By PETER SHELDRAKE

SERVANT leadership is an approach that focuses on the process of
leadership, but equally important in looking at the 'new'
approach is rethinking the purpose of leadership.

In a world where there is continuing change and uncertainty, it
becomes increasingly difficult to sustain the fiction that
leadership is about taking us to where we should be (as opposed
to trying to move us to where we would like to be): we don't
know where we 'should' be, and we don't even know what the
landscape will look like as we move forward.

If that sounds a little extreme, let me remind you of the number
of occasions in recent years when CEOs have been tipped out of
their jobs as a result of making the 'wrong decisions' about
what the company should be doing. Of course, they were not
'decisions', but 'guesses': identifying leaders as people who
seem to make good guesses seems a strange way to behave.

However, while being concerned about where we should be - and
then taking us there - reeks of traditional leadership: there is
a need to have a sense of where things are going, and where we
would like to be. Robert Greenleaf's essay on 'servant
leadership' does more than shift from 'should' to 'like'.

He is emphasising the importance of making a journey together,
and undertaking that journey with mutual respect. People are no
longer units of production, but are working together, thinking
together, and moving forward together.

When Machiavelli wrote The Prince nearly 500 years ago, he
offered some sound empirical advice on how to grab power and
keep it in the warlike environment of Italian principalities.

The approach is prescriptive, a "power and control for dummies"
book, based on observation: if you want to keep control, love
and fear are both useful, but fear works better in times of
adversity.

Servant leadership is not written that way - it is about ideas,
processes and suggestions, and they are often contradictory or
at least inconsistent. It is not an approach for those who want
a recipe.

In practice, servant leadership is really about how you see
leadership, and the issues you need to explore. Ten key concepts
underlie the approach:

* Five are concerned with skills - listening, empathy,
foresight, persuasion and conceptualisation

* Four are concerned with values - healing, stewardship, growth
of people and community building

* One is concerned with yourself - self-awareness.

How do servant leaders put this into practice? How do you know a
servant leader?

At one level, there is a very simple test.

Ask yourself the questions: "If I was considering doing
something that was different, that was important, that might
lead to big changes, who would be the person in my organisation
that I could talk to? Who would I feel confident in sharing
hopes and aspirations, who would offer guidance, and would give
me insights and understandings that would help me?"

The people who are identified by these questions tend to be
servant leaders.

They are often embedded in the core of organisations - not
necessarily at the top. They are easy to recognise, and are
prized by everyone who deals with them. They stand out because
they care - they really are stewards.

At another level, servant leadership becomes part of the culture
of an organisation.

In dealing with a variety of enterprises, I have been struck by
those places in which you sense that the skills of servant
leadership are living in the behaviour of the staff.

I have found this in an educational organisation, in a
government body, and in a number of commercial organisations.

Moreover, I have found that people want to talk about a new
approach to leadership, and welcome the opportunity to talk
about the servant leadership approach.

Indeed, in a seminar programme that I conduct, I am often struck
by the number of people who say "that's what we need" when they
read 'The servant as leader'.

The language and style of Greenleaf is clearly from the USA, but
the content is universal.

It is harder to find servant leadership at the top of
organisations. In most cases, the path to the top is still very
competitive and adversarial.

Many with a preference to lead and work with others in a
different way leave and start their own small enterprises, or
work as consultants.

Some battle their way to the top, and then slowly come to
recognise they wish to serve and lead differently - they have
followed Greenleaf's second path, being a 'leader first'.

However, the wisdom that these leaders begin to show is often
transformative for their organisations.

We are going through a period of significant change, a point of
inflexion. At times of radical change, outcomes are hard to
discern, and we are often trapped in the mindsets and values of
the previous period.

I remain confused about the world that will emerge over the next
20 years, but I am increasingly convinced that it is likely to
put the last two hundred years aside.

We have the capacity to treat everyone as a human being and
abandon the image of the person as a unit of production, and the
stresses and strains of contemporary life suggest that such
abandonment is long overdue.

To see ourselves as stewards, to put the needs of others first -
these are some of the critical elements of creating a new
approach to leadership.

Above all, I like to think about servant leadership rather than
servant leaders.

The word leadership emphasises that it is a skill that we all
can - and do - exercise.

Leadership is not a prerogative of position or power. It is a
natural capacity to work with others, interdependently.

Servant leadership affirms the dignity of the human spirit and
the reality that we are all born equal. The new leadership is
essential to create a world in which we can restore meaning and
respect for each other, and the world in which we live.

This is the final of a two-part article extracted from "The
Changing Leadership Agenda" by Peter Sheldrake. For more
information, call MIM Customer Service at 03-2164 4611, e-mail
via enquiries@mim.edu or visit our website www.mim.edu