Insights

In earlier posts, I shared about the leadership challenges of turning vision into reality and aligning our words and actions. A third common leadership challenge is bridging the distance between our capacity and the capacity of those who follow us.

In my last post, I wrote on the leadership challenge of turning vision into reality, or as some would say, bridging the strategy-execution gap. In this entry, I want to share briefly on how leaders can get what they say to line up with what they do.

As leaders, we each bring value to the world in our own distinct way. The uniqueness of the start of our leadership journey is extraordinary as we are born into the world and then move out to engage it, seeking to have impact, hoping to make friends, longing to achieve results, and aspiring to make a difference.

It’s well documented that employee engagement has strong ties to critical business outcomes including productivity, profitability, and customer focus. Engaged workers—those involved in, enthusiastic about, and committed to their work— lead innovation, create new products, and make new customers.

Today, there is a growing movement towards Serving Leadership that was not discernable 50 years ago. Organizations around the globe are discovering the transforming impact of this age-old model that views a leader’s work as more about serving and empowering others rather than being served.

Values are the foundation of an organization’s culture. Where Great Purpose addresses why we work, values guide how we work. This guidance will be intentional, or it will be unintentional, because every organization has values.

Robert Greenleaf catalyzed a modern “servant leadership movement” in management philosophy over the last 40 years. His famous quote on the subject was this: “Do those served grow as persons; do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants?”

In my previous post, I shared specific tips for how you, as a Serving Leader, can make the most of the first “100 Days” of a new leadership assignment. Here’s a recap:

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?