Page 83 - Harnessing the Strengths

66 ■ Servant-Leadership in the Intercultural Practice

manager had to demonstrate that the person complied with
the criteria. As a result, the system was less vulnerable to
change. The strict management made it clear that under
no condition was it to be made public that an exception
had been made for the research department. It was there-
fore remarkable to see that just fi ve years later, the entire
Shell Group had made this smart method of benchmark-
ing the organization-wide standard. Servant-leadership is
only effective between two cultures when it reconciles two
opposing orientations to a higher level.

Universal Criteria Versus Unique Ideas

The quality of a servant-leader, that of his or her team, and
that of the interaction between both is the most important
set of factors for determining the success of an organiza-
tion. There are thousands of books written about both sub-
jects, and justly so.
One of the most original thinkers about the subject
of management teams is the British author and consultant
Meredith Belbin. In his fi rst book, Management Teams,
he described how the gifted Apollo Team performed sig-
nifi cantly worse than the second team, which consisted of
fewer individually talented members but that worked better
1
together as a team. According to Belbin, an effective team
is a group of people who strive for a common goal and, in
the process, go through certain phases. We will describe
several of these in the next chapter. After almost forty years
of research, he came to the conclusion that the effectiveness
of a team depends on the fulfi llment of eight roles.
The creation of wealth is often realized by complemen-
tary roles within an organization or a society. The success
of a team requires that the roles are held by one or more of