I attended a local symposium this morning presented by National Bank of Arizona and the Ken Blanchard Executive MBA – National Bank of Arizona is really great at creating free events open to the business community. The topic of the presentation was leadership and the bottom line which was facilitated by Doug Hoxeng co-author of The Business Case for Servant Leadership: Lessons and Success from Organizations and Leaders.
What is servant leadership? I think the quote below from Robert Greenleaf who coined the term in the 1970s says it best.
A couple of interesting figures bringing home the bottom line case for servant leadership were:
- Servant-led S&P 500 companies pre-tax portfolio returs were almost 15% higher than non servant-led S&P 500 companies;
- Of the 500 largest publicly traded companies as outlined in Jim Collins’ book Good to Great, the servant-led businesses outperformed their peers by 224%.
Five elements related to leadership and organizational success are strategic leadership, operational leadership, employee passion, customer devotion and organizational vitality.
While listening to the presentation it occurred to me that the notion of servant leadership is a perfect tool for an organization looking to adopt a sustainable business model. This path to leadership really speaks to the heart of the social pillar of the triple bottom line. The critical element of servant leadership is about stakeholder engagement as is true of the social, environmental and economic aspects of sustainability.
What better way to effect lasting (sustainable) change than to create a organization where the focus is on what people need, promoting collaboration, sharing power and leaders becoming facilitators.
Perhaps if you’re needing one more point to add to your business case for sustainability, servant leadership will offer something more practical.
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