Insights

Not too long ago, I addressed a group from the Baker Leadership Fast Track Program, a program dedicated to empowering young-minded Pittsburgh professionals to learn more about civic engagement, community leadership, and service.

Great organizations are great because many men and women choose to give their best at work, beyond their job description or their manager’s commands. This is the power of full worker engagement.

At the heart of serving leadership is a point of view about the human person, namely, that people are your organization’s greatest treasure. This point of view requires a change in the minds and hearts of leaders who are accustomed to thinking of their people as tools.

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.

Values are the foundation of an organization’s culture. Where Great Purpose provides the source of energy and the answer to why we work, values guide how we work and make decisions. This guidance will be intentional, or it will be unintentional, because every organization has values.

Many organizations struggle with identifying their “secret” to success. Often, founders are insufficiently clear about their own unique approach. They can do the job themselves, but they don’t know how to describe what makes them successful.

We know that a fully engaged workforce is the differentiator for organizational performance. More men and women need to show up at the beginning of the day with an owner’s mind (intent upon doing what is right and possible), rather than heading home at the end of the day after they’ve completed only what is necessary and required.

While certainly not the author of the idea (or the practice, for that matter) of servant leadership, Robert K. Greenleaf catalyzed a modern “servant leadership movement” in management philosophy over the last 35 years.

A fully engaged workforce is the make or break of great organizational performance. Fully engaged men and women give their company or organization an edge that is nearly indomitable.

According to the “Pareto principle,” 80% of life’s results come from 20% of life’s efforts. The principle – as observed from nature, economics, business, and human organization – is sometimes also called the “80–20 rule” or the “law of the vital few.”