This afternoon I attended a presentation discussing Servant Leadership put together by the Center for Ethical Business Cultures on the campus of the University of St. Thomas here in Minneapolis. Guest speakers included the current CEO of the Robert Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership, as well as Dr. James Sipe and Don Frick, co-authors of a new book titled the Seven Pillars of Servant Leadership, described by the authors as an “implementation” guide for the teachings and philosophies of Robert Greenleaf.
Many of the topics discussed today were not new information to myself, or the rest of the KeyStone team, as we have attended many Servant Leadership related events in the past, done considerable reading and even worked with a handful of clients who have implemented the philosophy. For those of you not familiar with Servant Leadership, I would encourage you to visit www.greenleaf.org to get a full flavor - it’s worth a few minutes on the site. However, for our purposes here, let’s suffice it to say that Servant Leadership is about turning the “pyramid” upside down in an organization; Rather than leaders being the center of power, wielding it to their own advantage, they begin to think of themselves first as servant, working diligently to empower and grow their people in the organization. The philosophy does not constitute a suggestion of fully eliminating hierarchy or tearing up org charts, but rather to veer traditional thinking and behaviors toward a more people focused approach.
While most of today’s session was a reminder of the basics of Servant Leadership, one piece of new information really gave me pause. Mr. Frick and Dr. Sipe sited a study from their book, The Seven Pillars, comparing financial results of well known Servant Led, publicly traded companies against both the general market and the 11 well known companies profiled in Jim Collins ground breaking book Good to Great. Over a ten year period (1995-2005) the S&P 500 posted a 10.8% pre-tax portfolio return. For the same time period, The Good to Great companies posted a 17.5% return and the Servant Led companies posted a 24.2% return. The companies in the Servant Led category included organizations such as Southwest Airlines, The Container Store, Starbucks.
Certainly this data doesn’t guarantee that simply deciding to implement Servant Leadership will significantly raise your stock price. Also, there is no guarantee over the really long haul (20-50 years) that these companies will continue to outperform the market or their competition. However, it certainly is a big blow to the critics who dismiss Servant Leadership and other employee focused cultures as merely “soft stuff”.
At KeyStone Search, we remain very objective as it pertains to which particular cultural program or philosophy your organization should ascribe. Servant Leadership is certainly not the only way to align culture, create trust and build a more loyal, dedicated and productive team. There are many other great philosophies/programs out there; Collins’ Good to Great, Blanchard’s Managing by Values, The Scanlon Plan, The Oz Principle, EOS Process, Covey and many others. What we do believe strongly is that you must to do something. Letting your culture simply develop un-nurtured or unfettered is a recipe for disaster. Something I heard recently is that building a great culture doesn’t necessarily take a lot of money, but it does take a lot of work. Agreed!
The data continues to come in; The well aligned, employee centric culture eats the command and control culture for lunch - in every facet, including financially. I think it’s safe to say the old “carrot and stick” environments are going the way of the hula hoop! It’s about time!
Mike Frommelt