Servant Leadership: The case for the best leadership philosophy

I am a huge fan of Servant Leadership. Probably one of history’s best servant leaders said, “I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends.” His disciples knew what was going on. Applied to business, making the economics of their business transparent, involving all employees to understand and share in the improved financial results, consistently improves business results and powerfully engages employees. The trust and focus on the common good captures the employees’ hearts while the information captures their minds. Frequently referred to as Open-Book Management, this creates an empowered, learning organization. It complements directly many of the 10 characteristics you offered, all of which I agree with. And the good news is that it is not very difficult to do. Frankly, it’s much more difficult to improve results with out transparency. If interested, these Harvard Business Review articles provide more background: http://blogs.hbr.org/2013/12/a-winning-culture-keeps-score/ http://blogs.hbr.org/2014/06/share-your-financials-to-engage-employees/ Case examples of open-book success stories can be found at www.openbookcoaching.com. Are you familiar with open-book and if so, are you a fan. Possibly we can collaborate. Best wishes and thanks again for your article on Servant Leadership, Bill

Good article, but.... Greenleaf never gave us the specific actions that would unleash the full potential of every employee. Too much was spent on just listening as Jesus did. In a business, listening must be coupled with a response to what the employee says that satisfies the employee. Without a satisfying response such as action to resolve the complaint or to institute the suggestion or to answer openly the question, the act of only listening proves that the leader does not care. Listening and responding to the satisfaction to the satisfaction of the employee is the only way leaders have to show they respect, value, and care for their people, the only way to 'lead' their people to treat their work, their customers, each other, and their bosses with great respect and TLC. Best regards, Ben