In his speech to the Liberal faithful from Toronto last weekend, Liberal leadership candidate Justin Trudeau referred to the concept of servant leadership to explain his approach to greater democracy in the Liberal Party of Canada. One of the most successful leadership techniques in business and organizations around the world, you rarely hear of servant leadership in politics. Too often, people question the sincerity.
And yet servant leadership is what politics is all about. The essential step to becoming an effective leader is to first be a good servant. That rare person who is a natural leader knows that instinctively. It is the desire to serve that brings that person to a position of leadership. To remain an effective leader, you remain an effective servant. It is leadership that can corrupt the servant.
While examples of servant leadership have been around for thousands of years, it was only in the late 1900s that an American, the late Robert Greenleaf, studied and tried to explain servant leadership. He listed the characteristics of servant leadership and identified how they contributed to successful organizations. His foundation today continues to train leaders and servants.
Many of us in business saw these relationships as just an ethical basis for moral dealings with the complex relationships of business publics. When Greenleaf was writing his books, we were addressing university business classes on the importance of ethics in all business dealings.
And yet in politics the struggle is always to find the people whom you can serve. The knowledgeable political apparatchik can always find takers. And they take until they bleed you dry. The more freely you give, the less likely it is to be paid forward or back. Your usefulness becomes finite to those you serve.
The greatest danger is for the need to serve to be taken as arrogance. The best example of this in politics was the rhetorical question Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau asked on a western trip: Why should I sell your wheat? What is always left out of that quote was his continuing with a defence of the Canadian Wheat Board.
It is expected that Justin Trudeau will be more cognizant than his father of why you should never ask rhetorical questions of an audience. He also appears to have more intelligence than people want to give him credit for. That could be the ideal balance.
It will be fascinating to see how Stephen Harper’s people decide to attack Justin Trudeau. He will not be as easy a target as they think.
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Copyright 2013 © Peter Lowry
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