intentions are good; he is exerting authority in an area over which he does not have any. That makes him a dictator. He may be a benevolent dictator, but he is still a dictator.

From this we see that the essence of being a dictator lies not in your intentions, but in your whole approach to leadership — whether you accept the God-given limits on your power.

Though of course our nation has its problems, our democracy (republic) is a helpful example of institutionalized servant leadership. The president does not have unlimited authority over us; there are limits on his (or her!) power. Further, we believe that these limits aren’t simply chosen by convention, but arise from real natural rights that people have, and which not even government has the right to infringe.

The Corollary to Limited Authority: Respecting People’s Rights

This is the essence of servant leadership, and it applies to all areas of leadership, not just government — organizations, churches, non-profits, and everywhere else. The servant leader respects people’s rights. The servant leader recognizes that all humans are created in the image of God and thus have a certain right to self-direction over which the leader has no right to infringe. 

The essence of servant leadership is to realize that having true intentions for the good of those you lead means respecting that reality about people. In other words, truly seeking the good of the people you lead means that you don’t simply have a good end in mind, but also good means in your leadership. And good “means” in leadership means leading in a way that acknowledges and fully respects people’s independence and initiative. It means you seek to therefore lead chiefly through influence and principles, not control.

This brings us back to the benevolent dictator. Though he may have had good intentions, his approach is not even going to have good results. It won’t have good results because it goes against people’s God-given rights. By failing to respect their autonomy, it fails to respect their judgment. It will therefore fail to develop mature individuals. It will create a dependency on him as the leader, rather than growing up people into maturity — which is the true aim of leadership.

I hope to blog on the difference between autocratic leadership and servant leadership more in the coming weeks. But from this, note at least this key point: if we think the essence of servant leadership is simply that the leader has good intentions, we have misunderstood the real nature of servant leadership. That is why autocratic leadership often goes undetected — we too easily think it simply means having bad intentions in leadership (or being mean) and have failed to realize that at its root, autocratic leadership is about leading chiefly from authority rather than influence.

Don’t fall into the benevolent authoritarian view of leadership. Realize that truly seeking the good of those you lead means seeking to lead through empowering them, not controlling them.

The saving of our world from pending doom will come, not through the complacent adjustment of the conforming majority, but through the creative maladjustment of a nonconforming minority. ― Martin Luther King Jr.

Here’s another way to say it: God doesn’t call us to defend the status quo. He calls us to defend and pursue what is right. Sometimes, that’s the way things are currently done. But many times it isn’t.

We need to be able to identify the difference, and have the courage to create change where it is needed.

Keith Ferrazzi has a good post summarizing a study IBM recently did to identify the traits of their highest impact employees.

Their findings were very interesting. Here’s how Ferrazzi summarizes them:

The term originated in an IBM study that sought to identify the traits of their most high-impact employees. Turns out that ambition alone is mediocre; ambition plus intellectual humility is the winning combination.

Read the whole thing.

It is so easy, especially in turbulent economic times such as those we are in now, to get focused on efficiency and cost cutting. And those things do have their place.

But they are not the main thing. They are not what’s most important. And leadership should be diligent to never succumb to the temptation to let them usurp what is most important.

After a God-centered passion, two of the most important principles for any leader are respect and generosity.

Generosity — not efficiency. And respect — not efficiency.

Efficiency can, and often does, undermine both. That’s why you have to make it second, not first.

There are few (if any) promises in the Bible to prosper the “efficient” man or woman. But there is an abundance of promises to the generous person.

We know this from the Bible. But often we think that “business thinking” is different. That somehow the realm of running non-profits and businesses and other organizations plays by different rules.

But it doesn’t.

To be sure, people often think it does, and act like it does. That’s why we need to be careful about saying “non-profits need to be run more like businesses” and so forth — not because the principles for running an effective business are always different (though sometimes they are), but because there are many wrong business principles being used to run businesses, and we don’t want to let those infect the non-profit sector as well.

But the things that are ultimately required for running a business and non-profit well are ultimately the same things necessary for living a good life. And generosity and respect are two of those overarching principles.

And we aren’t left simply looking at the Bible to see this (though that should be enough). The best business and leadership thinkers have always acknowledged this.

Take Peter Drucker. At the end of his book The Effective Executive, he points out that his emphasis on making strengths productive “is fundamentally respect for the person — one’s own as well as others. It is a value system of action.” Drucker isn’t detaching executive effectiveness from the realm of morality and decency and sheer humanity. Rather, he sees them as utterly intertwined. A focus on strengths is ultimately a respect for the individual.

Likewise, he points out that the practice of “putting first things first” is not simply an issue of effectiveness, but character. “What is being developed here is not information, but chracter: foresight, self-reliance, courage. What is being developed here, in other words, is leadership — not the leadership of brilliance and genius, to be sure, but hte much more modest yet more enduring leadership of dedication, determination, and serious purpose.”

Drucker does not abstract effectiveness, even in large organizations, from character. They are utterly intertwined such that the core practices of effectiveness are actually manifestations of (and means of developing) character and respect for others.

Likewise, when I was at the Global Leadership Summit the year before this one, Jack Welch made a very significant comment. He said “Top people have a generosity of spirit. They get a kick out of giving bonuses, for example. They don’t have envy. They love helping people grow.” There’s character once again, and generosity. Top people are generous. Generosity is not just something for our personal lives and personal finances; we are to have a generosity of spirit in the way we go about our work. That is biblical, but what we see is that it is also borne out by the experience of the most effective business leaders and thinkers of our time.

So, how do you lead? Do you care first about generosity, or efficiency? About respect — and thus it’s corollary of positioning people according to their strengths — or efficiency?

I’m not playing these things off against efficiency, rightly understood. For ultimately, the best way to be efficient is to value generosity and respect before efficiency.

In You Don’t Need a Title to Be a Leader: How Anyone, Anywhere, Can Make a Positive Difference, Mark Sanborn highlights five core characteristics of effective leaders. Effective leaders:

1. Believe they can positively shape their lives and careers.
2. Lead through their relationships with people, as opposed to their control over people.
3. Collaborate rather than control.
4. Persuade others to contribute, rather than order them to.
5. Get others to follow them out of respect and commitment rather than fear and compliance.