Funding The Future Today

Servant Leadership…Ground Level

Long Long Ago in a city a lot like Houston, Texas I learned a valuable lesson. Paraphrased it sounds a lot like “Seek more to serve than to be served.”

Well, at least I thought I had learned that lesson.  Yesterday, I met a very beautiful lady with years of experience and loads of very important friends. Sitting in the room with her I felt like the grandmother that I am.  That is I felt like that until…

Until I asked myself how I could help this beautiful, successful, lovely lady.   You see, servant leadership only counts when you actually apply it.

On the surface it would seem that she needed nothing from me.  She had it all. But I managed to quit comparing myself to her and her enormous success.  I actually managed to think of her and not ME, though admittedly it took a while.  I began to listen with the purpose of finding out how I could help her.

In the end I learned that she has a tremendous responsibility to put on a conference and she needs some breakout sessions of real interest to the attendees.  I introduced her to the work of the I-Opt Survey of Information Processing Styles and explained that I would be glad to teach a session on it to her attendees.

I don’t know if she will actually decide to use me in that role but in the process I had introduced her to a valuable tool she can use in her own business.  I had helped her.

That is how simple Servant Leadership is.  Seek more to serve than to be served.  It isn’t all about me.  And it isn’t about you either.  It is about how we can help each other.