Page 194 - Harnessing the Strengths

APPENDIX

Meet the Authors

n this book, Fons Trompenaars and Ed Voerman make
a connection between two things that are close to their
Ihearts: dilemma reconciliation and servant-leadership.
Because servant-leadership is deeply rooted in practice, they
want the reader to begin immediately, giving him or her
clear ways to use the concepts in real life. In order to do
this, they make use of a servant-leadership instrument from
the start: the dialogue. Ed Voerman gets things started by
asking his coauthor about his motivation.

Ed: Hey, Fons, what is it about this subject that gets you
all fi red up?
Fons: What I like so much about servant-leadership, Ed, is
that this leadership principle offers extremely practi-
cal solutions to universal problems that are faced by
people all over the world. An example: Imagine that
you are riding in a car with a friend who is speeding
and he hits a pedestrian. You are the only witness.
What will you do when you are standing in front of
the judge? Will you lie for your friend or tell the truth?
Everyone wants to help his or her friends and every-
one wants to tell the truth. The dilemma is therefore

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