Page 12 - Harnessing the Strengths

Background ■ xi

A Tool for Dealing with Culture Differences

This book aims to give you a better grasp of more effective
ways to deal with culture differences, specifi cally within the
cadre of servant-leadership. Servant-leadership is the brain-
child of the American expert in leadership in organizations
Robert K. Greenleaf. It is a style of leadership that is based
on the idea that leading and serving are two sides of the
same coin. This is in many ways an unusual concept. For
most people, leadership is connected with power, and serv-
ing is viewed as the absence thereof. In the dominating lead-
ership models, the leader is the person who gives the orders
and the “servant” is the one who takes them. In that sense,
the term “leading” has a positive connotation—exactly the
opposite connotation of “serving.”

Servant-Leadership

Servant-leadership is totally different. This model revolves
around the creation of a whole through the integration of
opposites, much like the symbol of yin-yang. The secret of
the servant-leader lies in the hyphen between “servant” and
“leader.” The hyphen represents the essence. Not only does
it represent a close connection between the two concepts,
but also that, in terms of content, they are fundamentally
equally valued. Without that integration, servant would be
nothing more than an adjective for leadership. That would
make servant-leadership just another variation of the many
ways you can approach leadership. Just as the word adjective
signifi es, an adjective is adjacent to the noun; it is a modifi er
with a different core meaning from the word it is modifying.
In the case of servant-leadership, that would be completely