CMA Melbourne Breakfast Seminar on Servant Leadership

Leadership Seminar at GKY Pluit

If you happen to be in Jakarta 2-4 July, I will be giving a series of talk on leadership at GKY Pluit. The series is entitled "Servant Leaders for Christ". The multimedia team at GKY Pluit created this seminar promo clip that details the titles of each talk. For lack of better name, the clip is called Clip Test 3 :-)

But I do hope to see you there!

Back from the trip

I just got back from a business trip in Indonesia, and given the absence of a high-speed internet I didn't have the chance to blog (I did try but I figured I would age faster if I waited for the internet to upload and download stuff, so I gave up in the end).

Apart from having research meetings at a few universities, I had the privilege to address some of the key people at these universities and share about a topic that is close to my heart, servant leadership. These talks convince me even more that there is a deep-seated desire within most folks to be the kind of leaders who are authentic and holistic. The preoccupation with performance and growth is not quite a thing of the past, but people are tired of this fixation which in the end belittles and manipulates people, all in the name of growth. If the recent global financial meltdown is not considered as a powerful reminder of the inherent limitation of performance-oriented leadership, I don't know what will.

Servant leadership, on the other hand, done rightly, maintains its primacy on developing others to become what they are capable of becoming through serving and empowering them. In the biblical language, servant leaders serve others to be the very person God wants them to be. There are no 'mini-me' followers in the process. The emphasis is not even the organization's goals. It's the followers' though servant leaders are accountable not only to the followers but to other stakeholders.

All in all, it's encouraging to see the enthusiasm is out there to learn, practice, and implement servant leadership in organizations, no matter how counterintuitive it may sound to most people.

Who are you serving?

"As someone who has taught seminary students for more than 15 years, I worry about the rising number of seminarians who, when asked where and how they think they might best serve, respond with something like this: “Well, I think I would like to teach somewhere. Every time I have taught, people have told me I have done a pretty good job. I get a tremendous sense of fulfillment out of teaching the Bible. I think I could be satisfied teaching Scripture.” How pathetic. I know pagans who find satisfaction and fulfillment by teaching nuclear physics. In any Christian view of life, self-fulfillment must never be permitted to become the controlling issue. The issue is service, the service of real people. The question is, “How can I be most useful?”, not, “How can I feel most useful?”

Carson, D.A. 1992. A Call to Spiritual Reformation: Priorities from Paul and His Prayers, MI: Grand Rapids, pp 82–83

Howard Butt on Servant Leadership

Howard Butt's take on Trinitarian and Servant leadership:

What is Trinitarian Servant Leadership? Picture an equilateral triangle. One side is the Son, or submission, or servant. There is the Son, Jesus, the Son of God, submission and servant, that’s the side representing the cross. Another side is the Father authority, leadership, resurrection. The final side is the Holy Spirit, unity, creativity, and flexibility. It is all about the flexibility we need to relate most creatively to each other, in unity. Now the whole of life is this flexibility of servant leadership appropriate in each situation. This is the life in every believer. This is the God life that is in every believer when we are allowing Christ’s life to live through us.

The concept of servant leadership, which is a biblical concept, has two perils. One is that the servanthood of the leader renders him passive and impotent. As organizations become more truly democratic, the danger is that leadership gets lost or forgotten. A good example is that of the early Greeks, who founded democracy. It ultimately failed because in a totally egalitarian society, they did not allow for leadership. There was no one to provide an over-arching vision and direction. All went their separate ways, and the result was chaos, not freedom.

On the other hand, leadership can become authoritarian, insensitive, and tyrannical. The challenge is to find the balance between strong leadership and servant leadership. No one leads until someone serves.

Trinitarian Servant Leadership provides a model for merging three disciplines that I believe are vital in today’s business world: relational theology, behavioral science, and management strategies.