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The Power of Servant Leadership

I just finished The Power of Servant-Leadershipby Robert K. Greenleaf.

Here are some ideas it presents:

Leadership needs to be offered, and, if effective, it is voluntarily accepted. p181

Central to development of servant-leaders are:

  1. Listening
  2. Empathy
  3. Healing
  4. Awareness
  5. Persuasion
  6. Conceptualization
  7. Foresight
  8. Stewardship
  9. Commitment to the growth of people
  10. Building community

After discussing how the author responded to liberating visions, he describes things important to him. I find these valuable as well.

This is what servant-leadership is about: helping consensus, voluntary and durable consensus, to evolve. p59

The author describes 3 kinds of power and argues for persuasion as the way to go:

  1. Coercive power
  2. Manipulative power
  3. Persuasion as Power

I like how the author differentiates between manipulation and persuasion. He states that the servant-leader seeks to convince others, rather than coerce compliance. He states that people are manipulated when they are guided by plausible rationalizations into beliefs or actions that they do not fully understand. They are persuaded upon arrival at a feeling of rightness about a belief or action through their own intuitive sense.

I appreciated his acknowledgement of how growing in understanding is risky. It is risky in that you might change. Opening one's self to understanding always entails the risk that you will change yourself. p67

Every person has to live every minute of his own existence and make his own meaning out of it. But you can widen your awareness so as to make your experience more intense and more meaningful. Thus I urge you to open up to influences and seek opportunities that will expand your awareness. p94

 


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