It takes leaders to make more leaders.
As a leader, you are not out to create followers, but to discover, disciple, and distribute more and better leaders throughout your organization.
Let’s take the simple but accurate path of dividing people into two groups – leaders and followers. Followers don’t develop leaders – they follow them. Only leaders can develop more leaders.
The odds are high that you have someone on your team that is now only a follower – but you recognize potential in them. You want them to become the leader you already see in them.
THE QUICK SUMMARY – The Secret: What Great Leaders Know and Do by Mark Miller and Ken Blanchard
In this new edition of their classic business fable, Ken Blanchard and Mark Miller get at the heart of what makes a leader successful. Newly promoted but struggling young executive Debbie Brewster asks her mentor the one question she desperately needs answered: “What is the secret of great leaders?” His reply—“great leaders serve”—flummoxes her, but over time he reveals the five fundamental ways that leaders succeed through service. Along the way she learns:
• Why great leaders seem preoccupied with the future
• How people on the team ultimately determine your success or failure
• What three arenas require continuous improvement
• Why true success in leadership has two essential components
• How to knowingly strengthen—or unwittingly destroy—leadership credibility
The tenth anniversary edition includes a leadership self-assessment so readers can measure to what extent they lead by serving and where they can improve. The authors also have added answers to the most frequently asked questions about how to apply the SERVE model in the real world.
As practical as it is uplifting, The Secret shares Blanchard’s and Miller’s wisdom about leadership in a form that anyone can easily understand and implement. This book will benefit not only those who read it but also the people who look to them for guidance and the organizations they serve.
A SIMPLE SOLUTION
If you are looking for the latest techniques to help you coerce people to do what you say, you will not find any such techniques in the broad category of servant leadership.
Servant leadership is not a strategy or shortcut to success. Servant leadership is a long journey, leading with people as you add value to them by putting their interests ahead of your own.
Creating culture always starts with the organization leader, and it is no different in your church. If you are going to create a culture in which leaders SERVE, you are going to have to demonstrate these five principles first.
A person can serve without leading, but a leader can’t lead well without serving.
Five Strategic Ways Great Leaders SERVE
See and shape the future. Leadership always begins with a picture of the future. Leaders who cannot paint a compelling picture of a preferred future are in jeopardy of forfeiting their leadership. Clarity will often come in the midst of activity. If you are stuck, get moving. When the vision is clear and compelling, it will create life, energy, and momentum.
Engage and develop others. Engagement is about creating the context for people to thrive. Low engagement of your teams is not an indictment of the workers; it is the leaders who need to make a change. We believe leaders who are not proactively developing others are missing a vital aspect of their role.
Reinvent continuously. To make progress, to move forward, to accomplish bigger and better, something has to change. There are three arenas of change:
- Self – How are you reinventing yourself?
- Systems – Which work processes need to change to generate better results?
- Structure – What structural changes could you make to better enable the accomplishments of your goals?
Value results and relationships. Virtual every leader has a natural bias toward one or the other of these. While not bad, that bias can limit your effectiveness. The best leaders value both and manage the tension between them.
Embody the values. People watch leaders, looking for clues regarding what’s important to the leaders. They are also trying to determine if the leader is trustworthy.
Mark Miller and Ken Blanchard, The Secret: What Great Leaders Know and Do
A NEXT STEP
At your next team meeting, write the five SERVE statements on separate chart tablets.
On a scale of 1 (I don’t do this at all) to 5 (I consistently do this), ask your team to individually (and privately) to rate themselves.
Next, have a group discussion, asking for a consensus rating using the same scale above on how your team is taking these actions.
Next, list as many specific and concrete actions that demonstrate each particular action. After you have completed this action, ask the group for a consensus decision on the top three in each category, and circle them.
Finally, ask what actions are missing from each list. Discuss how these actions can become a part of your team’s regular practices.
Excerpt taken from SUMS Remix 95-3, released June 2018.
Part of a weekly series on 27gen, entitled Wednesday Weekly Reader
Regular daily reading of books is an important part of my life. It even extends to my vocation, where as Vision Room Curator for Auxano I am responsible for publishing SUMS Remix, a biweekly book “excerpt” for church leaders. Each Wednesday on 27gen I will be taking a look back at previous issues of SUMS Remix and publishing an excerpt.
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