Strategy Activation
The power of service and purpose. About this series. In these four articles, we ask: what are the keys to developing agile leaders who can pivot with the needs of the business strategy? Part 1. Develop your leaders in context. Leadership development can be used to put the best minds in a company to work on real, current business problems.
Part 2. Who leaders need to be and what they need to do. Each leader’s effectiveness depends on a number of factors, including personality traits, personal experience and workplace skills. Effective development addresses all of these.
Part 3. Realize that development is a journey. Meaningful change happens over time, but leaders can embrace new behaviors when they’ve been given time to understand them.
Part 4. The power of service and purpose. Serving a greater good is a powerful motivator for a leader to be his or her best self.
The drive of self-interest has become a prevalent dimension of everyday life. This societal trend toward self-interest, materialism, and competitive aggression, has been documented in magazines and books, including The Narcissism Epidemic by Jean Twenge and Keith Campbell. Leadership development—or any course of self-improvement—requires a degree of self-involvement, but there is a big-picture risk to the growing culture of “me.” Unfortunately, a rising tide of self-interest can jeopardize longterm organizational progress and strategy. To create a sustainable impact that goes beyond quarterly statements, leaders need to embrace a purpose beyond themselves. Most leaders will naturally express a desire to do this. They want to create, serve, build, and improve in the service of a broader and more long-term goal. This sense of meaningful contribution is the reason people get satisfaction out of mentoring and teaching others. However, many leaders suppress this desire in order to serve more practical, short-term objectives. People want to serve others, but for many reasons often end up serving only their own more immediate agenda. For an organization to unleash its potential, it must help its people experience the power of service. Leadership development, after all, is meant to improve how executives serve their teams, their customers, their organizations, and themselves. However, far too many people have been conditioned to take care of themselves first, whether for survival, financial reward, or an ego boost. The pendulum must swing in the other direction. Leaders need to experience the power of selfless service and of subjugating one’s own needs to a larger purpose.